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or 200 years now, at a steadily accelerating pace, naval research, study, and exploration, working in suPerb cooperation with every segment of industry, science, and education, has helped produce, as we all k°ow, a fighting force of acknowledged technical and c°mbat superiority that has helped us to sustain and guarantee the Nation’s security through nine major "ars and a host of lesser conflicts.
. Not so very well known, and hence less-appreciated, ls the fact that this same 200-year endeavor has served to provide, for every citizen, an additional legacy of ■ndividual and collective benefits of a magnitude as remarkable as it is unrecognized.
But now, certainly, as the Nation pridefully counts lts Bicentennial blessings, there is compelling reason to Ptesent a reminder-for-the-record of some of the my- tiad developments, products, and achievements—root- ed in the actions and activities of people and things naval—which contribute enormously to the ongoing "'ell-being and quality of life of the Nation and all its People, young and old, rich and poor.
And if the reading of even so brief an account should generate a noticeable measure of Navy pride and satisfaction, that too, is as it should be. For the accomplishments selected for presentation here represent Merely a cross section of America’s own magnificent Capability—too often taken for granted—to create,
Compiled and edited by Commander Robert P. Brewer, USN (Ret.), the Naval Institute’s Executive ^'rector, and Master Chief Journalist William J. Miller, USN (Ret.), using as principal source material: (a) the Naval Institute research report developed in s,1Pport of the Navy’s Bicentennial Van Project by Dr. B-Jack Bauer, Professor Nelville T. Kirk, Mr. David Q. ^c°tt, and Senior Editor Frank Uhlig; and (b) the Office °f Naval Research special presentation report, “Naval Besearch: Building on a Proud Tradition,” authored By Mr. Richard L. Kenney of ONR’s Command Information Division.” with ingenuity and determination, “Something Better.”
Historically, what was to become the characteristic pattern of the Navy’s special contributions to the Nation might be said to have begun when, in 1825, President John Quincy Adams asked Congress to establish a naval academy, and, in his own words defined, first, the unusual, dual nature of the Navy’s function as both an instrument of national security and a focal point and source of professional inquiry into matters not limited solely to the classic pursuit of proficiency in battle. President Adams described the purpose of the naval academy to be ‘for the formation of scientific and accomplished officers. ’ ’
With that as the beginning point for its now-traditional close association with the national concern for scientific research, the Navy’s potential for contributions in fields other than martial became increasingly recognized and respected, and used.
During the Civil War, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles set up, in 1862, a “permanent commission to which all subjects of a scientific character on which the government may require information may be referred.” The membership of the Commission included Charles H. Davis, the first head of the Nautical Almanac Office; Alexander Bache, former head of the Coast Survey; and Joseph Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution. And again, the dual nature of contribution was quickly evident when these men became significantly instrumental in helping other leading scientists of the day to obtain Congressional approval for a National Academy of Sciences, an effort which culminated within a year with the establishment of that National Academy.
Not surprisingly, four of the first five reports produced by the Academy concerned naval and maritime subjects, as for example, the first report considered the calibration of compasses aboard ships equipped with iron smokestacks, and this was followed closely by investigations into ways to protect ships’ hulls from salt water damage, and to evaluate the recently invented hydrometer, and to determine the worth of Matthew F. Maury’s current charts and sailing directions. The bonds of mutual effort toward common goals were growing.
As technical problems became more complicated during the rapid industrial growth following the Civil
ered alone, is probably the most famous example
War, Secretary of the Navy William Whitney properly noted in his annual report of 1885 that: “It is of little service to a nation to have any Navy at all unless it is a fair expression of the highest scientific resources of its day.’’ That belief was reinforced by others who followed him, including Theodore Roosevelt, whose period of direct association with the Navy, from 1897 to 1909, is itself a chronicle of technological progress for the Navy and the Nation. Among other things, the Navy demonstrated the use of the internal combustion engine in a submarine; completed the testing of the submarine Hollandpursued Roosevelt’s own suggestion that the potential of the “flying machine’’ be investigated; outfitted the first hospital ship; established the Hospital Corps; and opened the Naval Model Basin for ship design.
The pattern of concern for broad scientific inquiry continued to be evident in the action of Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels, in 1915, to appoint a Naval Consulting Board headed by Thomas Edison to study ways for “utilizing the natural inventive genius of Americans” to help the Navy keep pace with modern technology. At Edison’s suggestions, the Board proposed that the Navy establish its own research organization, a recommendation which led to the creation, in 1923, of the Naval Research Laboratory, to give the Navy its first opportunity for directed effort in performing scientific research.
The day of national giant steps of progress, that were to lead all the way to the moon, had begun. But cast back again now, to earlier steps and earlier progress that first gained direction and distance from naval efforts which enriched the Nation’s life. Whatever the unit of measure, the record is superlative.
For example, this month as the Tall Ships gather on the occasion of the Bicentennial’s “Operation Sail,” the courses they follow will be plotted from charts which had their origins in Navy Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury’s wind and current charts which were first issued in 1848. The charts revolutionized navigation by telling ship captains where they would most likely find favoring winds and currents, and they served to point the way, literally, for the era of the clipper ships, whose record voyages to the far corners of the globe attested the Nation’s awareness that its recently- won independence continued to be critically dependent upon the use of the sea.
Maury’s Sailing Directions, published in 1851, was the first authoritative work on the subject; he was the first to advocate sailing along great circle routes, the shortest possible distance between any two points on the globe, and he advised Cyrus Field on a suitable path for the transatlantic telephone cable which was laid in 1858 with the help of the USS Niagara.
Even earlier, one of the first charts published by the Navy had been the result of a survey, by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, in 1837, of the great fishing grounds around Georges Shoal and Bank off the New England coast. A year later, Wilkes led the first offshore national scientific expedition in a study of Pacific and Antarctic waters that carried them around the world and excited oceanographic activity by the continuing effort of the Navy to collect knowledge of its environment and to extend man’s sea-horizons.
During that epic voyage, which circumnavigated the globe, both of the expedition’s two ships, the Vtft' cennes and the Peacock, recorded, onjanuary 19, 1840, the sighting of a land mass which is now widely cofl' ceded, or debated, as the discovery of Antarctica. but not so well-known today, perhaps, is the fact that the expedition returned with a cargo, carefully collected under the supervision of horticulturist W. D. Bracken- ridge, of 10,000 species of seeds, nuts, and plants. That collection became the nucleus origin of the United States Botanic Garden which today attracts thousands of visitors to its site at the foot of Capitol Hill in Washington.
The success of the Wilkes Expedition stimulated overseas exploration in the 1840s and 50s to the point where that effort dominated scientific activity, and ini period more generally remembered as that of the Nation’s westward expansion, the Navy, already at home in all the seas, became the logical agency to condud the exploration necessary for a seaward expansion 10 transoceanic trading, fishing, and whaling.
Naval officers led expeditions to West Africa, thc Middle East, Central and South America, the ChinJ Sea and Japan, and the North Pacific Ocean, gathering information to add to the growing American stotf- houses of scientific knowledge and extending Amef' ica’s ocean frontiers at a remarkable rate. Commodotf Matthew C. Perry’s opening ofjapan in 1853, consid' naval diplomacy in American history. Later, during thc post-war period 1869-1874, the Bureau of Navigation conducted surveys of the Central American isthmus t° examine possible routes for an interoceanic canal. Thc sheer magnitude of naval tasks accomplished is perhap5 best suggested by the 1924 report of the Secretary of the Navy, which includes a 20-page listing of the exploring and survey expeditions conducted by the Navy during the previous century. When, much later, our elder* cruised the Pacific in the likes of the fabled Lurline and President Lines steamers, they, as do the gargantuan tankers of today, followed naval routes of a century past—and even later perhaps, some returned to g° ashore in places like Tarawa, where the assault beac*1 depths were plotted from Navy charts of another era.
Today, the Navy continues to expend its funds—on (he order of a quarter billion dollars annually—on its Ur>ceasing examination of its environment: physical and chemical oceanography, marine geology, oceanic bi- °logy, and engineering research, instrumentation and acoustics, meteorological data gathering, oceanic and atrnospheric circulation, changes in migration patterns °f commercial fishes, weather prediction, ship-routing '^formation—all having a combined impact of benefits t0 our merchant marine and maritime industry—and tbus to our Nation—that is as incalculable as it is important.
And even as the Navy concerned itself with understanding and using the phenomena at the air-sea internee, it has probed unceasingly with ocean-floor coring, deep-sea photography, biological sampling, bottom- Ptofiling, underwater construction, and corrosion con- ttol. Then, as man’s influence threatened .to become a danger to his environment, the Navy escalated its two- century-old war in support of the ecology which had its 0figins in the earliest of government conservation programs: to set aside timber lands for the orderly, ensured Use of oak in ship construction.
In 1970 the Navy and the Coast Guard declared all- °ut war against pollution of all types, producing new ar>d improved “weapons” for such operations as deleting, containing and recovering oil spills and reduc- lng air pollution through the introduction of new dis- ’Alate fuels and sewage disposal that are being adopted by industry.
Even as the age of exploration had drawn to a close, Slfnilar parallels in progress had become evident in the Davy’s contributions to the Nation’s burgeoning industry—benefits whose impact altered and improved, Measurably, the welfare and well-being of the country.
The celebrated pioneer aviator, Commander Richard E. Byrd, seen with his pilot, Chief Aviation Pilot Floyd Bennett, USN, was the first to command and navigate flights over both the earth's poles. He made immeasurable contributions to transatlantic flight —e.g., the NC flying boat, dirigibles, and Lindbergh's historic flight—before going on to become one of the foremost Antarctic explorers of the 20th century.
In 1882, a Navy appropriation for three steel-hulled cruisers and other vessels carried the Congressional stipulation that the ships were to be of domestic manufacture, in accordance with rigid Navy specifications. For a national steel-producing capability heretofore providing steel principally for such things as locomotive boilers and railroad rails, the combined creative efforts of the major steel companies were required to develop entirely new methods of producing steel castings. Although, initially, industry’s response can only be termed reluctant, the compelling demand served as a catalyst action which helped provide an 8-fold increase in the Nation’s steel production capacity in the ensuing 20 years.
Thereafter, by 1921, and again as a result of the Navy’s insistence on improved quality of metals, coro- rosive-resistant steel was developed for submarine periscopes and windlass gears, and other special steels and alloys were created for use in naval aircraft. By 1933, the Navy had also developed a revolutionary gamma ray radiography inspection process to detect flaws in cast and welded steel components.
The pattern of combined progress and shared discovery continued, spurred by the explosive technological growth of World War II, which precipitated its own enormous chain reaction of spinoff development of an unending series of near-magical items of personal creature comfort, cures and conveniences which have become, literally, commonplace fixtures in our everyday lives. Consider: the development of titanium with nickel to form Nitinol, the “metal with a memory” which can be bent, coiled, or otherwise formed at low temperature, but on being heated will return to its original shape. Application? For John Q. Citizen, whose taxes paid for this essential research, it is necessary only to look again at the magnificent braces on the teeth of John, Junior—just one of the civilian, orthodontist uses of Nitinol which make it all well worthwhile.
It is unlikely, too, that John Q. Citizen, as he starts his car in the mornings, perceives any relationship between the Navy’s submarines and the storage battery of his car. Nevertheless, there is a definite spinoff value,
directly resulting from extensive Navy tests in the 1920s to develop more reliable, safer, more efficient, longer- lasting batteries for submerged operations. The benefits of their findings, better design and better materials, can now be obtained at your nearest service station.
Similarly, the operators of printing presses, punch presses, riveting machines, steering gears and movie projectors, among many such machines, have little or no awareness that a naval ordnance engineer developed the Waterbury hydraulic speed gear—long used by the Navy to train and elevate large caliber guns—incorporating a principle now widely applied throughout industry and business. These examples of industrial/civilian applications of Navy-origin principles and products are as abundant as they are varied, and they range from the development—for ordnance purposes—of special alloy formulas for steel springs, to improved refrigeration, insulation, and air conditioning, to the first high speed motion picture camera, to food processing.
Indeed, for the farmer there is tempered-steel hard evidence that from the same research which has produced better weapons, there has come a better plowshare.
Consider, too, Ms. J. Q. Citizen, as she surveys the familiar objects of her domain. Undoubtedly she would express some mild surprise to learn that many of the appliances, devices, materials and conveniences she has come to regard as essential, have origins extending beyond an advertised brand-name or television commercial. No credit line: “Courtesy U. S. Navy” ever appears, but, for example, as Ms. C. seals the school lunches in neat Saran wrap bags, she is likely using a commercial derivative of a plastic developed by the Office of Naval Research for use in high-altitude balloon research.
And why, Ms. C. might ask, would the Navy want a Teflon-coated frying pan? The answer, of course, is that the Navy didn’t want a non-stick cooking utensil when it experimented with the Dupont-invented polytetra- fluoroethylene. The Naval Research Laboratory was searching for a lubricant/preservative coating for the protection of rifles and ammunition. However, Navy scientists found that by spraying a thin film of the material on metal, then heating it in a very hot oven, they could lubricate the metal for an indefinite period of time—making for considerable savings in naval machinery maintenance costs. Years later, the commercial application became evident and quickly became a part of America’s kitchenware.
Users of the multitudinous fiber glass products— small boat hulls, building materials and fabrics, fishing rods and pole vaulting poles are some—would have difficulty relating such things to the Polaris missile, but fiber glass itself is an example of the results obtained by the combined efforts of industry, the other services, and the Navy to develop a filament-wound motor case for the Navy’s missile.
Obviously, any attempt to document, fully, all of the Navy’s largely unrecognized contributions that have helped America—and the world—to achieve a better life, would be presumptuous, but certain of these gifts from the sea services lend themselves to presentation rn definable categories.
Under the very broad heading of “science,” an early Navy “first” in services to the people may be noted m the establishment of the Naval Observatory as the firs1 federally finance astronomical observatory which began publishing its monumental Star Catalog in 1846, and since 1869 has provided the Nation with exact time signals. In 1866, a separate Hydrographic Office was established as a principal, continuing source of marine navigation information for the Nation.
In the field of communications, and for understandable reasons, the Navy’s interests and involvement have been inherent to its mission—but invariably to the benefit of seaman and landsman alike. In 1858, after helping to chart the desired route, the Navy also helped lay the first trans-Atlantic cable, employing the USS Niagara for the purpose.
In 1878, Master Albert Michelson, while teaching at Annapolis, conducted the first of his experiments m measuring the speed of light—experiments for which he was awarded, in 1907, the Nobel Prize in physics, an honor which, itself, must reflect unique credit to the naval service which had strongly encouraged this young physicist in his brilliant contributions to science and to mankind.
As early as 1888, Lieutenant Bradley A. Fiske experimented with radio, and in 1899, the Navy extensively tested Guglielmo Marconi’s newly developed equip- ment—the first Navy message transmitted was on the occasion of Admiral Dewey’s triumphant return to New York from the Spanish American War—and during the following year the first sets were installed on naval vessels. Five years later, President Theodore Rooseveh assigned to the Navy the major responsibility for the government’s use of radio.
By 1904, Navy broadcasting of time had originated at Navesink, N.J., and the Navy had 33 ships and 18 shore stations equipped with radio, and during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, the radio on board the USS Chicago was the only means of quick communication between the city and the outside world. In 1908 the first radio-telephone was used on board ship, and the Naval Radio Laboratory was established.
In 1914, the famed Naval Radio Station, Arlington! Virginia, began its operation. Best known for its broadcasts of time signals from the Naval Observatory, it was
a pioneer in long distance transmissions. By 1918 it Wad-cast directly and regularly to Paris and Honolulu, ar*d the even more powerful Naval Radio Station New Brunswick, N.J., could be heard by radios in the front 'ines in France.
it was during this period that the Navy’s insistence °n better performance served to prod the industry into the development of vacuum tubes, thereby creating a tnarket which substantially reduced the cost to civilian users of this “exotic’ ’ new equipment.
In 1923 the Navy developed the first high-power, high frequency radio transmitter and conducted the first radio-controlled flight of a pilotless aircraft—a forerunner of things to come in air navigation and commercial transportation, as well as in missilry and space exploration. And, should any of the growing thousands °f citizens band radio enthusiasts ever wonder, between ten-fours,’’ just where it all began, the Navy built the first mobile transmitter and receiver in 1924, and installed it in the airship Shenandoah.
During the course of experiments in 1922 in the hlavy Radio Laboratory (later the Naval Research Laboratory) in Anacostia, Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor and Leo C. Wung discovered that moving objects reflected certain frequencies of radio waves. This was the basis for radar. % 1925, the Navy was working to develop the pulse
transmitter which employs the principle of radar, and, in 1930, L. A. Hyland discovered that aircraft could be detected by a similar method. Again, magnificient cooperation between naval and civilian scientists of this country and England continued the perfection of radar to become a formidable weapon in war and a vital instrument for a peacetime world.
Also in 1930, the Navy developed a new acoustic receiver for underwater sound detection of submarines, the predecessor of modern echo-ranging sonar which has been adopted by the world’s oceanographers to study and map the world beneath the surface of the seas.
As a result of such passed-along benefits, when a protein-hungry, mineral-poor world harvests the oceans’ bounty, the source, the methods, and much of the hardware will be by-products of two centuries of naval investigation.
Meanwhile, Navy research continued to open new channels in electronics, and the record will clearly show—oftentimes at a deafening decibel level—that the transistor, that ubiquitous mote which has attached itself to virtually all of our lives, and all the related marvels of the electronics industry are the products of basic research in solid state physics supported on a large scale by the Navy.
Perhaps even less well known to a world become increasingly dependent upon computer technology is the fact that the world’s first high-speed digital computer was developed by scientists supported by the Office of Naval Research. That research also made possible the magnetic core ferrite storage units now widely used in most computers.
The Navy’s association with nuclear power—a term and a concept which still trigger mixed reactions—is generally considered to have originated with the employment of nuclear propulsion in, first, submarines, and later in surface ships. Not so well known is the fact that the Naval Research Laboratory became, in 1939, the first U.S. government agency to study atomic power, and that research developed a liquid thermal diffusion process for separating uranium isotopes and produced some of the material used in early atomic devices.
Thereafter, the United States Navy was the first organization to adapt nuclear power for essentially a peacetime use, and increasingly useful to the scientific
Measuring the velocity of light while at the Naval Academy was but the first step in a life’s work that culminated in Albert Michel- son’s becoming, in 1907, the first American ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Physics.
community as well as the Navy are the compact radioisotope power generators which provide electrical power to run experiments and transmitters in locations where conventional power does not exist. For example, in 1962, a Navy nudearpowered reactor furnished electricity for the Naval Air Facility, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica.
An even more recent development, regarded to have an exciting use potential in a wide variety of fields, is the laser. A device that generates light with a purity of color, a degree of directionality, and a beaming of radiant energy many times greater than any other, including those that use the sun as its source, laser’s industrial and medical applications are already indicative of its increasing value to man. While the Navy claims no credit for the initial breakthrough which made the laser a reality, the Office of Naval Research had actually supported university maser and laser research beginning in 1951. Like most of such research, the Navy demanded no military payoffs for its support, principally for the reason that the Navy’s interest was in finding new ways of communication, both above and below the seas. That interest continues to increase as additional applications, in optics and medicine among others, become evident.
Shortly after the announcement that four of the first seven astronauts were naval aviators, the quartet—left to right, Wally Schirra, Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, and Alan Shepard—met with CNO Arleigh Burke and acting Corps Commandant, LtGen Vernon J. McCaul. As they and other naval officers ventured out into space on man’s greatest adventure, the nation was reminded that it is Navymen who comprise the Navy’s greatest gift to the nation.
Perhaps in no area of the Navy’s many contributions is the vital common denominator of people so impressively evident as in the accomplishments of that elder science of man: medicine.
Since its establishment in 1842, the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery has functioned quietly, determinedly, and with superb professionalism not merely to heal the sick, but to prevent sickness and to make man better because he is healthier. Few others, in or out of uniform, can know, as does the physician, that while wars bring extraordinary suffering, each experience provides an additional awareness and an increased determination to improve medical care and to extend the profession’s capability to reduce man’s vulnerability to natural and self-inflicted ills. And because the subject of his concern does not vary, in or out of uniform, the benefits of the medical professional are shared by all.
Beginning in 1820, with Naval Surgeon Usher Parsons’ “The Sailor’s Physician,’’ naval medicine progressed through stages that are indicated by Naval Surgeon G.R.B. Horner’s “Diseases and Injuries of Seamen,” in 1861, and the first textbook on atomic medicine, by Rear Admiral C.F. Behrens, in 1949In the field of research, Navy surgeons B. F. Bache and E. R. Squibb (who later founded one of the country’s largest pharmaceutical house) persisted in their efforts to develop a more adequate source of anesthetics, and so produced a new method of manufacturing chloroform of better quality, in greater amounts, at less cost.
In preventive medicine, in 1911, the Navy led the country in administering antityphoid vaccinations to all of its people. The results were carefully observed by the Nation, and, by the 1920s, antityphoid vaccinations were compulsory in all states.
In 1941 Navy doctors were the first to use sulfonamides in wound treatment to prevent infection; in 1943 Navy doctors were the first to use blood plasma in field surgery, and naval medicine also first employed Penicillin for the treatment of gas gangrene, pneumonia, and local infection of wounds and ulcers. War- fime experience also enabled the naval physician to pass t0 his civilian counterpart valuable knowledge of burn treatments developed in combat, and later applied on tfie home front.
Navy experiments in 1943 first accomplished the transmission by radio of pulse beats and body temperatures, using sensors attached to the patient’s body. New techniques developed during the war provided the ^orld of neurosurgery with benefits which are still be- lng realized in civilian hospitals.
In 1949 the National Naval Medical Center established the world’s first tissue and bone bank, and in 1955 naval research developed a method of freezing wfiole blood for long term storage.
Navy medical “firsts” include: the first nuclear teactor for use in medical research; development of a luick-thawing method for treating frostbite; development of an artificial kidney; and in recent years, design °f new devices for the whole world of bionics and new mstruments to measure and diagnose vision defects.
Today, 16 Navy medical laboratories continue research in communicable disease, cardio pulmonary functions, underwater physiology, nuclear radiation, Psycho-physiological responses and their relation to °Perator effectiveness, and the physical effects of decompression and acceleration—directly related to the 0ther-than-Navy world.
The pattern of contribution of Navy dentistry, although it did not appear until after 1873, when the first Navy dentist was commissioned, and the Dental Corps fiself was created in 1912, displays the same, steadily mcreasing performance seen in the Navy medical effort. Navy dental research began with the establishment of the first dental school in 1923, and thereafter the emphasis has been on preventive dentistry, now becoming similarly emphasized in the civilian sector. For the Navy, the problem lay in the fact that there have always been more ships and stations without dentists than with them—hence the need for preventive methods.
Probably the greatest advance, beyond the basic tech- Nque of brushing, was accomplished in 1964, when the Navy developed a three-stage stannous fluoride treatment for preventing decay, which was determined to have exceeded 70% effectiveness among Naval Academy midshipment observed. The success of the program has led to extending treatment to dependent children and has served to set a standard for nationwide c*vilian use.
The development by Navy dental personnel of one instrument alone should earn the unqualified gratitude of every patient who ever shuddered at the prospect of enduring the dentist’s drill. In a classic instance of creative cooperation, a civilian technician and a Navy technician combined talent, ingenuity and persistence to develop the ultrasonic, turbine-driven dental drill which revolutionized that unhappy aspect of the profession by virtually eliminating the chief source of heat and pain—vibration.
For those who may still be prone to view such a presentation of gifts with a wariness born of repeated encounters with hidden costs, there is the assurance that although the Constitution provides that new inventions may be patented—and indeed most of the new processes, and materials and devices developed by the Navy are patented—those patents are made available to whoever wishes to use them, without payment of royalty. The patents are taken simply to prevent someone else from doing so, thereby making them unavailable for royalty-free use. How many are involved? During the past five years, more than 2,600 Navy-generated patents have been made freely available to the public.
And because the Navy’s search for Something Better continues, the contributions to the Nation will continue, in a future that holds promise of an even greater spectrum of things to be shared: new fuels; alloys; hull- forms; propulsion; communication; navigation. The gamut extends from permanent wax finishes for your car, through mosquito-repellent jackets, to termite elimination.
On review, and lest the total effect of such a concentrated accounting of accomplishment serve to obscure a significant conclusion, it should be pointed out that perhaps the largest impact of naval research, training, and development has been felt where it is most valuable—in the Nation’s schools. Navy efforts to improve the quality of every aspect of its activities have helped to make new methods and new equipment and new concepts available to civilian education on a scale never before equalled.
The continuing Navy support of scientists in over 400 colleges and universities, and the tremendous fund of knowledge generated by that Navy inquiry into every discipline, have had a profound effect on education itself.
This is as it should be, for the product of the education process is a more informed, intelligent citizen, and the Navy, we are prone to forget, is made up of citizens too. If the education process is improved, both the Navy and the Nation will be improved—for the Navy’s greatest contribution, always, has been its People, and it is their combined achievements which, for 200 years, they have presented to America, with pride.