Mina Rees
Abstract
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) played a vital role in the postwar support of basic research in the sciences at the nation's universities in the years immediately following World War II before the establishment of the National Science Foundation in 1950 and its expanded funding a few years later. Part of ONR's mathematics program was devoted to the support of computers and computing, and this article will report on that aspect of ONR's activities and the related activities at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS).1
The establishment of ONR at the end of World War II reflected the concern of several of the naval officers who had been associated with the work of the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) and of leaders in both the legislative and executive arms of the government that the vitality and momentum of wartime research would be lost in the postwar years and the level of civilian scientific research would be disastrously diminished. This concern was formulated by Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal in a memorandum he sent to the president, dated February 1945, in which he said, "The problem which began to emerge during the 1944 fiscal year is how to establish channels through which scientists can [contribute to the nation's security by carrying on research] in peace as successfully as they have during the war." In response to this initiative and the support it received, ONR was established by act of Congress in 1946. In June of that year, I was invited to go to Washington to set up its program in the mathematical sciences.
I had been executive assistant to Warren Weaver, the chief of the Applied Mathematics Panel (AMP) of OSRD during the war, and had frequent dealings with several of the naval officers attached to the U.S. navy's liaison office with us. It was one of these officers who suggested my name to Alan Waterman, the first chief scientist of ONR whom I had known in OSRD. Although I thought it somewhat unlikely that mathematicians would be enthusiastic about accepting support for their peacetime research from one of the military services, I decided, after talking with some of my wisest friends, to accept the appointment. During the early days of my tenure, I traveled widely around the United States to discuss with senior research mathematicians the type of program that would be desirable and appropriate, and their willingness to participate in it. The only guidelines laid down by the navy for the determination of this program were those set by Public Law 588 of 1946, which, in the words of the preamble, established
an Office of Naval Research in the Department of the Navy; to plan, foster, and encourage scientific research in recognition of its paramount importance as related to the maintenance of future naval power, and the preservation of national security; to provide within the Department of the Navy a single office, which, by contract and otherwise, shall be able to obtain, coordinate, and make available to all bureaus and activities of the Department of the Navy, world-wide scientific information and the necessary services for conducting specialized and imaginative research; to establish a Naval Research Advisory Committee consisting of persons pre-eminent in the field of science and research, to consult with and advise the Chief of such Office in matters pertaining to research.
The program we designed after wide consultation received the blessing of Captain Robert D. Conrad, USN, the military officer who was responsible for the entire contract research effort of ONR and was viewed by the staff as the spiritual father of ONR. In 1947 he wrote to me that I had "won the title of mathematical architect of O.N.R."
The program we planned provided for the support of research in pure and applied mathematics, statistics, and computer development with its related numerical analysis to ensure the sophisticated use of electronic computers when they became available. Implementation of this broad policy was in the hands of the staff, and an able staff was assembled. The objective was to develop a program of first-class mathematical research that was of long-range interest to the navy and to identify mathematical results of potential importance to the navy wherever and whenever they appeared (see [21]). One such result that appeared very soon was George Dantzig's work in linear programming, which, as I will report later, gave rise to a substantial and important logistics program in ONR.
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Index Terms
- The computing program of the Office of Naval Research, 1946-1953
Recommendations
The Computing Program of the Office of Naval Research, 1946-1953
The computing program of the Office of Naval Research was concerned primarily with numerical analysis and with computers developed at universities; but ONR also participated in the National Bureau of Standards program, under which the UNIVAC was ...
Reviews
James Cecil Hammerton
This paper is an account of the emergence of computing in the United States, written in part to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the ACM. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) was established by an act of Congress in 1946. Mina Rees was invited to be its head. The program she and her associates planned “provided for the support of research in pure and applied mathematics, statistics, and computer development with its related numerical analysis to ensure sophisticated use of electronic computers when they became available.” Of her tenure in office, Rees reports that much of what was important “for the history of computers in the United States took place at the bureau between the day I arrived in Washington . . . and the time when INA [Institute for Numerical Analysis] ceased to exist just after I left Washington in 1953 to become dean of the faculty of Hunter College.” The scope of the paper clearly extends beyond the physical confines of the Office of Naval Research. The description of the networking of a government agency with university programs, of the funding methods deployed, and of the hazards to those funding methods due to the misunderstandings (and the understandings) of people in government are the stuff of history. During the several years I have taught an introductory course in computer science, which in addition to other matters endeavored to convey some sense of the origins of the computing business, no text that I have used has included the name of Mina Rees. Some of the other names she mentions are there: Jay Forrester, John von Neumann, J. Presper Eckert, John Mauchly, Grace Hopper, and Howard Aiken. But of Rees and her close associates, John Curtiss and John Todd, not a word. This paper will help to repair those omissions. Students, I have found, accept the time-sharing environment in which they find themselves without question. They accept the proliferation of personal computers without any wonderment about “how so much got into so little.” Most of them go through their four-year academic undergraduate program without seeing a punched card. Their incredulity rather than their interest is aroused by the history of the development of working memory: the Williams tube, the rotating drum (vertically mounted “so it didn't sag” as Rees reminds us), the mercury delay lines, even the coincident-current memory when cores were the size of donuts and cost one dollar a bit] But as to how it all came about back there in 1946–1953, it seems to the average student like looking back on the Stone Age. Rees's account of those early days is a timely reminder of all we owe to the early pioneers both in the development of machinery and in the evolution of software and applications methods. Stibitz and Dantzig are mentioned. SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer), SWAC (Standards Western Automatic Computer), ATLAS I, and Whirlwind are part of her story. Her talk of “the usual delays and failures to meet deadlines” rings a bell. She reports that when Warren Weaver, then chairman of the Naval Research Advisory Committee, visited the Whirlwind project, he said that his conversation with Forrester had left him confused about whether Whirlwind was a simulator or a general-purpose computer. Doubtless Forrester chuckled about that. A glossary of acronyms would have helped the reading of this account. Most of the acronyms for machines and for organizational entities are explained when first used; occasionally an explanation occurs after the first use, as with SEAC and SWAC. For those who today are concerned about the continual emphasis on national security, Rees supplies plenty of ammunition. The roots of the practice of tying a program or project to national security in order to secure funding run deed in our national history and the practice is embraced eagerly by those who seek the funding. In the conclusion to the paper, Rees writes “In large part, there was a free flow of information and encouragement among the mathematicians and engineers who were participating in bringing achievement and focus to the whole undertaking. All this was facilitated by a number of factors: First, the community of mathematicians was still a small one . . . all . . . were acquainted with one another and worked easily together. Second, many of the scientists in responsible postwar positions had had assignments during World War II in which they had been associated with engineers. . . . Third, most of the people involved believed strongly in the potential of computers and were prepared to accept responsibility for making decisions. . . .” She concludes, perhaps with some nostalgia, “As I left Washington [in 1953], I was convinced that computers would be exploited in the future by the large commercial companies and the role of the government vis-a`-vis the computer would be quite different from what it had been during the zesty days of my service in ONR.”
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