OSRD

For Holmes, the OSRD’s path to success offers lessons for contemporary efforts to leverage science and technology in the national interest.

As Holmes documents, Office of Science and Research Development Director Vannevar Bush’s vision of mobilizing science for the war effort led to the development and deployment not only of the fuse, but also of Allied landing craft, a blood substitute, penicillin, and radar-jamming technology, to name just a few of the innovations from “Bush’s army of researchers” within the OSRD.

There was also a lot of work done on vaccines through OSRD’s Committee on Medical Research, including vaccines for flu and pneumonia.

Both of these mobilizations required strong federal control, the first through the War Production Board and the second through OSRD.

And even with OSRD, Vannevar Bush set up the partnerships with industrial research labs as contracts, not grants.