Talk:Vannevar Bush/Archives/2012/April

Analog computers
Analog differential analysers are completely different animals to Babbage difference engine! Sure, their output might be similar (a table of numbers) but the construction, operation etc. are completely different (for example - diff. analyser is an analog machine, while difference engine is purely digital). Needs checking! (no signature)

In books by Norbert Wiener, Bush is quoted not as having "constructed a differential analyser" but as the inventor of analog computers. Now, this could probably be as controversial as calling Marconi the "father of radio", but I suspect that Bush's work before 1945 deserves more attention than his short article about the Memex. After all, he never built the Memex, just speculated about its future existence. --LA2 19:36, 11 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree. His work on differential analysers is massively more important than the speculative Memex; in the pre-digital era these were the cutting edge in scientific computing. They go back to Victorian integrator mechanisms (Kelvin etc) but Bush's contribution was the invention of the torque amplifier that made multi-stage devices feasible (see ).Nothign else at the time could handle heavy differential equations in physics. Later, differential analysers were used on problems like the dynamics of the Barnes Wallis bouncing bomb. 213.120.158.228 20:19, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Memex
"He despised the humanities?" Hardly. Read his most famous article, "As we may think" -- it's about a guy researching the history of the longbow, for crying out loud! He was certainly a social conservative, and may have disliked the trend in certain forms of the humanities/social sciences (like anthropology), which were often used at the time to promote radical causes like communism and sexual promiscuity (think of the works of Margret Mead), but that isn't the same thing. --Dr. Jonathan Badger

The Memex section paragraphs 2, 3 and 4 do not appear to be NPOV. I would suggest they either need some substantiation for the contained value judgements or they need to be rewritten. I have commenced with two simple word changes to paragraph 4.

Further to this, paragraph 3 may be factual, but if so, it would be more credible if it contained actual references with regards to what influence Bush had to "choking" off funding to anthropology studies and to what extent, ref: "...(he badly weakened American anthropology when he choked off a large part of its funding in the 1930s)...".

The next line also appears as if it was written by a bitter librarian on his staff, "... and refused to talk to the librarians who could have helped refine his ideas." Is there some documentary evidence that he was particularly disrespectful to the librarians of his time? Threepd 14:43, 22 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Until there is documented evidence, I've changed the wording to reflect that he was not active in the library community, but hopefully, I've removed the defiant tone. I also went ahead and included some qualifications to the "he despised the humanities." This is just over the top and needs a STRONG citation if it's to stay that way.

Who was Buckland, who is like him, and in what manner was the conceptual Memex proven - or even proved - to have been so flawed? Midgley 14:23, 24 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Buckland is an acamedic in the field of Library Science. In other words he's a librarian whose work is not cataloguing books or giving reference service but doing research in everything that has to do with library science, which is also called Information Sciebce. see Talk:Memex for more. --AlainV 02:59, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I've not seen what he wrote. Given that the Memex was an idea rather than a design, I think the tone of the articles condemnation is harsh.  If I was the chief scientist, then I'd expect that academic librarians etc would be among the sort of people who would implement such ideas, not regard them as a jury to decide whether I had produced a completely formed plan.  Particularly if it was part of an essay in a magazine - or did the Memex get design work done on it as well? Midgley 13:16, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * No, the Memex was never fully designed or prototyped, it did not even reach (under its memex name or other names) the stage of virtual prototype like Alan Kay's Dynabook, but Bush was given a contract to build something that would have been its precursor, the "Rapid Selector". If the Rapid Selector had worked it would have been in a sense the precursor to a real memex in the same way that the early versions of the NLS (computer system) and the first versions (not the one Steve Jobs finally saw working) of the Xerox Alto can be seen as early precursors of our modern networked personal computers.  But Bush never managed to make the Rapid Selector work and Buckland traces the History of the project and its meaning. And Buckland's research is very recent, becasue when Bush did his work there were not as many academics in the field of Library Science (or Information Science) as we have now, and the few that existed then were more busy with topics such as library economy than looking at gadgets devised by engineers. --AlainV 16:13, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Some of this should find a place in the articles I think. Perhaps one reason Bush didn't involve library academics was that they were visibly busy with other things?  I think it is all very well to look back from now (or 1882) and see that something couldn't work, but Tsiolkovsky's idea of an orbital tower was no less interesting for not being possible without carbon fibre and Bush's pointer Where We Might Go is not diminished by being a reflection of what many people were thinking around then. Midgley 22:09, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

The few academic librarians (full time professors teaching Library Science or Library Economy in Colleges and universities) were busy with a lot of other things but there were uncountable librarians working in libraries per se, ready to answer all his questions. Bush had in theory an incredibly easy access to the teams of librarians working at MIT when he was president there and to the thousands of librarians at the library of Congress when he was Roosevelt's foremost Science specialist. He chose to ignore them and also ignore their services as information sleuths (they could have found for him the publications by others such as Goldberg and Paul Otlet) and went on to reinvent the wheel. His famous positions at MIT and the White House are the reasons why the Memex went on to be hyped in US popular magazines and why he was cited on and on, again and again whenever thinking of the future of computing was done in the US. There's a very nice article on this :Kahn, Paul, Nyce, James M., Oren, Tim, Crane, Gregory, Smith, Linda C., Trigg, Randall H., Meyrowitz, Norman (1991): From Memex to Hypertext: Understanding the Influence of Vannevar Bush. In: Walker, Jan (ed.): Proceedings of ACM Hypertext 91 Conference. December 15-18, 1991, San Antonio, Texas. p.361. Linda C. Smith did a marvelous study of how the original Memex article has been misappropriated and ill cited by anybody wanting to justify themselves with a precedent. Her paper has been published and re-published in several places. So, "Memex as an Image of Potentiality Revisited." can be found in: From Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind's Machine. Ed. James M. Nyce and Paul Kahn. Boston: Academic Press, 1992. Pp. xi + 367. --AlainV 22:39, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

"Bush set out his thoughts at length in the essay "As We May Think" in the Atlantic Monthly which is described as having been written in 1936 but set aside when war loomed. He removed it from his drawer and it was published during July 1945." Well I for one haven't been able to find any information on whether or not that is true. I've read his article, alongside the intro to it, written in The New Media Reader, and all it mentions is the fact that Bush published it in 1945. So I think i'm going to change the page to show that; if someone else finds a verisitic source, feel free to change my edit and the page back. But since we don't know if this information is true, let's leave it to the facts. --Kendalfong 2:11, 29 Oct 2009 (UTC)

Bush, Canadian UFO documents, and deletions
AlainV keeps deleting the section I added on Canadian documents that say that Bush headed a secret UFO committee with the U.S. Research and Development Board. His provided reasons are he doesn't like the referenced websites and the documents are "alleged."

The documents are not "alleged" but were discovered in the Canadian National Archives. They have been authenticated by the Canadian government as genuine. In other words, this is all totally factual and documented. Not liking the subject matter per se is not a valid reason for removing material.

Regarding the "UFO conspiracy websites" that are referenced: They have copies of the documents for Wikipedia readers to view. If AlainV can find other Websites which he finds more suitable that also have these documents online, I have no problems with sending the readers there instead.

The documents that are "alleged" are the so-called MJ-12 documents that again name Bush. The questionable and controversial nature of these "documents" is clearly written into the section. There is no claim here that they are factual. Quotes from letters of Omond Solandt, chairman of the Canadian Defence Research Board, are provided to indicate that he and Bush did indeed discuss the subject of UFOs "informally" on many occasions and Bush was very interested. Included are quoted portions where Solandt also denies having any knowledge that Bush headed up any U.S. government UFO group.

As far as I can see, the section as written is factual, documented, and does not express a POV. AlainV may disagree, but I'm sure some sort of mutally agreeable wording can be worked out. Dr Fil


 * Wikipedia has a clear policy against putting in any article what you just described above. Please read it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research You have to reference publisshed sources, not archive documents from which you have done some form of analysis. Thank you for your kind attention. --AlainV 03:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * AlainV, you have not politely requested other sources but instead chosen the path of total censorship. In fact, you have removed my material three times in only 24 hours.  Hmmm, doesn't Wikipedia have a clear policy against removals of this sort?  Yes it does.  Instead the proper and polite thing to do would have been to put this up for discussion here.


 * In point of fact, the links provided are to the PRIMARY sources, namely the documents themselves. They just happen to be listed at websites that you don't personally approve of, which is besides the point.


 * Also every time you delete you dream up some new rationale for deleting. E.g., you claimed the documents weren't real or that they were "alleged."  What was your basis for that?  They are straight out of the Canadian National Archives and they have been vouched for as authentic.  Here's a few of the related documents from the Archives Website:


 * http://www.collectionscanada.ca/ovni/002029-1400.01-e.html
 * http://www.collectionscanada.ca/ovni/002029-1402-e.html (note direct involvement of Omond Solandt and Canadian DRB, as I mentioned in)


 * Although it is more awkward for the reader, I will instead make all links direct to the documents without focal webpage with links and commentary. Thus ALL PRIMARY source material and no intervening interpretation at the website. OK?


 * I could also list various books where the documents are printed, such as Arthur Bray's "The UFO Connection." Bray was the Canadian researcher who first found some of the documents in the Canadian National Archives and made them publicly available.  Another is Timothy Good's "Above Top Secret."  Is this acceptable?  Or are you going to list all source material as UFO conspiracy wacko stuff, including Archive documents, and again use it as your rationale to delete the material?


 * And BTW, unless it is plagiarized, everything published on Wikipedia is some form of "original research" or interpretation by the Wiki writer collated from a number of sources, including, no doubt, your own stuff. This does not somehow automatically invalidate it because others don't like the subject material.


 * Thank you for your kind consideration.Dr Fil 05:14, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * There is nothing about Vannevar Bush in those Collections Canada Web documents. I've just read them. --AlainV 05:49, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * They list only four pages out of hundreds of pages of documents on Project Magnet and Project Second Story, both Canadian UFO study groups set up by Omond Solandt under the DRB. The memo that got Project Magnet established with Solandt's approval and naming Bush heading up the secret UFO group was from the Department of Transport dated Nov. 21, 1950, and based on a briefing arranged by the military attache at the Canadian embassy in Washington.  memo    The memo is at the Canadian National Archives even if its not listed on their website.  (Believe it or not, not everything in archives is digitized and on the Internet, hence using links to websites that do have particular documents, even if you don't approve of them.)


 * There are also follow-up memos and letters, again involving the Canadian embassy, concerning a magazine article on saucer propulsion theories that had to go through Bush and the U.S. Research and Development Board for clearance. Here are the links to those documents that I provided:


 * And I further provided links to letters written by Omond Solandt saying he did meet with Bush on a frequent basis and discuss UFO's, but "informally." And to be perfectly fair, the quotes also have Solandt saying he was unaware of any group that Bush was supposedly leading.


 * All of this points to Bush being involved in the UFO investigations of that period, which isn't surprising given the history of the subject, since the intelligence branches of the Air Force, Navy, and Army, the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, plus the CIA, FBI, NACA (of which Bush had been chair and a member through 1948) also had their own investigations going on. In 1947 when the Air Force's Project Sign was first set up, the memo written by Gen. Nathan Twining Sept. 24, 1947 (saying flying saucers were real and needed investigation by multiple government agencies) specifically mentions the U.S. RDB, of which Bush, of course, was chair at the time.


 * Of course Majestic 12 should be mentioned, since it is all part of the controversy about Bush and UFOs. I tried to make very clear that the so-called documents naming Bush as heading of MJ-12 were not only controversial but believed by many to be fraudulent.


 * I really don't see why this well-documented material should be excluded from biographical material on Bush. Whether you like the subject of UFOs or not (its apparent you don't), there is no escaping that Bush had a well-documented link in the investigation of them.  Again, this shouldn't be so surprising given the extensive investigations going on at the time by many government agencies, most of them in secret.  Why wouldn't the nation's "science czar" also be involved?Dr Fil 19:33, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

When you point to archival documents you're pointing to documents which require original research. On the other hand, if you have on hand a book (let's say a biography of Bush, since this is, after all a biographical article on Bush) which makes a connection between several archival sources then you can sum up parts of that book, or dig facts from that book without adding your interpretation or opinion of it. Does it say in a biography (book or article)of Bush that he had any kind of connection to any kind of project dealing with UFOs? I've read several articles on Bush (by James Nyce, Paul Kahn and many others and parts of a biography by G. Pascal Zachary and I don't remember any mention of him being involved in A UFO hunting project. --AlainV 01:11, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * There is nothing in the Zachary biography related to UFO's, the Majestic 12, or any of the other content in the disputed section. I could see a brief mention of his supposed place in MJ-12, but a whole section of dubious content based on dubious sources is unacceptable.--ragesoss 17:00, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but I just don't understand the logic here. There is nothing dubious or disputed about the Canadian documents, which are absolutely genuine.  They're in the Canadian National Archives (mainly the Department of Transport files).  If anything, links direct to the documents on the Web constitute primary sources of information, not descriptions that might be found in a book.  It's also more convenient for Wiki readers rather than trying to find an obscure book in a library. No biography covers everything about a person's life.  Refusing to include material because it isn't in a biography strikes me as ridiculous if it is authentic and can be found elsewhere.  Would adding non-biographical book references to the documents help resolve the problem here?


 * All I did is say that Canadian documents implicate Bush as heading up a UFO investigation group in 1950-1951 within the U.S. Research and Development Board, which Bush chaired from 1947-1948 and was on the oversight committee after that. What is the basis of this statement?  "Original research?"  No, just stating what's obviously in the documents and then linking to the documents so the reader could verify the contents for themselves:
 * Dept. of Transport top secret memo, Nov. 21, 1950 (based on briefing received by Canadian embassy military attache and DOT radio engineer Wilbert Smith in Washington D.C. from an RDB consultant): "The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb. Flying saucers exist.  Their modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush."    (The memo also mentions discussions with Omond Solandt, chair of the Canadian Defence Research  Board (DRB), who gives the go-ahead to saucer mechanism's research with the DRB lending assistance.)
 * The "small group" headed by Bush was operating within the RDB as revealed in additional correspondence concerning a proposed magazine article by Donald Keyhoe on saucer propulsion that had to go through Bush and the RDB for clearance.
 * Nov. 24, 1950: Memo to Dr. Solandt from Smith, saying he was enclosing a draft of the article for revisions by Solandt and others in "our group" and that it would require permission from the U.S. RDB before it could be published.
 * Jan. 3, 1951: "Secret" memo to the Canadian embassy from Smith.  Again mentions that Solandt/DRB were to review revised article. The article was to be returned to the embassy, and then taken "to Dr. Bush for clearance."
 * Jan. 6, 1951: "Secret" response from embassy to Smith: Mentions embassy secrecy of whole matter (directed by ambassador) and that revised article had already been returned to Keyhoe by the Solandt/DRB embassy liason (Wright), who hadn't since heard from Bush or what he did about it.


 * This all looks cut and dried to me and is no more "original research" than quoting or paraphrasing from a biography of Bush about something else. Again, I can reference books with this material in addition to web links if that will help resolve the dispute here.


 * I also included quotes and links to letters from Dr. Solandt from the 1980s where Solandt admits to frequent discussions with Bush about Canadian UFO research while denying knowledge of Bush heading up a UFO committee. (It does obviously beg the question why Bush and Solandt would be holding such discussions if Bush wasn't actively involved in investigations.) Again pretty cut and dried documented historical material about Bush's obvious connection with UFO investigations at the time even if there never was an actual Majestic 12 group.Dr Fil 20:09, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Those documents are on a UFO cosnpiracy site on the Web. They don't even give proper mention of the RG (Record Group) number which the National Archives assigns to series. Even if they were finally identified as coming from where they are alleged to come from I still don't see how they could be considered as nothing more than bits of information which are completely irrelevant to this biographical article on Vannebar Bush. --AlainV 01:11, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * "Even if they were finally identified as coming from where they are alleged to come from I still don't see how they could be considered as nothing more than bits of information that are completely irrelevant to this biographical article on Vannevar Bush."


 * Translation: "I, AlainV, really don't care a whit if the information is factual or fully cited.  I'm still going to delete it and any lame, self-serving rationale will do."


 * Thank you for so clearly spelling out your real agenda here, namely denial and censorship based on personal prejudice about subject matter. What an abuse of the scholarly intent of Wikipedia.


 * Have a nice day!Dr Fil 19:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

His name
family relation to other Bushes? Prescott, George HW, George W uncle or something 64.160.47.37 00:40, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * "No relation." --Fastfission 05:04, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation of first name. Needs a reference. I've been told VAN e var; sorry, I don't have a reference either.
 * Van-EE-ver. Like receiver. He once made a joke that everybody called him "Van" because nobody could figure out how to pronounce it correctly. I don't have a reference on hand but I'm 100% positive of these things. --Fastfission 05:04, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I worked beside Dr. Bush at MIT during the decade of the 1960s, and he himself pronounced his name "VAN-e-var", not "Van-EE-ver". Olgan 22:02, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I concur with Olgan. That's what I've heard in history of science courses in college but I don't have a reference.  --Coolcaesar 04:45, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I have a reference, from the Zachary biography Endless Frontier (p. 2): "Friends called him "Van" because, he joked, they could not pronounce properly his full first name (it rhymed with beaver)." --ragesoss 07:02, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
 * A colleague at the University of Mary Washington who wrote his dissertation on V. Bush advised me Bush pronounced it Van-EE-ver. I think he based his advice on the Zachary biography. Are there no recordings in which FDR introduces or mentions him, or in which someone says his name? Without better evidence, it seems unwise to make the categorical statement that begins this article. Clearly the matter is contested! I've edited the article but do not know how to change the IPA pronunciation that follows--would be grateful for help here. Gcampbel (talk) 16:19, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Perspective/NPOV
This article makes fun of his Memex idea, accuses him (without citing sources) of anti-Semitism, repeats silly charges about being part of an evil cabal of 12 and devotes an entire section trying to wrap criticisms of Bush around an apocryphal pun. The rest of the world seems to think of Bush as a major figure, but you wouldn't know it from this article. Other than come up with "Memex", did he do anything for 20 years at MIT? (He seems like he was a pretty smart guy). What about the differential analyzer? Was it important?

Or how about his role as the first head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development? Science and technology played a big role in US efforts to win World War II, things like radar, bombsights, FM radios, the atomic bomb. Other than grab power and control the Manhattan Project, what did he do for four years? (One account said he convinced FDR to fund the Manhattan Project).

Where's the perspective? The coverage of topics proportionate to their importance? Like many articles, this is a patchwork of factoids without an over-arching understanding of the subject. A high school student doing a report on science policy would be ill-served reading this rather than the EB version. Surprisingly (for a major computer topic), the article on the differential analyzer remains a stub. JoelWest 23:22, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Some tagging for requiring references. Factoids rearranged into something factual (barring checks for precision) and hopefully more useful.  An article on the general imperfection of humans may be worth writing, but this is not it (I mean I agree with the remarks above).  Unreferenced stuff should be excised in due course, and archived here lest it all be rediscovered later. Midgley 14:51, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Norbert Wiener - referred to above here - was at MIT according to one reference on the Web because Harvard discriminated against Jews - making MIT a better university, of course.

"However, Harvard didn't have Jews on the faculty. That was sort of an issue that I became aware of. Of course, with the growth of Fascism and the treatment of Jews by Hitler the awareness of Jews grew. I even had it in Woodrow Wilson High, I remember. There were homes who would have parties and wouldn't invite Jews. I had a friend who was the son of the local pharmacist, and I once took him to a party with me where he hadn't been invited. It wasn't an unusual thing to do in those days, but the family bawled me out: "We don't accept that kind of person here." So there was a certain amount of anti-Semitism, not in my family or even in my immediate circle, but very strong in the academic world before World War II. Harvard, particularly, was [anti-Semitic]. You had people like Norbert Wiener, his brother-in-law, Philip Franklin, and Norman Levinson, all of whom had been spurned by Harvard and were at MIT. It made MIT a very good department. Harvard has changed now."

http://content.cdlib.org/dynaxml/servlet/dynaXML?docId=hb1p3001qq&doc.view=entire_text An interview with another US university chancellor, Albert Bowker.


 * In an ancyclopaedia article about a person, it is not encyclopaedic to remark on ways in which they (may) have been identical to the general run of their peers in their time - it is worth noting if they are usefully or notably different from them. An article on anti-semitism in US universities might well be worth writing, and Wiener might be an example in it, but that is not this article and that is not made out to be notable or relevant in this article.  Midgley 15:58, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I've read the Norman Lewinson article. It seems hard to reconcile that with the assertion here.  There is no other mention in this article of the Provost of MIT, tht also needs more detail. Midgley 16:04, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * You mean Norman Levinson. What made Bush's anti-semitism unusual was that at the time, MIT was largely free of that sort of thing.  Admissions were, and still are, based on merit and not on whether the applicant was a son or grandson of an alumnus or went to the right boarding school (a tactic used by Ivy-league schools to keep out Jews and others).


 * I'm not sure of what your agenda is, Midgley. First you were objecting to mentioning Bush's anti-semitism because it was unsourced, and now that it is sourced, you claim that it is unimportant, since lots of other people were anti-semetic at the time. -- Rglovejoy 16:20, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * My agenda? Writing an encyclopaedia.  The reference to admissions is interesting, given that the man in question is described in his own article as having been admitted to most of (the courses in his subject) at MIT.  If there is something that is different here, then that is perhaps worth trying to substantiate and write abotu - eg "unlike all other senior faculty at MIT, V Bush made appointment decisions on the basis if his documented anti-semitism."  It doesn't quite fit with appointment as Provost, and it isn't made out by one person not getting one job on one occasions.  16:25, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * redacted

..Anti-semitism.. While the provost at MIT, Bush had been accused of anti-semitic bias. In 1937, Bush had turned down Norbert Wiener's request to appoint Norman Levinson to a assistant professorship in the mathematics faculty. Wiener and G.H. Hardy, who was visiting Harvard at the time, went to Bush's office to protest. Hardy was alleged to have said, "Tell me, Mr. Bush, do you think you're running an engineering school or a theological seminary?"


 * Quoting again from the Lveinson article, Levinson ..." joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1937." It doesn't say which job he got, but that appears to be the same 1937, and there is no assertion that the Provost had been changed.  A reason for removing it is that it doesn't seem to reach the standard of scholarsip needed for a significant assertion about someone in an encyclopaedia.  Midgley 16:28, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * As I noted in Midgley's talk page, Bush was made a Vice President and Dean of Engineering of MIT in 1932. The citation in the Sylvia Nasar book said that Bush was the provost, a position that did not exist until 1949, and not the vice president.  Bush reported directly to Karl Taylor Compton, the president of the Institute.  I'll go ahead and make those changes. -- Rglovejoy 17:06, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I like the edit, Midgley. If Bush ever did or said anything pro-semetic, I think it would be good to include that here as well. -- Rglovejoy 18:04, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
 * There may well be scope for an article on the admissions policies of American universities in the 1920s-50s, and that may well touch on anti-semitism (although I suspect there are more conspicuous groups who were disadvantaged) but that would be that article, and this is this article. Midgley 14:23, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm an outsider on content development but an avid user of wikipedia. Reading this article, I was first startled to see the charge of anti-semitism (in a full section given this title!), then appalled to see how thin the evidence was. Charges of anti-semitism are serious and can blacken a historical figures name indefinitely, being propagated from one source to another. I suggest you either produce something more substantial or remove this section from the article. A good encyclopedia article will be widely read and quoted and therefore should strive to be definitive. Encyclopedias are not the place for rumors. Adamsiepel 13:06, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

"He also predicted "electronic brains" the size of the Empire State Building with a Niagara Falls–scale cooling system. While this does not look quite so far-fetched if Google's entire collection of servers is considered as a single "brain", it still falls well short of Bush's prediction." Being fair to the man, how large would all of google's servers be if built using 1940s technology? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.105.104.157 (talk) 08:45, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I've marked thart section "Original Research." I think I'll delete that passage about Google's servers in a few days if no one provides a source. David Delony (talk) 19:14, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

"This co-ordination of scientific effort was instrumental for the Allies winning the Second World War." - This sentence strikes me as much too speculative without providing some serious support for its contentions. First, that the coordination of scientific effort was entirely the result of Bush's committee, and second that the coordination was instrumental for the Allied victory. I think the article works fine without the sentence, and I would suggest removing it. Hmoulding (talk) 20:33, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Bush's hostility to the social sciences
In response to Midgley's query, here are my sources for my edits.

Bush's hostility to social sciences, particularly anthropology, was documented in:


 * G. Pascal Zachary, Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century (New York: Free Press, 1997).

Unfortunately, I don't have the page number but if you search on Google Book Search (books.google.com) for "Vannevar Bush anthropology" you will get several other excellent sources for this assertion.

As for how this hostility prevented Bush from meeting with the librarians who could have helped him clean up the Memex's defects, the source for that is: Again, I don't have the page number. This was all from research I did as an undergraduate student, years ago. --Coolcaesar 06:14, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Colin Burke, Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush and Memex (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1994).

For Midgley
Please, would you take some aspirin, dress a Vannevar pajama and go to sleep, please?! What a PITA! 201.19.129.247 02:48, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Bush's Doctorate
His degree was erroneously listed as a Ph.D. The MIT library (http://library.mit.edu) as well as the book A Century of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, 1882-1982 (p. 48) make it clear that Bush got his degree at MIT when engineering doctorates were called Eng.D. (before the Sc.D.) and that he chose to keep it an Eng.D.

Claude Shannon
The article says that Shannon was a graduate student of Bush. Maybe this is true, but it's misleading, because Bush was not the thesis supervisor (graduate advisor) for either of Shannon's MIT degrees -- the PhD in math or the SM in electrical engineering, both of which (according to the MIT library) were supervised by Frank Hitchcok.


 * I agree, as can be seen on this page . 143.107.165.124 (talk) 23:07, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Fred Terman
The article says "One of Bush's PhD students at MIT was Frederick Terman", but his dissertation supervisor was Dugald C. Jackson. So again, this is misleading. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Joelwest (talk • contribs) 02:22, 30 December 2006 (UTC).

Removing memetics category
I am removing the memetics category from this article since you learn no more about the article's contents from the category and v.v. Since so many things may be memes we should try to keep the category closely defined in order to remain useful. Hope you're okay with that. The link to meme would be enough I suggest. Facius 11:09, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Any Relation?
Does anyone know if this fellow is related to the Bushes of current American political fame? If so, I definately think it warrants mention in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.47.240.109 (talk) 09:04, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

A supporter of eugenics
He was also an eugenist, a follower of eugenics; at least until 1939.Agre22 (talk) 04:05, 27 May 2009 (UTC)agre22

What's the source for your statement? Recent history gives us ample reason to suspect the worst of wartime leaders. However, suspicions should not be disguised as facts. Vannevar Bush's only involvement may have been the leading role he played in shutting down the old-style "science" of eugenics. I found the following excerpt from:

Progressing from Eugenics to Human Genetics Celebrating the 70th Birthday of Professor Newton E. Morton

"On the other hand, the eugenics movement and research in the United States fell far short of the expected standard of a science. The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor did collect and accumulate many thousands of sheets of manuscripts and reports, but the data were biased and methodology of analysis false. In 1935, the administrators of the Carnegie Institution of Washington appointed a committee to assess its work; the committee found its work unsatisfactory. In 1939, Vannevar Bush, the new President of the Carnegie Institution, persuaded Harry Laughlin, the head of the Eugenics Record Office, to follow Davenport into retirement. In the next year (1940), the Eugenics Record Office was shut down entirely."

This source supports his opposition. Was he involved before he shut down the Eugenics Records Office? Or, did he just fix a problem that was part of the Carnegie Institution before he arrived? Does anyone know? John Harvey (talk) 17:26, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Removed from see also section
The see also section is only for Wikilinks to other Wikipedia articles. This did not belong and should be integrated elsewhere:

NOTE: In the preview footage as the interview with V Bush begins, his name is spelled Vanevar Bush.
 * [Television DVD release] of the World at War 30th anniversary edition. Vannevar Bush is interviewed at length during the filming of the series between 1971 and 1973. The interview is contained in the World at War archives. This interview was not a part of the original series. It appears on Disc 11 of the World at War 30th Anniversary edition.