ABSTRACT
The scientific war effort in the United States was administered by the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). Vannevar Bush was a brilliantly effective research director. Although he had developed analog computing machines in the 1930s, by the outbreak of war he had ceased to have any active interest in computing, despite his understanding of its importance in scientific research. At the outbreak of war, the only computing technologies available were analog machines such as differential analyzers, primitive digital technologies such as punched-card installations. Computers were receiving scientific as well as public attention. Scientists were on the move to learn about wartime developments. It is possible to trace the links between the Moore School and virtually all the government, university, and industrial laboratories that established computer projects in America and Britain in the late 1940s. The Moore School, besides its computing work for Ballistics Research Laboratory (BRL), ran a number of research and development projects for the government.
