The Listeners. Roy R. Manstan

membership based on which technology they were best suited for. Additional committees were later created to address fuel and fuel handling, metallurgy, and optical glass. The objectives were far reaching, but each committee was dedicated to the same goal—preparedness.⁷

      NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND THE PRESIDENT

      During the Civil War, as the earlier records of the [National Academy of Sciences] indicate, its committees and its members dealt actively with military and naval problems of precisely the same type as those which have insistently pressed for solution during the present war.⁸

      By the fall of 1915, it had become obvious to members of the National Academy of Sciences that the European war was being defined by rapid advances in technology, the direct result of the efforts of scientific minds among the participating countries—Germany in particular.

      During the summer following the loss of Lusitania, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels had initiated an idea to bring together engineering talent from America’s industrial and manufacturing base. Daniels enlisted Thomas Edison to head what would become the National Consulting Board. By October, the NCB had formed committees whose mission was to address the technological needs that were presumed to exist on and over the battlefields of Europe, and on and under the sea. Yet the emphasis would be on improving state-of-the-art technologies through engineering know-how and not through the application of scientific principles.