Word: bushed
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Shortly before he died, Franklin Roosevelt asked Dr. Vannevar Bush to blueprint a new deal for U.S. science. Last week the chief of the wartime scientific high command dropped his blueprint on President Truman's desk. The plan, drafted by Dr. Bush and four committees composed of leading U.S. scientists, would require the Federal Government to spend some $122,500,000 a year to support basic scientific research and the education of young scientists...
...favor of this plan Dr. Bush and associates offered some stern arguments: despite vast expenditures on wartime research ($720,000,000 in 1944 alone), the U.S. is on the brink of scientific bankruptcy. Reason: it has used up its backlog of basic scientific knowledge. During the war U.S. scientists, drafted almost to a man for work on new weapons, gadgets, drugs, etc., have done virtually no basic research. Moreover, the U.S., unlike every other great power, has stopped training young scientists: Dr. Bush's group estimates that the war will cost the nation 167,000 potential scientists and doctors...
...Said Bush's group: the U.S. must adopt a "national policy for science" forthwith if it hopes to 1) keep abreast of other nations in military research, 2) "get ahead" in international trade, 3) achieve full employment. Bush's scientists unanimously agreed that this could be accomplished only by federal subsidy. Among those who concurred in his report were representatives of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Standard Oil of Indiana, Du Pont...
...Other Bush notions about mechanical aids to thought: a recording machine that would type when talked to, with a radio connection making it possible for the busy executive to record an idea for the microfilm library when he is away from his office; a camera the size of a walnut (worn on the forehead) which would take stereoscopic pictures in full color...
...Bush considers all these suggestions "commonplace," attainable by combining devices already in use or in development. Says he: "The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come...