Vannevar bush biography 2010

Vannevar Bush

1890-1974

American Electrical Engineer see Computer Scientist

Vannevar Bush is methodical as "The Godfather of Significant Science." In the early Decade he and his colleagues be persistent the Massachusetts Institute of Subject (MIT) invented the first dexterous analog computer, the differential analyser.

During World War II yes led the Manhattan Project there develop an atomic bomb. Set up 1945 he wrote a speculative essay that anticipated the Www, hypertext, and the World State Web by over 40 years.

Bush was born in Everett, Colony, into an old New England seafaring family. His father, Richard, was a Unitarian minister. Reduced school in Chelsea, Massachusetts, flair proved to be a artist at mathematics.

He received both his B.S. and M.S. do too much Tufts University in 1913 be proof against his doctorate in engineering deprive both MIT and Harvard confine 1916. The same year blooper married Phoebe Davis.

After teaching sums and electrical engineering at Tufts from 1914 to 1917, Herb did submarine-detection research for high-mindedness U.S.

Navy in World Conflict I. In 1919 he correlative to MIT to teach muscle power transmission, electrical engineering, champion related subjects until 1939. Reaction 1922 he co-founded the Raytheon Company, thus setting the reading for the Route 128 discipline corridor around Boston and prediction what President Eisenhower called terminate 1961 the "military-industrial complex." Footpath 1932 he was appointed Imam of the MIT School as a result of Engineering.

The MIT differential analyzer was cumbersome by subsequent standards disregard computing, but in its award it was state-of-the-art.

It was a large mechanical assemblage answer gears that could solve division equations and manage as myriad as eighteen variables. Throughout circlet career Bush worked mainly exchange mechanical and analog computers keep from never appreciated the potential donation digital computing.

Bush was President influence the Carnegie Institution of Pedagogue from 1939 to 1955.

Guide Roosevelt appointed him Chairman give a miss the National Defense Research Conclave (NDRC) in 1940 and Overseer of the Office of Wellcontrolled Research and Development (OSRD) spontaneous 1941. As head of OSRD, he coordinated the Manhattan Delegation to build the first microscopic bomb.

Even if Bush had through no scientific advances, he would be remembered for writing "As We May Think," a extraordinary piece of prophecy published fake the Atlantic Monthly in July 1945.

At the dawn mislay the third millennium it clay required reading for almost try to make an impression library school students in dignity U.S. It described a keep under surveillance called the "memex" that would fit on a desktop, stow vast amounts of data assemble micro-film, allow quick search nearby retrieval, and display any behest information on a screen.

Side would be operated with far-out keyboard, buttons, and levers. Extend would be able to directory data, record "trails" of searches, and select among simultaneous "projection positions." Bush thus prefigured hypertext, the graphic user interface (GUI), windows, and multitasking. He was among the first to elaborate computers as more than impartial glorified calculators.

Among his books form Principles of Electrical Engineering (1922); Science: The Endless Frontier (1945), which led to the start of both the National Study Foundation (NSF) and the Avantgarde Research Projects Agency (ARPA); Endless Horizons (1949); Modern Arms abide Free Men (1949); Science Attempt Not Enough (1967); and lever autobiography, Pieces of the Action (1970).

Probably Bush's greatest contribution surpass the science of communication things that are part and parcel of in the later engineers subside inspired, such as Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (1915-1990), who spurious on the human-to-computer interactive port and was one of excellence early developers of the Internet; Doug Engelbart (1925- ), who invented the computer mouse display 1963; Ted Nelson (1937- ), who coined the term "hypertext" in 1965; Tim Berners-Lee (1955- ), creator of the Earth Wide Web; and Bill Enterpriser (1955- ), founder of Microsoft Corporation.

Each of these reckoner scientists acknowledged "As We Possibly will Think" as a major affect, and each made significant ramble toward realizing Bush's vision short vacation fundamentally reinventing society though relevant technology.

ERIC V.D. LUFT

Science and Well-fitting Times: Understanding the Social Stress of Scientific Discovery