Scope and Content Note
The papers of Vannevar Bush (1890-1974) span the years 1901-1974, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period from 1932 to 1955. The collection consists of general correspondence, family papers, scientific papers, speeches and writings, subject files, and printed matter. It documents various phases of Bush's professional life as a physicist, engineer, and administrator of scientific research. Bush's advocacy of closer cooperation between scientists and the federal government during World War II led to his role as the principal mobilizer of American scientific and engineering talent in the wartime defense of the nation. His first national appointment was to the chairmanship of the National Defense Research Committee, an embryonic agency for weapons development that Bush proposed and that President Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurated in 1940. One year later Bush assumed the directorship of a greatly expanded successor organization, the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), where he supervised the Manhattan Project and a number of other programs. The collection is organized in six series: General Correspondence , Family Papers , Speeches and Writings , Scientific File , Miscellany , and Additions .
The primary series of Bush's papers is the General Correspondence , which includes letters sent and received and a wide variety of material ranging from personal writings and memoranda to organizational reports and minutes covering the gamut of Bush's professional and avocational interests from the late 1930s through 1955. Illuminated are his various inventive probings (Bush was knowledgeable in optics, medicine, ornithology, and zoology) and his puzzling over questions such as the uses of penicillin, the "homing instinct" of birds, and the development of a "rapid selector" for the retrieval of microfilm and tape recordings. Evident as well are his connections to businessmen, academic associates, and government officials who shared his enthusiasms or had an interest in their practical resolution and marketability. There is also information regarding his career as a teacher and dean at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1930s.
The main focus of the correspondence, however, is on Bush's responsibilities as coordinator of the scientific community during and after World War II. Featured are the complexities and challenges of running the OSRD, but prominent as well are the activities of other governmental and quasi-governmental bodies whose tasks supplemented or continued OSRD policies through World War II and into the Cold War era. Included among the agencies which are represented in some detail are the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the Joint Committee on New Weapons and Equipment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Science Foundation, the National Research Council, and the National Academy of Sciences. Important, too, are files concerning Bush's numerous corporate and academic affiliations, including his service on the board of directors of American Telephone and Telegraph Company,1947-1962; as chairman of the board of Merck and Company, 1957-1962; as corporate chairman of MIT, 1959-1966; and as a trustee of Tufts College and Johns Hopkins University.
The Scientific File pertains to diverse topics such as air engines, fly rods, immunological reactions, and solar pumps. In it are diagrams, photographs, laboratory notes, bibliographies, patent reports, and correspondence. His family papers , which are relatively few, contain correspondence with immediate family members but consist mainly of financial records and miscellany. The Speeches and Writings series provides a full account of Bush's views on a host of subjects, with notable topics being the interrelationship of science and government and the technological assumptions behind America's postwar relations with the Soviet Union. Especially relevant to this latter theme are papers relating to Bush's book, Modern Arms and Free Men (New York, 1949) and to numerous talks and articles delineating his views on international control of atomic energy, the garrison state, America's military and ideological confrontation with the Soviet Union, and the loyalty controversies of the McCarthy period.
The Additions series consists mainly of a speeches and writings file from the Carnegie Institute of Washington where Bush served as president during 1939-1955.
Important correspondents include scores of legislators, policymakers, executives, scientists, and military officials. Among them are Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman; army leaders Henry Harley Arnold, Omar Nelson Bradley, Robert Porter Patterson, and Carl Spaatz; and government experts Dean Acheson, James Forrestal, and David Eli Lilienthal. Additional names of significance and frequency include Niels Henrik David Bohr, Robert A. Choate, Karl K. T. Compton, James Bryant Conant, Bradley Dewey, Charles Dollard, W. W. Garth, Jr., Caryl Parker Haskins, D. C. Josephs, James Rhyne Killian, Russell R. C. Leffingwell, F. Alexander Magoan, Don Krasher Price, Redfield Proctor, Palmer Cosslet Putnam, Elihu Root, Jr., Oscar M. Ruebhausen, John T. Rule, Orville J. Schell, Leslie Earl Simon, W. H. Timble, Tracy S. Voorhees, Warren Weaver, Bethuel Matthew Webster, Carroll L. Wilson, and Robert E. Wilson. Institutional materials and correspondence in addition to those already cited above include files pertaining to the Metals and Controls Corporation, the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the Franklin Institute, the United States Patent Office, and the Smithsonian Institution.