Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

430 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51)
of proximity fuze devices. In May 1945 ground was broken for the con-
struction of a half-million-dollar ordnance electronics laboratory on the
Bureau grounds. Concurrently, the Navy asked for continuation of the
guided missile work, and upon the establishment of the AEC, support was
offered for enhanced programs on its behalf. The Bureau was thus committed
to a large amount of developmental research in the postwar period.3
At the same time, the store of basic research had been seriously de-
pleted by the war and there was growing concern in the Federal Govern-
ment for its replenishment. It was unlikely that this country could ever again
rely on Europe for its basic science, or afford to depend on foreign research
for its military strength.4 This prospect became a major concern of OSRD
during the demobilization period; vide Vannevar Bush's Science—The End-
less Frontier (1945). The question was raised by the science committee of
the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion and was one of the first
orders of business of the AEC. The naval establishment found its answer
in the organization of the Office of Naval Research in 1946, to coordinate
all research for the Navy and support basic as well as applied research.
With its system of grants and contracts for research in the universities
and in public institutions, the Office of Naval Research played a key role in
the formation of the National Science Foundation. The establishment of
the Foundation in 1950, "to evaluate science research programs undertaken
by agencies of the Federal Government," settled the 100-year-old question of
a permanent central scientific agency in the Government offering support
to basic science.5
Even before the establishment of its central agency, the Federal
Government had sought to assure itself of a continuing fund of both basic
and applied research through the creation of laboratories wholly supported
with Federal funds but operated by non-Federal agencies, as were the Los
Alamos Laboratory and Radiation Laboratory of the University of Cali-
fornia, the Argonne Laboratory at the University of Chicago, the Lincoln
Laboratory at MIT, and the Applied Physics Laboratory at the Johns Hop-
kins University.
'Memo of agreement, LJB for Chief of Ordnance, Oct. 31, 1944, and attached corre-
spondence (copies in NBS Historical File). In addition to the Navy and AEC research,
memo, Joint Chiefs of Staff for Director, NBS, May 24, 1945, requested NBS to assume
all obligations of the Interservice Radio Propagation Laboratory (IRPL) as a postwar
Bureau function (NBS Blue Folder Box 24, FPE—674c). The magnitude of the defense
research commitment by 1950 is described in 20-page memo, Director, NBS for Secretary
of Commerce, Nov. 28, 1950 (NBS Historical File).
Don K. Price, Government and Science: Their Dynamic Relation in American De-
mocracy (New York University Press, 1954), pp. 32, 46.
Ibid., p. 60.