ORDINARILY THE NAVY is considered as one of the main arms of national defense. In truth defense is its primary function. For were there no need for protection of the homeland and the safeguarding of our interests and rights abroad, the Navy would not have been called into existence. But there is a peace-time aspect to our Navy which we tend to overlook but which we can see reflected in much of our scientific and industrial life. Writing on the occasion of Navy Day, 1924, the President of the United States, the late Calvin Coolidge, said in part:
Our American Navy has always been much more than an arm of war-time defense. All the money that has ever been spent on the Navy has been returned to the community several times over in direct stimulus to industrial development. We may be very sure that in the future, as in the past, the Navy’s services to industry and the arts of peace and science will continue completely to justify its maintenance in the highest efficiency.
In the pages that immediately follow this short introduction are described a few of the Navy’s contributions to the arts of peace and science in the fields of (A) Communications, (B) Astronomy, and (C) Hydrography. Although important, these represent by no means all of the Navy’s influence upon the national life in peace time.
As an industrial asset, the Navy has made many significant contributions to the development of radio, marine engineering, metallurgy, ship construction, ship designing, aviation, and aeronautical engineering. Improvement in dry docks, marine railways, hangars, and airport projects have been stimulated by the needs of national defense as expressed through naval specifications. Standardization of industrial products, as well as the refinement of the products of the steel and oil industries, are due, in no small degree, to the rigid specifications of the Navy. Whether it be the steel that protects the hull of the ship, the explosive charge that renders the projectile an effective and deadly missile, or the optical glass that insures the accuracy of the range finder, the Navy is constantly demanding of industry ever greater refinements and more perfect performance.
Perhaps the two chief sources of mass entertainment in America today are the radio and the photoplay. It is interesting to note the Navy’s direct and indirect influence upon these two forms of recreation that reach so great a number of Americans.
During the cruise of the American fleet around the world in 1907 and 1908, a few resourceful radio operators beguiled the long watches at sea by placing phonograph instruments before their transmitting sets and broadcasting musical programs to their fellow operators in the other vessels of the squadron. From these crude beginnings, and the Navy’s insistent demands upon an infant industry for ever greater perfection in vacuum tubes and receiving apparatus, came the enormous impetus that has made the radio a household word and a household article throughout the country, as well as a great and growing industry.
The moving-picture enthusiast who likes seeing athletic performances and other features which have been photographed by high-speed cameras is not likely to attribute this development to the Navy, but over 20 years ago the Bureau of Ordnance found it necessary to make a scientific study of the motions of projectiles in flight. When it was found that no cameras were available either here or abroad that would take more than 16 exposures per second, the Naval Gun Factory collaborated with the Edison Laboratories and designed and built the first three high-speed cameras in the world with exposures of over 100 per second. This contribution, indirect though it was, did much to revolutionize the motion-picture industry.
If industry owes much to the exacting standards of the Navy, the Navy in turn owes much to the zeal, patriotism, and support of American industry. For the Navy while essentially a fighting machine is made up of American materials and American personnel. Into that majestic unit of sea power—the American battleship—have gone many hours of patient research and experimentation, and the wisdom and ingenuity of a resourceful people. Our fleet is more than the expression of the might of a nation. Each component unit embodies within its hull something of the character and the genius of the American people. Each individual mass of steel, cleaving through the water with the precision and rapidity of an express train, simultaneously throwing tons of high explosives into an unseen target beyond the horizon is the product of many hours spent patiently in laboratory and research center with America’s finest inventive effort being directed to giving the best possible materials to the nation’s first line of defense.