Scier ists and the Legacy of World War II: The Case of Operations Research (OR) M. Fortun; $. $. Schweber Social Studies of Science, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Nov., 1993), 595-642. Stable URL hitp://links jstor-org/sicisici=0306-3127% 281993 11%2923%3A4%3C595%3ASATLOW% 3E2.0,CO%3B2- Social Studies of Science is currently published by Sage Publications, Lid ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/www,jstororglabout/terms.hml. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use ofthis work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hutp:/www jstor.org/journals/sageltd.html Each copy of any part of @ JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission. STOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org, upslwww jstor.org/ Wed Jun 16 10:38:21 2004© ABSTRACT 111s clear why the contributions of physicists during Werld Wor Il were central in ‘the successes of radar, sonar, proxiity fuses and atomic bombs. Its net so clr ‘what they contributed to Operations Research (OR) and Systems Engineering (SE). and which of ther skils were particularly relevant to these developments This paper is an attemt to answer that question for OR. Inthe process, we look ‘brely a the history of OR and of Taylorism. and compare developments in the United States and Great Britain. We also discuss the relation of OF to SE. The ‘paper cen be considered 080 study n how authority s appropriated. and how ‘the difering contexts in the US and UK shaped the difering outcome in these Scientists and the Legacy of World War Il: The Case of Operations Research (OR) M. Fortun and S.S. Schweber ‘A convincing case can be made that the principal events shaping the ‘twentieth century until the 1990s have been the two world wars, Among many other things, both wars dramatically highlighted the value to the state of scientists and scientific institutions. But in contrast to World War I, World War II altered the character of science in a fundamental and irreversible way.’ The importance and magnitude of the contribution to the war effort of engineers and scientists, particularly physicists, changed the relationship between scientists and the state. Already during World War II, and with ever greater emphasis later, with the onset of the Cold War, the armed forees in the United States, particularly the Navy and the Army Air Force, convinced that the future security of the nation and its dominance as a world power depended on the creativity of its scientific communities and the strength of its institutions of higher education, invested heavily in their support and expansion. From the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s a ‘Sociol Studies of Science (SAGE, London, Newbury Park and New Dei), Vol.23 (1993), 898-042596 Social Studies of Science close relationship was cemented between scientists and the military. Physicists played a key role in these developments, and this paper is an inquiry into the special skills and characteristics that made their contributions so central until the early 1960s. ‘The obvious traits the physicists possessed were unusual versatility, ‘outstanding mathematical abilities and remarkable experimental and technical skills. These attributes enabled the best among them to invent quantum mechanics, construct cyclotrons, develop atomic ‘beams apparatus, design rhubatronsand klystrons~ and thus acquire mastery over the atomic and nuclear domains, Their particular achievement in the period from 1925 to 1939 was the apperception of the (quasi) stable ontology ~ electrons, neutrons, protons ~ the building blocks of nuclei, atoms and molecules ~ and the formulation of the (quasi) stable theory — quantum mechanics ~ that described the Interactions and dynamics of these entities. Their unique powers were their ability to translate their understanding of microscopic phenomena (that is, of nuclear, atomic and molecular structure and dynamics) into explanations and predictions of the macroscopic properties of matter ~ and, moreover, to translate that mastery into the design of macroscopic devices. ‘The generation of physicists that matured with the birth of quantum mechanics was a ‘population’ in possession of traits that allowed it not only to adapt to existing conditions, but in fact to dominate and transform the scientific and technological environ- ‘ment. The Great Depression exerted a rigid selection pressure on the community: only the very best survived, and these were an extra ordinary lot - among the theorists: Hans Bethe, Lev Landau, Robert Oppenheimer, Rudolf Peierls, John Slater, Edward Teller, John van Vleck, Victor Weisskopf, Eugene Wigner; among the experi- ‘mentalists: Enrico Fermi, Ernst Lawrence, Isidore Rabi, Felix Bloch, Emilio Segre, Bruno Rossi. During the 1930s they replicated themselves. A whole new generation was selected and trained — primarily on American soil: Robert Serber, John Wheeler, Julian ‘Schwinger, Richard Feynman, Edward Purcell, Charles Lauritsen, William Fowler, Luis Alvarez, Norman Ramsey, Edwin MacMillan, Robert Wilson. World War II gave them the opportunity 0 display their powers, and in the process they acquired some measure of power. The physicists working on radar devices, on proximity fuses, ‘on missiles and on atomic bombs had unlimited funds and equipment for experimentation, so that the technical knowledge and skills of the community were greatly increased during the war. Beinga hardy, self-Fortun & Schweber: Scientisis and the Legacy of World War IT 597 confident, wide-ranging and resourceful new species, physicists occupied new niches after the war World War II is an example of a ‘Hacking-type’ of scientific revolution’ Thomas Kuhn himself noted that the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth century does not fit what wwe have come to call a “Kuhnian revolution’, two characteristics of which we might summarize thus: (1) the transformation consists essentially of changes within a discipline and proceeds from a period of normal science with its paradigm(s) and puzzle solving aspect to ‘one of crisis in which the reigning paradigm is unable to confront the ‘observed anomalies. The crisis is resolved by the introduction of @ new paradigm which ushers in a new period of normal science: (2) the transformation is discontinuous in that the pieces come together in a new way (gestalt switch), and is primarily an epistemological revolution. In his essay on “The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science’, Kuhn indicated that Sometime between 1800 and 1850 there was an important change in the character of research in many of the physical sienes, particularly inthe elster of fields known a5 physics. Tht change is what makes me cll the mathematiztion of| ‘Baconian sence a second emphasis ours] sient evolution We have called such “big” revolutions "Hacking-type revolutions Hacking has called attention to a fundamental feature of such revolutions, namely that “they are embedded in, pervade, and transform a wide range of cultural practices and institutions’, and he hhas noted some of the characteristics of such big revolutions i) They are auer- or erssaieplinary. In a Hacking-type revolution something Inuppens in more than one discipline transforms a wide ange of practices and ii) New institutions are formed that epitomize the new diretons. ii) Big revolutions are linked with substantial social change, Alera Hacking-type evolution there is diferent fel tothe world, a marked change in our sense of texture ofthe worl, 10) There can be no complete, definitive history ofa Hacking-ype revoltion.* ‘That the first scientific evolution satisfies all these criteria is clear. ‘The Royal Society and the Académie des Sciences are some of the new institutions it created. Hacking has pointed to the rise of the bour- geoisie as indicative of the substantial social change associated with that revolution. The British Association for the Advancement of Science, and the numerous statistical societies founded in the 1830s,598 Social Studies of Science are some of the new institutions associated with what Kuhn has called the second scientific revolution. There is indeed a different feel to the world thereafter: it has become quantified; numbers and statistics rule it, It is Mr Gradgrind’s world. The end of the nineteenth century witnessed another Hacking-type revolution connected with the microscopic representation of matter and the establishment of science-based technologies, particularly those grounded on the new understanding of clectricity. The Physikalische-Technische- Reichsanstalt, and its replicas ~ the National Physical Laboratory in ‘Teddington, England and the Bureau of Standards in Washington, DC ~ are some of the new institutions spawned by that revolution, ‘Similarly, the new emphasis on graduate education, the post-doctoral research positions in chemistry, Felix Klein's transformation of Géttingen, and his Gottinger Vereinigung zur Forderung der andgewandten Mathematik und Physik, are all indicative of new directions and the new partnership between universities, industry and the state. World War II was responsible for yet another Hacking-type revolution. The revolution was brought about by the plethora of novel devices and instruments that were developed principally by physicists: oscilloscopes; microwave generators (magnetrons, klystrons) and receivers; rockets; the myriad of new vacuum tubes; novel electronic circuitry; computers, nuclear reactors; the many new particle detectors. Many of these devices had been introduced before the war, but in a relatively primitive state and on a piecemeal basis. It is the scale on which these devices and instruments become available that refurbishes the stage. Thus chemistry is transformed by NMR. ‘and microwave spectroscopy, instrumentation that the development of radar had made possible; similarly, radio telescopes transform astronomy. World War I also initiated a revolution in management science, risk assessment and military planning’ — and military planning has dominated much of world affairs since World War II. Operations research and its methods were in part responsible for instigating these changes, World War II also helped consolidate developments in applied science and engineering that became known as ‘systems studies’ and ‘systems engineering’. Systems engineering had its origins in developments within AT&T, the communications monopoly that until the mid-1980s oversaw the Bell system, the 24 operating companies and the Long Lines department that delivered telephone services to the United States. More particularly, systemsFortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War H 599 engineering was a by-product of the partnership between the Bell Laboratories, the research and development component of AT&T, and the Western Electric Company, its manufacturing and supply arm. What characterized the Bell system was ‘technical integration’, the concept introduced by Hendrik Bode, to describe ‘the ease with which technical information could flow back and forth between Western Electric, the operating Companies and the Bell Labs’.” Systems engineering is characterized by the fact that it demands a ‘much more intimate cognizance of the operating problems in the field than is needed in simple research and development of technical apparatus. ‘These developments after World War II were deeply influenced by the research and development activities carried out during the hos- tilities, activities in which physicists played a dominant role, The patterns of interaction that were developed by the OR groups be- ‘ween scientists and the military in the United States became the ‘model for the post-war committees that advised the armed forces on ‘weapons development and on tactical and strategie matters. In the US, World War IT was responsible for a new framework for expert advice to the armed services by civilian scientists ~ principally physi- cists or former physicists ~ as indicated by the proliferation of advisory committees, The structure and mission of these committees ‘were patterned after the National Advisory Committee for Aero nautics (NACA)," the committee that had been set up before the war to advise the government on military and civilian aviation; the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) that Bush headed during the war, responsible for weapons development:" and the many operations research (OR) groups that had advised military com- mands during the war. This quantitative increase translated itselFinto something dramatically new in the relation between science and the military. Similarly, the consolidation of the systems approach and of systems engineering owes much to the activities of physicists at the Radiation Laboratory at MIT, the Applied Physics at Johns Hopkins, and the Jet Propulsion Lab at CalTech ~ facilities that could rightly be described as systems facilities ~ and to their post-war activities in such summer projects as Hartwell, Charles and Troy and Vista. These summer projects were depicted as systems studies “because they dealt with the interrelations of a large number of technical components that are called upon to cooperate in forming a system’. Although it is clear why the contribution of the physicists was600 Social Studies of Science central in the suecesses of radar, sonar, proximity fuses and atomic bombs, itis not so clear what they contributed to OR and systems ‘engineering and which of their skills were particularly relevant. This paper isan attempt to answer that question for OR. Inthe process we briefly look at the history of OR and of Taylorism, and compare the developments in the United States and Great Britain. We also discuss the relation of OR to systems engineering." Our paper can be con- sidered as a study in how authority is appropriated and how the differing contexts in the US and Great Britain shaped the differing ‘outcome in these two countries. ns Research’? Oper ‘The principles of operations research were first formulated in Great Britain, In 1968, E.C. Williams, one of the people responsible for its development, gave the following account of its beginnings: Just over thirty years ago in 1937 I was a Junior Scontieofcer, at the Bawdsey| Research tation ofthe Air Ministry. This was the esearch establishment engaged in the development of what snow called adar. Towards the end of 1937 had just, finishes a series of experiments in jamming our own radat so that we could be prepared forenemy jamming ithappened -asindeeditdid. Iwas then assigned to joina team of Royal Ait Force [personnel]... to find out how bes to use adarsin ‘what we would now cal total sytem’ for intercepting and destroying enemy aircraft... Now we had to havea name to describe us ind what we were doing, ‘The rex ofthe establishment was engaged on the normal work of research and development and design of radar work equipment. Our new work wast find out how to best use them, The term “operations” has a specie connotation inthe ‘Armed Services, andi this work we Were now beginning to be directly concerned ‘uth operations. So, one or oer or both (and Teannot remember which) of Sir Robert Watt and A.P. Rove coined the term “operational research section” to put ‘onthe organization chat above our mimes ~ simpy to distinguish this new kind of | ‘work rom the normal work of research and development establishment. I wasas Simple and obvious as that.” Actually, already in 1935, on the initiative of Henry Tizard, a group at the Royal Air Force Station at Biggin Hill had started work on the design of a fighter direction system on the assumption that radar would work. At the time Tizard was the Chairman of the ‘Acronautical Research Committee in the Air Ministry, and A.V. Hill and P.M.S. Blackett were members of that committee."* The groups at Biggin Hill and at Bawdsey were subsequently combined to design the fighter Command Group operational system that was usedFortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War IT 601 through the Battle of Britain in 1940, Roughly a half dozen scientists ‘were involved: they were concerned with the problems of the locations of radar sets, the interpretation of radar signals and the efficiency of the operation. Ithas been estimated that during the Battle of Britain radar increased the effectiveness of the British air defence system by a factor of ten; and that operations research increased its efficiency by another factor of two." In his reminiscences Williams. stressed that from the beginning the whole enterprise was a joint effort by the Royal Ait Force and Air Ministry Scientists. It simply did noi matter at all whether one man wore a uniform and ‘nother eiviian tit ~ neither di rank matter. The scape ofthe work grew we sared strictly on evaluation ofthe operational performance of equipment and later weapons. But we were soon asked to analyze the operations themselves: the frst example I know of being quiteslementaryanalyiso fighter losses im France thi helped in the momentous devision not to send any more fighters to France. ‘There were infact developed four main streams of work (i) the origina work concerned equipment or weapons evaluation and redesign for better performance with ts human operates: (i) the analysis of specitic operations to improve the tactics, and tatical experiments (i) the prodition ofthe outcome of future operations either inthe taste stratepc field withthe object of influencing policy and lst but not least, (iv) thestudy ofthe efcseney of organizations which wielded the equipment and ‘weapons in battle" The original conception of teams of scientists working at the ‘operational level in military commands is attributed to the physicists E.C. Williams and P.M. Blackett. The appellation ‘Operational Research’ derived from the fact that their main field of activity was ‘he analysis of actual operations wsing as data the materi to be found in an operations room, eg. all signals, track chars, combat reports, meteorological information, ec... [T[hese data are not. and on secrecy grounds cannot, in ‘general, be made available to the (service) technical establishments. Thus such Scien analysis, if done a all, must be done in or near operations toons.” “Blackett’s circus’, as the original group was called, included three physiologists, two mathematical physicists, one astrophysicist, one Army officer, one surveyor, one general physicist and two mathema- ticians. This mixed-team aspect of the group ~ in fact, both the team clement and the interdisciplinary nature of the effort - was to become a distinguishing characteristic of both operations research and systems engineering,"602 Social Studies of Science One of Blackett’s first assignments was as Scientific Adviser to General Pile at the headquarters of Anti-Aircraft. Command. Blackett was to analyze and make recommendations on how best to use the radar sets that were directing the firing of the gun batteries defending London against German night bombers. His recom- ‘mendations for the deployment of the radar sets and gun batteries were adopted, and resulted in markedly improved defence. In 1941, Blackett was assigned to the Commander-in-Chief Coastal Defence to devise an operational strategy against the German U-boats that, were wreaking havoc with the British merchant fleet carrying much needed food, equipment and weapons from the United States. ° From 1942 until the end of the war, Blackett was Chief Adviser on Operational Research reporting directly to the Vice-Chief of the Naval Staff at the Admiralty. He and his staff worked on such problems as the Bay of Biscay anti-U-boat offensive, the destruction, of the German blockade runners in the South Atlantic, the optimal size of large convoys of ships in the Atlantic, the best allocation of resources between producing merchant ships and anti-submarine escorts, and the effectiveness of bombing raids by large numbers of aircraft.” During the early phase of World War II, the problems addressed by operational methods were concerned with the allocation of scarce radar stations, and with search techniques and convoy strategies in anti-submarine warfare. OR rapidly expanded to the study of all aspects of the functioning of complex organizations and operations including personnel and machines ~ encountered in the different branches of the armed forces. Eventually it became an integral clement in the planning of the major campaigns ~ including strategy and logistics, the training and management of manpower, the cost effectiveness of weapons, and the allocation of resources. The specific primary purpose of operations research durng World War II was to discover means for making the best use of the military forces and \weapons then currently available. OR studied the operation or the process while it was going on and, usually, its recommendations could be implemented very quickly.” One ofits essential features was the comparative freedom with which analysts could seek out their own problems, and the direct coupling of the analysis to the possibilities of executive action. By the end of the war, several hundred people were involved in Great Britain in analyzing both tactical and strategic problems. The Admiralty, the Chiefs of Staff, the RAF Coastal Command, the SEFortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War IT 603 ‘Asia Command, the Fleet Air Arm, Bomber Command all had ‘operational units attached to them Operational Research was imported to the United States from Britain through communications by Shirley Quimby, of Columbia University. Quimby became stationed in London after the exchange of information initiated by James Conant, the second in command at the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), during his visit to London in the autumn of 1940. Further contacts were made on behalf of Division 2 of the NDRC by LE. Burchard and H.P. Robertson in the early fall of 1941, They made contact with Desmond Bernal, Solly Zuckerman, W.N. Thomas and J.W. Baker, and brought back to the US data on blast and explosive damage Roberison became deeply interested in the operational research ‘methods being developed by Blackett, and he became a prime force in the development of operational analysis in the US. The first US groups were formed in 1942. One was attached to the Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL) and was under the supervision of Ellis Johnson, who was then on leave from Carnegie Tech. The NOL group worked on the problem of mine warfare. Their analysis led to the enormous aircraft mining blockade of the Inland Sea of Japan in 1945. Another, that later became known as the Anti- Submarine Warfare Operations Research Group, worked at the Radiation Laboratory at MIT. It began under the stimulus of Pillip Morse, and reported initially to both the Army and the Navy. This sr0up which included Morse, George Kimball, Francs Biter and John von Neumann as a frequent consultant ~ was later expanded into the Operations Research Group that was attached tothe staff of the Commander-in-Chief, US Navy, Admiral King: it dealt with problems connected with submarine warfare, aircraft and amphib- ious operations, anti-aircraft and new weapons analysis. From September 1942 to July 1943, von Neumann was closely connected with the Morse Navy group ~ the Mine Warfare Section of the Navy’ Bureau of Ordnance ~ and worked on the physical and statistical aspect of mine warfare and countermeasures to it; these activites took him to England during the frst half of 1943. Von Neumann's involvement was particularly influential in that it brought ‘game theory’ into operations research. In 1928, he had proved his famous minimax theorem for (finite) zero-sum games for such games there exists an optimal strategy that is given in terms of a unique number that represents the minimum ain and maximum loss cach playercan expect, Bothin 1932and againin 1937, von Neumann604 Social Studies of Science had lectured in Princeton on mathematical economics, and when ‘Oskar Morgenstern came there in 1938, he collaborated with him on a monograph on the subject. The manuscript of their influential The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior was completed in January 1943, just before von Neumann's departure for England. By the end of the war the new game theoretic methods that had been developed by von Neumann and Morgenstern were added to the toolkit and ‘mathematical techniques that OR scientists deployed.” These proved very valuable, and game theoretic approaches took on great importance after the war, particularly after the introduction of fast, digital computers. Examples of the kinds of problems already addressed during the war were the following: (a) Given targets of specified value, physical vulnerability, and. geographical istribution, and given the physical properties and aiming characteristics of ‘weapons to be used in their destruction, how should effort be distributed among {hese targets inorder to maximize the damage produced? (©) A productive system is being progressively destroyed. What faction ofits activities should be asigned to recuperation inorder to maximize is total useful ‘output at some later date? The “game” element enters when both attacker and Sefender are fee to choose how they will deploy ther destructive and productive ‘forts the best course for one will depend on what the other does.” The estimation of physical damage on production usually assumed some linear relationship between production loss and total damage inflicted. The models of production were all based on the input- output methods that Leontieff had developed, which brought economists into the OR business. As in Great Britain, each of the services set up during the war a functioning operations research group at various command levels. As in Great Britain, the earliest US efforts had short-term aims. But it ‘was soon established that OR techniques could usefully be applied throughout the whole military effort. A particularly intensive effort went into analyzing the tactical problems of the air war against Germany. The US 8th Force, which was stationed in England, had a large operations research group attached to it. The tactical problems addressed by the group included finding the best flying altitude, the best division of payload, and the best method of attack, “Theteisna best ying altitude ofcourse. Ther only ‘best altitude under a given set of conditions”. The choice of altitude depends on weather, visibility, sea ‘condition, radar conditions; twill depend on the enemy's lookout eflectivenes, ‘plane speed and mancuverabity, and s0 on, Some of these factors changeFortun & Schweber: Sciemtisis and the Legacy of World War IT 605 ftom day t0 day, others more slowly. Tactical studies have the purpose of ‘establishing quantitative relationships between the various tates, numerically expressed, and the rel of the operations of which these tates are components ‘When successful. such studies lad to predictions ofthe effect of changing one of more ofthese variable components If for example, the alitude ofthe airplane is increased by ten percent, what will be the elect onthe efficiency of the search ‘operation? Ic has been found that studies ofthis Sort, earried out by operations research methods, frequent permita rapid improvement effectiveness. In some ‘sei pays far more tommprove the tactics than to improve the weapons, anditie almost always easier fate and cheaper todo so.” ‘The importance and influence of OR activities is indicated by the fact that operations research organizations were maintained in all the branches ofthe armed forces after the war. The Navy (through a 1947 ONR contract) supported an Operations Evaluation Group (OEG) at MIT, with Jacinto Steinhardt as its director. The Air Force had an Operation Analysis Group (OAG) both at the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff/Operationsand at the various Air Force Commands. In 1946, it contracted with Douglas Aircraft to manage Project RAND (Research and Development) to deal with long term assessments. In 1948, the RAND Corporation was established, initially financed by the Ford Foundation to demonstrate its supposed independence. After the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 that created the National Military Establishment, the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG) was established in December 1948 to advise the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with P.M. Morse as its technical director. hv 1949, the Operations Research Office (ORO) was created by the Army, and staffed by personnel hired under acontract with the Johns Hopkins University. In each case the OR group reported their analysis and made their recommendations directly to the com- ‘manding oficer ofthe branch to which the group was attached. For it hhad been recognized during the war that the successes of OR efforts were in part due to the fact that the head of the OR team reported directly to an operational military commander who could implement the recommendations. During World War Il, the time scale of change in the enemy's environment — the theatre of operation, the targets, the weapons and technologies used ~ was relatively long. It was therefore usually possible to respond fairly effectively to the introduction of new ‘weapons ~ such as U-boats with snorkels, V-2 rockets - and the new strategies they made possible, by changing one factor in the opposing ‘weaponry and strategy. Hence OR’s incremental, additive approach was, for the most part, adequate to meet the challenges606 Social Studies of Science But during the war it also had been necessary to address such questions as the optimal allocation of limited resources among a variety of competing military demands. Thus the MIT Radiation Laboratory had to decide what kinds of radar sets to develop, how ‘many to manufacture, where to deploy them, and to supervise the ‘manufacture and ensure the adaptation of the apparatus to the field conditions. From these efforts developed what became known as ‘systems analysis’, the planning of responses to military and security needs based on projected weapons systems and the environment in which they would operate.” The rote of the physicists in developing the systems approach at the Rad Lab is attested to by Vannevar Bush. In an interview with Henri Guerlac in 1944, Bush commented that: [MIT was. physicists show and Dr Compton wanted that way, Bowles [vho was Alfred Loomis’ right-hand man] represented the center of thought that some ‘engineering and engineering methods might well be tied in the Rac Laboratory, but it was Bowles against the field ~ they pasted hel out of hi Bowles had tried to set up an engineering office at MIT, but the physicists wouldn’t use it. Moreover, K.T. Compton had supported their action. In his interview with Guerlac, Bush indicated that ‘at the outset ... the constitution of the Microwave Committee worked well to get a mecting of minds with Industry’, But after a while “the Radiation Laboratory took the ball and ran away”. Bush also stated that after the creation of OSRD ‘the structure [that is, the Rad Lab] became Totalitarian’, but that he was“not damn fool enough’ to think that he could enforce his views that more traditional engineering approaches ought to be represented. He had a policy of encouraging as much autonomy as possible, and he encouraged the Rad Lab's direct contacts with the Services and with industry. Bush also noted “the opposition of the big companies to the development of the Laboratory and the rise of the small companies’. He thought that ‘the big companies [were] “damn conceited”; that ‘the Rad Lab physicists, were “also conceited”; and that ‘the stuff would never have been done if the big companies had done it” Traditional operations research, for the most part, addressed problems where the objectives were precisely spelled out, and the existing systems and weapons (the “hardware’) were considered fixed ‘and unchangeable. OR was usually concerned with tactical problems ‘and could be stated quantitatively and mathematically, and the aimFortun & Schweber: Seiemtists and the Legacy of World War II 607 of the analysis was to find more efficient ways to operate, in situations, where the meaning of “more efficient” is fairly clear’. OR problems usually admitted a unique solution that represented the optimal allocation of the hardware available to the decision maker. Systems analysis, on the ater hand, refers 10 the far more complex problem of choice among alternative future sjstems, where the degrees of freedom and the ‘uncertainties arelarg, where the dificult lesas much n deciding what ought tobe done asin how to do it... The total analysis is thus a complex and untidy procedure often with ite emphasis on mathematical models, with no possibility ‘of quantitative optimization over the whole problem, and with necesary great ‘dependence on considered judgments Systems analysis after the war was applied primarily in weapons development projects undertaken under the aegis of a primary ‘contractor ~as, for example, with the Nike system —and in the civilian sector in large scale undertakings in the communication sphere,” and there in fields that were monopolistically controlled by a single industrial firm. In both situations cost was not necessarily the primary consideration. Because, in the problems that are considered by systems analysis in the military field, the objectives and criteria cannot be precisely defined, there are usually no unique or sharp optimal or maximal solutions. Nevertheless, by insisting on precision and logical rigour. the systems analysis approach (in the military area) at times evidently could achieve more reliable assessments ofthe possible choices, their costs and consequences than could other ‘means, But very often what was meant by ‘systems analysis’ was the attempt to synthesize the various specialized research techniques into a coherent analytical framework that could be used to confront the problem as a whole. But the systems approach had one feature that became its hallmark: heterogeneous professionals — physicists, chemists, electrical engineers, generals and admirals, economists, Managers - and heterogeneous organizations ~ universities, manufacturing firms, branches of the armed forces, government laboratories, private foundations, think-tanks ~ were seen as, and operated as, essential interacting components in a ‘system’, Indeed, “disciplines, persons, and organizations [took] on one another's funetion as if they [were] part of a seamless web’. ‘Already during the war, many members of the various operations, research organizations became convinced that the techniques they hhad developed were not limited to military applications. But how to translate the wartime OR and decision-making skills and insights into608, Social Studies of Science educational programmes was far from clear. Two somewhat separate approaches can be discerned in the immediate post-war period. The first — directed primarily at undergraduates ~ was designed to train students as ‘scientific generalists’, and made statistics the core of the curriculum, The argument was that ‘statistics, as the doctrine of planning and interpreting experimental data, has a common relation, toall sciences’, In addition to the statisties requirements, the students ‘were required to take courses in several fields of science, in order that they learn to recognize the ‘logical framework of science ~ as distinguished from its Factual content’. The departments of statistics at Harvard, Princeton and Berkeley are representatives of this approach. An influential paper by Bode, Mosteller, Tukey and ‘Winsor gave the blueprint for the curriculum of these programmes, and set forth their rationale. For these authors, the complexities of the modern world were due to scientific and technological advances, which in turn have permitted the large sale division f labor, the use of complex and indivect methods of production and distribution, and the development of large com: ‘unite, and large arcas held together by common channels of publication and ‘communication which charateriz our modera world.” But it seemed to them that science itself was getting too complex for the single individual to grasp, and that there was ‘too much narrow specialization’. It was clear to Bode and his colleagues “that the decision of overspecialization and overcomplexity is one which scientists must in some way overcome’. The development during World War II of research teams ‘in which members of sufficiently different background and amplitude were added to cover all probable aspects of a given situation’ was an attempt to solve the problem. Writing in 1948, they thought that: “AC present, the team method appears to be the only suggestion which has been made toalleviate the situation’. But the scientific team must have a coordinator or administrator to unify the group, and this administrator must make the final decisions ~ decisions that involve consideration drawn from more than one scientific area. They felt that a ‘scientific generalist” with @ command of advanced statistics was the ideal person to be the supervisor for such teams. During World War II many scientists had found that their background of experience in scientific problems was 4 significant advantage when tackling military problems:Fortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War IT 609 11 enabled them to isolate more quickly the critical issues ina given situation, to ¢stablish the skeleton with essential logical structure for ito supply accurate or approximate numbers by means of which the general nature of the sltions involved could be explained. These... are the same sorts of things that a scientist docs every dyin is own fair environment and are essentially the processes by hich he ests and discards o establishes various hypotheses to explain adequately situation. The differences principally tha in the military eld the considerations ‘which may occur to one frequently turn out on examination to be of sich unique ‘orders of magnitede that very approximate quantitative reasoning squitesufcient to establish the general pattern. In the peace time context, they argued, statistics would enable the decision problems to be addressed and solved when the relevant factors are less clear cut, Bode, one of the architects of the curriculum who, by training, was ‘an applied mathematician and at the time of the writing of the paper ‘was a member of the Bell Labs, made the following observation regarding the programme: “Thecuriculum must certainly ince something called Industrial Processes. This includes such things as forging, milling, what aturtet lathe i, what kinds of heat ‘weatng there ae. and what they do, what an industralchemistr set-up looks like, ce. The couse can be ently descriptive ~ we aren't waining enginoers ~ and therefore fairly shor, but I think some knowledge of the standard processes of| ‘manipulating materials isa neces The pieture of the generalist which emerges from the present draft i a sort of superstatstcian with more general scientific taining than statisticians usually ‘manage. This seems to me praiseworthy, but think that we ovght to take one oF two steps more toward the Bea ideal ofthe iberlly educated man and sientic philosopher.” ‘The second approach ~ which became identified with OR pro- grammes ~ was aimed at the graduate level, and hoped to draw students who had been trained in one of the sciences as under- graduates, When writing about OR’s accomplishment after the war, the definitions of OR that were given usually emphasized its general features and its applicability in non-military contexts. Thus the physicist Charles Kittel characterized OR as ‘a scientific method for providing executive departments with a quantitative basis for decisions. Is object is, by analysis of past operations, to find means of improving the execution of future operations’.”” One of the classic definitions of OR was given a few years later in Morse and Kimball's Methods of Operation Research:610 Social Studies of Science Operations researchisa scientific method of providing executive departments with 4 quantitative bass for decisions regarding the operations under thei control" This emphasis on ‘scientific method’ reflected the then prevalent Philosophical outlook of the physies community in the United States namely, operationalism and logical positivism, with their emphasis ‘on methodology and methodological issues. By 1952, ‘Operations Rescarch’ was deemed to be synonymous. ‘with the terms “Operations Analysis’, ‘Operations Evaluation’, and “Weapons Systems Evaluation’. All were considered to employ scientific methods to solve action problems. In these definitions, the scientific method was understood as a systematic method of learning by experience, or more explicitly, asthat combination of observation, experiment and reasoning (both dedetive and inductive) which scientists are in the habit of using in their scientific investigations..[with the] reasoning often [aking] one of the forms of aumerical dadution and induction covered bythe term statistical analysis.” After the war, in both the United States and in Great Britain, active efforts were made to secure a permanent place for OR activities. By 1952, in both countries, a professional OR society had been estab- lished with the usual accoutrements: members, fellows and officers, a Journal, and prizes. But some interesting contrasts between the post- war developments in Great Britain and the United States can be discerned. After considering the US context in more detail, we will ‘examine the situation in Britain at greater length, In the United States, the Cold War, the burgeoning militarism and the relatively more sophisticated state of the art of industrial management all conjoined to keep OR practitioners primarily employed by the military. Thus, of the some seventy persons who attended the first mecting of the OR Society of America (held in the spring of 1952 at Arden House under the auspices of Columbia University), well over half were employed by the armed forces," or ‘were staff members of think tanks supported by the armed forces, such as the RAND Corporation and the Armour and Battelle Institutes. Another seventy had indicated that they had been unable toattend but wished to become members, but their affiliation was not given, At that meeting, a constitution was adopted, officers elected and an editor appointed. ts initial membership was all male." A year later, in 1953, P-M. Morse, the president of the society, could boast that the membership of the society was over 500 persons, and thatFortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War II 611 ‘more and more large companies ~ aircraft and electrical manufacturers, railroads and oil companies, insurance companies and department stores ~ are forming their own operations research. groups or are buying consulting services in operations research’.*” ‘The changing fortunes of OR in the civilian sector of the US economy can be inferred from remarks made by Robert Solow, distinguished economist at MIT. In 1951, in an article in Fortune magazine, he expressed scepticism about the value of OR in the industrial realm: fhe professionals] are wrong, OR which, according to military leaders, was one ofthe major ways in which sciemists helped to lick Hider ~ may survive ony asa ‘means of increasing the efficiency of militar establishments. Ithe professionals are Fight. OR hasan induseal future" But five years later, after having helped establish a PhD programme in OR at MIT, Solow was unambiguous about OR: LLonghairs~ typically PhDs with no business training or experience ~ are geting into business more and more supplying not only the technology of machines or processes, but also new general technology linked to decisions... Their product 'Soperations research... ALilsbestit isa sjstematic approach ta whole business asa integrated operation, an analysis ofthe intrtlation of all is pars * By the mid-1950s OR had established itself as a new discipline Graduate programmes in OR were operating successfully at several major American and British Universities." In the United States the process had been accelerated by efforts of the National Research Council (NRC). The NRC, ‘recognizing the great value of operations research, and wishing to further its development and applications outside the armed forces’ had in 1949 set up a committee within its Applied Mathematics Division for this purpose. The NRC Commitee surveyed existing manpower, formulated guidelines fora graduate training programme, established several doctoral fellow- ships and funded several conferences. The Commitee also issued a pamphlet designed to provide executives and administrators and scientists with a brief description of OR. It characterized OR as ‘he application of the scientific method, by scientists, to the study of large complex organizations or activites. Ils objective 8 10 provide. top-level administrators with a quantitative basis for decisions that will inreate the effectiveness of such organizations in carrying out their basie purposes. Thus although the activity consists of research its research with a severely practical real612 Social Studies of Science ‘The pamphlet observed that ‘every definition of OR, and every illustration of its use emphasizes the fact that the men [sic] who carry it out are scientists, Why scientists? Because first, the material with which the [OR scientist} deals is in many cases of a repetitive character, sothata good grounding inthe esentias of probability theory and statistics is indispensable. [And] second, and perhaps more important, a ‘cient training develops habits of observation and experiments and technighes (of numerical analysis, which gives the OR approach much of is power and fertility" To this the text added a philosophical note: |What were attempting to say eres hat the trsiningand the work of «practicing seientist ead him toa set of attitudes that ae largely unigue. He has learned that whatever is philosophical views may be, he must in his work assume the existence ‘ofa concrete external physical reality, and whatever factor theory he encounters ‘st relate themselves somehow in his mind to this basi reality." ‘The pamphlet further asserted that ‘In fact, if the requirement of scientific training or scientific method were omitted from the defini- tion of OR, there would be much less to distinguish it from many cxisting management techniques’. Although encompassing many of the former management techniques —such as time and motion studies — the pamphlet suggested that one of the distinguishing features of OR is that itis “organization-wide in scope, and that no matter what particular problem is being examined, itis examined as a part of the whole’. This in turn required that OR teams have access to all information, to have the freedom to investigate whatever they con- sider necessary, and that there exist an intimate liaison between the OR team and the management of the enterprise. The pamphlet also asked the question: “What is new about OR”, and gaveaas its answer that the novelty of OR does not liein the use of certain specialized scientific techniques, but “in the broad scientific approach to the problems of the organization as a whole’. A more thorough historical inquiry, however, indicates that the answer given was open to question. In fact, the OR rhetoric of efficiency and effectiveness, and of system analysis, was the same as the one used by the advocates of Taylorism and scientific management during the first decades of the century. Similarly, both depended on measurements and quantitative studies, and both made use of the mathematical language of optimalization, Both were concerned with situations inFortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War II 613 which alternative courses of action existed. The objective of both scientificmanagement and OR isto clarify the differences between the several courses, indicate their outcome and relate these to the stated ‘objectives of the operations, ‘These questions and themes ~ of the ‘newness’ of OR, of its usefulness to industry, and of its relation to Taylorism and scientific ‘management ~ appear also in the British context, which we will now. ‘examine more closely. (OR in Post-War Britain During the 1930s, there had been intensive efforts to propagandize the ideology of scientism and to link it to aspirations for social change in Great Britain. When William Bragg welcomed P-M.S. Blackett and, JS. Haldane to the Council of the Royal Society in 1940, he not only praised them for their scientific achievements but also commended them for doing something more and something new. It sa chapter of novel importance, because, a6 they extend the records of the facts of nature they find themselves compelled atthe same time to consider new problem the relation of those acs to society and to the government of nations.” Blackett also frequented the dinner club organized by Solly Zuckerman, named the “Tots and Quots’; among the regular partici pants were J.D. Bernal and CH. Waddington.” In_ his autobiography, Zuckerman bragged that “Operational Research was, to a significant extent, the creation of our members'.* ‘The development of OR in Great Britain during the war has been discussed inthe previous section. After the war, Bernal worked atthe Housing section of the Ministry of Works, and Waddington at the Ministry of Agriculture; their operational research techniques went with them. Blackett returned to the University of Manchester and to his work on cosmic rays (for which he would receive the Nobel Prize in 1948), but he continued to promote OR in both government and private industry Another figure linked to this group is Herbert Morrison. As Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security during the war, Morrison had been an invited dinner speaker at the “Tots and Quots’ club, an occasion which Zuckerman recalled as marking the first mention of614 Social Studies of Science the term ‘operational rescarch’.** Morrison became Lord President of the Council in the Labour Government, and so was responsible for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and for civil science policy. In the first postwar parliamentary debate, Morrison, alerted the House of Commons to the achievements and future promise of his friends in science: [The Government attaches the very greatest importance to science. We recognize the contsibution which sience has made tothe prosecution of the war and the schievement of victory, and we aren les desirous that seiene shall play ts arin {he constructive tasks of peace and of economic development" A recent article by Jonathan Rosenhead provides an important new perspective on the fortunes of OR in the civilian sector in 1947 and 1948. This was the ‘crossroads’ period when Labour's power was at its highest, during which OR was variously pulled and pushed by the conflicting interests of consumers, scientific workers, nationalized industries, traditionally laissez-faire government ministries, and the first chill winds of the Cold War.” Through the formation in 1947 of the Advisory Couneil on Scientific Policy and its adjunct Committee on Industrial Productivity (CIP), Morrison attempted to promote OR within the government. Inearly 1948, the CIP produced a report, “Principles and Practice of Operational Research’, describing OR’ ‘wartime successes and suggesting possible areas for its civilian appli- cation, “The establishment of OR groups in each government department’ was recommended to ‘redesign the government admin- istrative machine more efficiently’ to formulate criteria of efficiency for the newly nationalized industries’, and to “raise the level of national productivity’. The report never gathered the support necessary to become a reality. The reasons for this are complex and are well detailed by Rosenhead, but one group of reactions to the proposal is worth highlighting. As the report worked its way through the various ministries, working groups, and councils, comments such as the following were written in the margins or in separate notes: there i doubt in many quarters whether there is anything new in the technique ‘of operational esearch, and whether it snot simply new namefor the application ofthe scientific method to practical problems. almost completly convinced that theres nothingin operational research other ‘than proper application of sientife methodFortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War I 615 ‘itis hard tobe sure that this papers really saying anything at all. the more ‘we read the literature which has been circulated about tthe closer we come tothe ‘conclusion that operational research is merely aterm covering a whole range of sensible activity (ready known, studied and applied under other names), ari tearily, and to no purpose, diferentiated from other sensible activity.” The inventors of OR remained convinced, however, that there was something new and valuable in these techniques, despite the seeming vagueness and generality of their definitions. Something was going fon, no matter how slippery it might be to pin down. A survey published in the Operational Research Quarterly in September 1953 shows both the growth of operational research in Britain, and the problems of defining what operational research is exactly. Two hun- dred and ten ‘private firms, nationalized industries, civil service departments and ... research associations’ were sent questionnaires asking if they carried out operational research, which was defined (quite generally) as ‘the application of the scientific method to pro- Vide executives with a quantitative basis for decisions regarding operations under their control’. Of the 160 that responded, 31 did no ‘operational research; 27 did it ‘in a very broad sense’; 17 were ‘active in routine fields such as quality control, time and motion studies, market surveys, etc.’; 41 had ‘no OR section’, but ‘some of our sections perform OR some of the time’; 27 had ‘at least one section (or individual) doing this sort of work, but they do not call themselves an ‘operational research section’;and 18 carried out operational research and had an offcially-titled operational research section."" In addition to the remarkable fluidity of the definition of operational research, the survey revealed that these activities were still concentrated in government departments and research asso- ciations: of the forty-five respondents in the last two categories, three were the Army, Navy, and Air Force; eleven were government departments or large public utilities; and seven were research asso- ciations. But private industry was beginning to adopt these techniques as well: the remaining twenty-four respondents consisted of such industries as “broadcasting, building, chemical, coal, con- fectionery, engineering and machinery, industrial consultants, metal, pharmaceutical, social surveys, textile [and] transport..." Still, private industry was not automatically interested in OR, and hhad to be convinced that they could profit by adopting some of these techniques." In 1949, Blackett, then the most recent Nobel Prize ‘winner in physics, attempted to do just that. Blackett suggested to Sir Raymond Streat, Chairman of the Manchester Joint Research616 Social Studies of Science Council, that the MIRC sponsor a series of talks on operational research in industry and invite local industrialists. The five lectures and one open forum took place between September 1949 and January 1950, and drew about 200 subscribers." The lectures were delivered by the Director of the British Boot and Shoe Industry, the Director of ‘Scientific Control for the National Coal Board, the Director of Road Research at the Road Research Laboratory, L-H.C. Tippett of the British Cotton Industry Research Association, and A.W. Swan of the United Steel Companies. In his preface to the printed proceedings, Sir Raymond Streat touched on all the prevalent themes ~ the war-time successes of ‘operational research, the promise for industry, and the dire economic situation in Britain’ ‘We believe that in these pages there ean be found significant clues to a realy exciting problem. That problem is whether there lies im something called “Operational Research’ which most people vaguely understand to have performed rear miracles during the war, potent weapon for raising industrial efciency in ‘peacetime and ths contributing othe competitive strug for survival which ts ‘commonly apreod faces the people of Britain. ‘Some of the comments recorded in the proceedings are very reveal- ing, and worth examining in some detail. The frst address in the series \was delivered by H. Bradley, Director of the British Boot, Shoe, and. Allied Trades Research Association. After a nod of praise to the moderator, Blackett ~ ‘whose name will go down in history... .asone who did so much to enable this country to meet and overcome the U- boat menace" ~ Bradley delivered an endearing speech about the industry's social responsibility for providing the English people with g00d, quality footwear which would last and fit properly. To these laudable ends, his research association had applied the methods of ‘operational research, But he felt compelled to begin his talk with ‘a confession’, and in this confession we can see the same questions about OR that were raised by the civil servants in Whitehall. A few years previously, Bradley told the gathered businessmen, Charles Goodeve had distributed a memorandum describing operational research, in preparation for a meeting 0 discuss its potential for industry: ‘ut acknowledge and thisis my confession~that did no really understandit.1 ‘thought there might be something init that I had not it upon 1 did aot quit ee ‘where we came into it - but as the meeting proceeded it slowly dawned on me weFortun & Schweber: Seientisis and the Legacy of World War 11 617 hd been doing operational research ll the time in our shoe ade, ASa matter of fact, it was brought home pretty forcibly, because in private conversations and discussions Isai I did nol know what operational research was and was told ‘Goodness gracious, Bradley ~ all you dois operational research!" A similar perspective was raised in the last of the formal lectures in the series, delivered by W.H. Glanville of the Road Research Lab- oratory. Road transport was one of Britain's largest industries, employing over a million workers at an annual cost of £600 million. The government's Road Research Laboratory examined such varied problemsasheadlight glare, reflector placement, and the mosteflicient asphalt spreading techniques. In his lecture, Glanville related an experience similar to Bradley's: Inroad research we outlined the altack on ou problems largely inthe years before the war, without any thought of operational research forthe term had not ye been born, It was not until we were wel on our way that someone came along and sad ‘What a splendid example of operational esearch’" Glanville also remarked that the ‘enthusiasts’ had tried to define operational research but failed: there remained ‘a lack of precision about its boundaries’. Glanville even suggested the heretical idea that operational research was nothing new, that in the ‘less romantic guises’ of market research, time-and-motion study, and method research, so-called “operational research’ had been around for twenty or thirty years. A.W. Swan of the United Steel Companies made the historical echo more explicit: There are many definitions of Operational Research. Mine is that Operational Research i the successor to what used 10 be called Scieniflc Management, and in my view Operational Research is Scientific Management plus the statistical Approach” But at another level, this hype was precisely what the business leaders wanted. G.A. Campbell of the Geigy Company commended Blackett for instigating the conference, but noted that the ‘academic people’ still needed to make more of an effort ‘to sell their wares’ to industry; many managers would be willing to take advantage of some of these methods of which they had been well aware, but just needed a little enthusiastic prodding.” W. Howarth of the Musgrave Spinning Company gave voice to the needs of managers in a more poetic manner:ols. Social Studies of Science ‘What we need in industry is very simple explanations. We are ordinary people, and always in hury, and we do not ike deep arguments. The net thing = that it be made to appear spectacular, even iit snot. The Americans have tht git They ‘ean make the alphabet sound lke the Odyssey or the Had if you give thems the chance.” ‘There were, however, other reasons for the adoption of operational research by British industry, more compelling than the desire of managers for some Homeric fagade on rather mundane techniques. In its editorial praising the contribution of OR to the problem of handling the nation’s iron ore transport, The Economist voiced a widely-held conviction that ‘as modern industrial problems grow bigger and more complex, the executive has to make fast and accurate decisions. in which operational research may be able to help him ...”." The business environment had changed dramatically since the war, as had the corporations. It isa generally accepted but simplified view that the end of World War IT marked the beginning of a new era of corporate concentration ‘and the appearance of multidivisional management hierarchies. As the historian Leslie Hannah suggests, trends in both these areas ‘actually began in the 1930s and were merely accelerated afler the war. In the 1930s, the limits to corporate growth included the economic depression, the prevalence of cartelization and collective agreements, and also the management difficulties that came with large amal- gamations. Nevertheless, a ‘substantial merger wave’ in the early years of the decade increased the overall size, international involve- ‘ment, and diversified holdings of a number of corporations.” Giant corporations such as ICI were the earliest to adopt a successful multidivisional managerial hierarchy, but they were the exception rather than the rule. Other corporations, such as Unilever and Vickers, found that they "had expanded more rapidly than could ‘conveniently be handled by their more traditional managerial organ- ization, and demergers to cope with this were sometimes necessary... But by the postwar period, Hannah writes, managers were approaching the further growth of their firms with greater com fidence. they were now less inhibited by the managerial problems which had beset some of the euler larger companies... The computer and methods of | ‘operations research (both originally developed for wartime planning) made the ministration of larger-scale enterprises more tractable, and the gradual bull up ‘of experience of large-scale organization improved the capacity of large fms to “undertake further growth, Perhaps the most significant and widespread postwarFortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War IT 619 development in management was the adoption ofthe multiivisional organization "truce which we saw in rudimentary form in the ICT ofthe 190%." ‘These large-scale industries, such as United Steel, Pilkingtons, English Electric, Courtaulds and, of course. Imperial Chemical Industries, were among the first to adopt the methods of operational research.”* Due to its sheer size, complexity and a well-documented. history, ICI serves as a convenient example of the uses and con- sequences of operational research. A Mr H. Kenney of ICI's Billingham Division was present at the 1949 Manchester discussions, further suggesting that this particular division might be especially interested in the new OR tools Originally part of Brunner, Mond before the 1926 merger that produced ICI, Billingham had long been an important component of the ICI enterprise; its relative geographic isolation and high con- centration of scientists and engineers contributed to ‘a particular management and worker culture at Billingham’.” It was much more than a production facility, being heavily involved in scientific research: Billingham played a key role in the design work for the “Tube Alloys’ project during the war, and developed and manu- factured the plastic ‘Perspex’ that became one of ICI’s major produets. Billingham was an immense operation: it operated an oil jetty. two large riverside wharves, an internal railway system with 80 miles of track, 20 locomotives and over a thousand railway cars, and a large fleet oftrucksand tankers. The handling of nternaland external traffic flow, product control, and communications was ‘a really colossal task’, and precisely the kind of job that operational research would be able to tackle.” Billingham was also precisely the kind of place where operational research would be accepted most easily. One of the key influences that ‘stamped their mark on the broad social system of Billingham” was “the technocratic managerial culture” that resulted from the presence of so many scientists and engineers.” There existed 4 functional organization structure run by these technocrats with an authoritative hand. As one manager put it: “There was a very ‘mechanistic style from top to bottom at Billingham. Everyone in his, place and knew his place ....”” In the early 1950s, ICI was ‘pioneering’ one particular form of operational research: work-study techniques, the quantification and, strict regimentation of specific production tasks. The result, in addi- tion to presumably increased efficiency, was that “pressures of @20 Social Studies of Science continuous and irritating kind” began to develop on the shop floor. (One manager recalled: In those days the shop stewards were getting increasingly agressive. We had work- ‘studi the division and in mos areas there wer bons stems working. As you know its easier to measure process work thin engineering work, and the process ‘workers felt the engineering workers were being pada bonus on the fiddle and they themselves were being ground into the dust by ruthless workstudy officers. These vere cnles, endless dspstes, Ninety-five percent othe disputes Iwas involved in ‘sere about work-study values that were Being challenged.” Here, then, is one example of how the operationalizing of OR resembled Taylorism in its effects. We have also seen how a few OR practitioners and industrialists, cutting through the vague catch-all definitions, themselves suggested connections and similarities be- tween OR and Taylorism. The question therefore presses more urgently: what was really new about OR to differentiate it from Taylorism? ‘Taylorism™ When Frederick W. Taylor published The Principles of Scientific Management “the larger question of increasing the United States’) national efficiency” was uppermost in his mind. He saw the remedy for the pervasive inefficiency that was rampant in industry and ‘in almost, all of our daily acts’ in ‘systematic management, rather than in searching for some unusual or extraordinary man’, for ‘no great man can (with the old system of personal management) hope to compete «with a number of ordinary men who have been properly organized so. 4s efficiently to cooperate’, He declared that ‘In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first’. His system of rationalized management was ‘a true science’ that rested upon “clearly defined laws, rules, and principles. ‘Its principal object was to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer coupled with ‘maximum prosperity for each employee’. ‘Since Taylor was an engineer, he also analyzed possible improve- ments in the machines and the mechanical devices used in the processes under investigation, Such considerations were an integral part of his original system. Taylor is famous for his studies of metal cutting tools, However, scientific management gradually came to be principally concerned with the operations rather than the devices."Fortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War IT 621 ‘The appellation ‘scientific management’ for Taylor’s system was given wide currency in 1910 by Louis Brandeis, in his arguments before the Interstate Commerce Commission against granting rate increases to several eastern railroad companies. Expertise and ‘optimalization —in order to increase efficiency and productivity —were seen as the hallmarks of Taylorism. But over and above the quan- titative features of the system ~ piece work, task cards, time and motion studies - Taylorsaw the essence of scientific management asa “complete mental revolution’ of both management and labour: The great revolution that takes place in themental attitude of the two partes under scientific management is that both sdes take thir eyes off the division of th Surplus as the al important matter, and together tuen their attention toward increasing the sie of the surplus uni this surplus becomes so large. that theres ‘ample room fora large inctease in wages for the workman and an equaly large Increase in profits forthe manufacture. Taylorism thus promised ‘an escape from zero-sum conflict’ ~ in which the gain of one party could only be accomplished by the loss of the other. Maier sees Taylorism in the period after World War I as a vehicle ‘to validate a new image of class relationships’ and as an escape from having to accept the class confrontation and social division that had existed in the pre-war period." Taylor's system of scientific management and Ford's assembly line encapsulated the American commitment to technological efficiency and productivity. Taylorism effectively provided both a methodology anda legitimation for linking the rationalization of technology to the jonalization of labour. In the name of efficiency, control of the labour and machinery processes were given over to allegedly “neutral” engineers. Ford's assembly line combined machine tools, time-and- motion studies and electrical power into a rationalized system of elicient and profitable production under engineering control. Both Taylorism and Fordism were enthusiastically embraced in the United States and ‘pervaded the entire culture’. The reception of Taylorism and Fordism in Europe, as evidenced by public discussion and government sponsorship there, was much more selective. The greater sensitivity to bureaucratic control was undoubtedly a factor. As Max ‘Weber noted, scientific management, which he defined as the exercise of control on the basis of knowledge’, was the essence of modern bureaucracy.” Henry Le Chatelier, a distinguished physical chemist and an eminent metallurgist, did much to promte Taylorism in Europe. He22 Social Studies of Science was the first to introduce and expound Taylor's principle in France. As early as 1908, he translated several of Taylor's articles, and thereafter proselytized Taylorism in his extensive writings on the subject. In 1927, these were collected and issued with a lengthy prefatory essay in an influential volume. In that book Le Chatelier called Taylorism a genuine science and indicated that he considered Taylor one of the great rationalists of the stature of Descartes, Newton and Claude Bernard,” Le Chatelier pointed out that, in constructing his approach, “Taylor has applied the Cartesian princ- iple of analysis (division), which is the foundation of all science’. ‘Separate every difficulty in as many parts as is possible and this is required in order to effectively resolve them’. In fact, Taylor carried the division of labour to the extreme: ‘not content to consider each worker independently of his neighbor, he furthermore decomposes each of his operations into elementary movements’ Le Chatelier ‘saw Taylorism as rigidly deterministic. By conceiving of management asa deterministic process and by employing extensively experimental ‘measurements, Taylor had done for industrial phenomena what ‘Claude Bernard, one of the pioneers of experimental medicine, had done for natural phenomena in general Science sit has heen defined by Taine, by Claude Bernard, rests essentially on the notion of determinism: all natural phenomena are connected by necessary rela tions, bylaws each one of them is function of certain numberof independent variables, of fictos. Industrial phenomena, whether it be the purchase price of a Certain tem or the profit from an operation, behave the same wa. Experimental Science applied to ther study consists in making in each particular case the ‘compete enumeration ofthe relevant factors, and thereafter determine by precise ‘measurements the variation of the sudied phenomenon as a function of the \atation of each ofits factors For Le Chatelier, Taylorism consisted primarily in the quantification ‘and the subsequent mathematization of the management of industrial ‘organization and production. Every “industrial result isa determined function of certain factors and may be expressed by an algebraic formula’, Its precisely ‘the determination of the algebraic and very ‘complex functions ~ i.e. the laws ~ that is the essential object of the application of science to industry To establish the very complex algebraic formula that gives te synthesis ofthe ‘observations that were made iis indspensable to conform toan essential rule of| the scientific method: always setup the experiment in groups of two and vary a single factor imone of them and record the resulting change”Fortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War IT 623 Compare Le Chatelier’s statements with the ‘Note on Certain Aspects of the Methodology of Operations Research’ that Blackett drafted in early 1943. Blackett’s memorandum had its origin in the “attempt fin 1941] to set out forthe benefit of new scientific recruits to the operational research sections, some of the principles that had been found to underlie the work of the first two years of the war’ In his report. Blackett stressed that the first step always was to collect as ‘much numerical data about the operations as possible, However, since the measurements are always incomplete the question arises on how to proceed. One possible approach is what Blackett called the a priori method, that is to construct simplified mathematical models and to try to find general solutions to them. In time of peace (when up-to-date numerical data on war operations are not available), this may be the only possible method’. In essence the procedure was to select the variables which were suitable for quantitative treatment and ignore the rest. The differential equations (describing the model) were then formed and solutions obtained. A more ‘common-sense’ procedure was to abandon this attempt to construct from first prin- ciplesa complete imaginary operation and attempt to find by analysis how real operation would be affected with a change of variables (for ‘example, of tactics or weapons.) If the yields Y.Y. are the result of war operations and XXs the operational parameters or variables then the form ofthe function Y= FOXX) cannot, in general, be found from first principles. But for small changes a fairly accurate answer is often obtainable. Ifthe partial ‘ifferential coefficients dY,/dX, can be determined, then the opera- tional effect of changes in weapons, tactics raining, and the like, give a predicted yield Y", where ay, ay, Y,+— dX, +— dX, + aX, dX,624 Social Studies of Science Blackett then discussed the statistical method of determining the coefficients ifthe operational data are extensive enough.” According to Lovett, Blackett’s methodological ‘Note’ became ‘the textbook of ‘operational research and had wide circulation’. Blackett’s Note thus fleshes out and gives an explicit formulation of Le Chatelier's mathematical vision of Taylorism. But whereas, for Le CChatelier, the functions F, were to be ‘algebraic’ ones, in Blackett’s version the functional relationship can be much more general. From our analysis of Taylorism and scientific management, and from an analysis of the models that were set up to treat the problems. that were encountered during the war,”” we are now in a position to sive a partial answer to the question, what was new in OR? The answer is that Taylorism, with its deterministic conception of the world, used deterministic models, where the effect of a given action was assumed to result ina well-defined, determined effect. OR, on the other hand, dealt principally with stochastic processes and with probabilistic models that explicitly recognize uncertainty as an in- trinsic feature of the processes being modelled In fact, we would like to suggest that itis the use of probabilistic models, later to be refined with a host of mathematical techniques — decision theory. game theory, Monte-Carlo methods" - that is the characteristic feature differentiating OR from “scientific man- agement’. Scientific management investigations — like the later OR ones ~ were interdisciplinary in character. There was nothing novel about the ‘mixed-team’ approach of OR. Industrial psychology grew out of the ‘scientific management’ investigations of the effect of repetitive actions on workers on the assembly ine. Nor wasit unusual to have physiologists on the team to help in the investigation of fatigue in the workplace. The holism of Kurt Lewin, one of the early pioneers in the field of industrial psychology, had its roots in the “systems’ approach of Taylorism. By the mid-1950s, the indebtedness of OR to Taylorism began to be acknowledged. In an essay on management consulting and OR, J.W. Pocock noted that: Taylor and his coleagucs were working at comparatively elementary levels where singe itl had been done, mich could be done wth relatively simple techniques of| ‘quantitative analysis, Operations research now beings to commerce and industry tore powerful techniques of quantitative analysis and isan extension of Taslor’s basi philosophy to possibilities probably beyond Taylors ison far-reaching asitFortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War IT 625 A decade or so later this view had found its way into the standard textbooks on the subject: engincering and thos of operations research do just adds mathematical sophistication and “tools that dda’ exist previously The connection between OR and Taylorism having been estab- lished and the differences noted, we are now in a position to indicate why the physicists played such an important role in making OR so highly effective, Why the Phy: 2 Why were physicists (and, more particularly, why were the British and American physicists) key contributors to OR? A superficial answer might suggest that physicists trained in the Anglo-Saxon physics tradition of ‘empiricism + computability’ were ideally suited to carry out these developments. Their pragmatic, instrumental tradition was particularly helpful in shaping the theoretical tools of OR. In his review of Kimball and Morse in 1951, Jacob Bronowski hinted at this: ‘Operations research has done its major work, and it turns out to have been a piece of education ~ the education of scientists and warriors in a new empiricism’."" Moreover, in the British and American context, perhaps more so than anywhere else, physicists came to embody the notion that: rationality = computability. Crowther and Whiddington also alluded to this equation in 1947, in their book Science at War. In their discussion of OR they noted: “This is the major conception - the reduction of war toa rational process. isthe contrary ofthat held by Hier, who had a romantic iew of war, He belived that ‘wars are won by grea inspiration... Systematic scentife work on known ‘weapons paid larger and quicker dividends, It Beat Hier. “Hitler and bis generals filed to produce any operational research comparable to ‘he British developmen. Ithey had, they probably would have won the submarine ‘campaign and the war Butt wasimpossible fr them to collaborate onthe basis of ‘quality withthe rational cpalitaran selentiss626 Social Studies of Science Crowther and Whiddington’s observation that the hierarchical structure of Nazi Germany prevented collaboration between the German armed forces and the “rational, egalitarian scientists’ points the way to a richer and more sensitive explanation that takes the political context into account; an explanation, incidentally, that also sheds light on Taylorism. Given that the initial developments of OR stemmed from problems connected with radar ~ the instrumentation for which was initially designed by physicists, the experiments for which were initially car- ried out by physicists, and the mathematics and theory for which were initially formulated by physicists ~ it is not surprising that physicists ‘would be involved in the problems connected with the allocation of the radar sets and their most effective deployment. If we accept that probabilistic modelling was the novelty in OR, then the role of the physicists in that enterprise becomes clarified further. Quantum ‘mechanics had familiarized them with probability, and more so than. most other scientists they conceptualized their universe of inquiry probabilistically. The models of their world were intrinsically prob- abilistic. Thus most of Blackett’s work during the 1920s and 1930s was connected with scattering experiments in which he measured cross-sections ~ that is to say, the probabilities that certain events occur in the interaction between the ‘elementary’ constituents of ‘matter he was hurling at one another." The same was true of Bernal in his X-ray structural analysis of complex molecules and solids. He also studied Haldane’s and Wright's statistical approach to population genetics. Moreover, Blackett’s younger sister was an industrial psychologist and he was therefore undoubtedly familiar with Taylorism, and with the time-and-motion and other workplace studies that were being carried out in British factories. Bernal likewise knew of Taylorism. Lenin had been very much concerned with scientific management, and Bernal had studied these matters in con- nection with his writings on the social function of science.'* Morse, who had a mastery of quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics, also had a partiality for numerical work. He was closely connected with the experimental work in nuclear physics at MIT, and was familiar with the problems of counting rates in nuclear detectors. ‘Thus probabilistic modelling was familiar to him. In any case he had access to Blackett’s initial OR documents. Ttis worth noting the parallelism between physicists and engineers in OR and Taylorism. It was an engineer who brought forth Taylorism and scientific management, and engineers were to be theFortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War II 627 ‘midwives for the new utopian world these techniques promised. As Herbert Hoover commented in 1922: [The engineer's ifelong training in quantitative though, his intimate experience ‘with industria if, leading to an objective and detached point of view, hisstratepc position asa party of the third part with reference 10 many of the conflicting Economic groups, and above all his practical emphasis on construction and pro- ution, place upon him the duty to make his point of view effective. "™ Physicists played much the same role with respect to OR, and to the post-World War II world. Both sets of professionals emphasized their objectivity, their neutrality and their use of scientific methodology. Blackett saw the relative novelty of OR ‘not so much in the material to which the sienifc method is applied as inthe level At which the work is done, im the comparative freedom of the investigators to eck ‘ut their own problems, and in the direct relation ofthe work to the possiblity of It was important in order to maintain objectivity and neutrality that the operations research scientists not make the decisions - they were doing “science in collaboration with and on behalf of executives’ Ifthe answer to the question: ‘Why were the physicists so influential in the development of OR during the war” consists for the most part that they had been drawn in because of their gadgeteering wizardry, and that many of them had a mastery of certain mathematical tools and had experience with modelling natural processes with those tools, ‘and that proficiency in the use of these tools was much more prevalent, among physicists than in any other discipline ~ then to a large extent their centrality is accidental. What physicists did have is self-con- fidence, and this may account for the ‘anything goes’ characteristics of OR. ‘Any approach is legitimate in an operations research study as, long as it leads to a better understanding of the problem’."* If this, argument is right, then population geneticists, economists, physical ‘chemists in possession of these same tools could and would have done the same thing. And indeed they did In fact, with the evolution of operations research into systems. analysis, there occurred a corresponding change in the professionals, that were in charge of the analysis. Whereas physicists and applied ‘mathematicians were predominantly responsible for the creation and establishment of OR, economists, lawyers and social scientists later took over the influential positions in systems analysis. Effective28, Social Studies of Science systems analysis must integrate a wide variety of professional skills, including those of the social and political scientists. Economists and, lawyers could act as ‘generalists and integrators because, on the fone hand, the more technical aspects of sub-problems could be relegated to engineers and applied scientists, and, on the other, the ‘more integrative aspects of the problem — such as the allocation of resources among expensive competitive weapons systems, assessing. the cost of different modes of research and development, bargaining among competitors, evaluating the political consequences of certain recommendations ~ were the traditional areas in which the toolkits and the special skills of economists and lawyers could be effectively employed. The intellectual tools possessed by physicists may have been necessary for the development of OR. But physics and physicists do not explain why OR was predominantly an Anglo-Saxon phe- nomenon, Ted Porter, in a recent talk on ‘Quantification and the Accounting Ideal in Science’, has insightfully given a clue to an answer. He pointed out that quantitative knowledge ‘is especially useful to coordinate the activities of diverse actors, and to lend credibility to forms of belief and action when personal trust isin short supply’. Porter stated the matter succinctly and epigrammatically “Objectivity has prestige in a pluralistic society mainly asa substitute for trust’. And the logic of objectivity is most readily expressed by the language of numbers, quantification and mathematics. We can thus view Taylorism and scientific management, with their emphasis on quantification, as a technology for dealing with mistrust in liberal democratic countries. How were fair wages to be deter- ‘mined? Industry might simply have negotiated a price. But, by the end of the nineteenth century, an agreement resting on no more authority than managerial judgment lacked credibility. The numbers gleaned from time and motion studies, time sheets and the like, were to be the objective quantitative evidence on which both workers and ‘management could agree. They were to be the basis for setting fair ‘wages for the workers and reasonable returns for the company. The same for OR. What is at issue is how power is exercised in situations where military commanders and scientists must work to- gether in a political system in which ultimate responsibility lies with civilian leaders clected by the citizenry. In the wartime setting, the ‘decisions could simply have been made unilaterally by the military OR became valued because it produced valuable results. But ina postwar setting, in the democraticand presumed egalitarian setting ofFortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War IT 629 the paradigms of twentieth-century liberal societies, Great Britain and the United States, unilateral decisions would lack credibility. So OR was mobilized to provide quantitative evidence on the basis of which decisions were to be made, The role of OR after the war was certainly as much political as technical.” Miller and Rose have noted that accounting is wholly typical of the normal way power is exercised in modern liberal societies." Porter argues that power there is not mainly an agency of dret, dictatorial control, but a set of methods and implicit standards by which people are judged nd by which they judge themselves, Subordinatesate lft with some autonomy. provided they maintain good number, ‘Superors ae not supposed to intervene the details, nto impose orcetuly thee ‘own discretion, but Sofa as posible to respect the objective measure” ‘The comparison of OR with accounting is striking. Much of what Miller and Rose say about accounting applies directly to the auth- rity and prestige of OR in the wartime situation, to OR and British, Labour party politics in the post-World War II period, to OR within American corporations during the 1950s and 1960s, and for that ‘matter more generally to the authority and prestige of the knowledge snd methods of the natural sciences in the political realm. But there remains an additional question. Physicists did play a dominant role in giving scientific and technical advice to the US government at the highest level well into the 1960s. The composition of the advisory committees to the various branches of the armed forces, that of the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), of the General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the AEC, all testify to that.'”” Why? The obvious answer is of course their technical know- ledge, particularly in matters nuclear, and the prestige granted them by the public and the government due to their success during the war." But there are additional factors to be considered, The first to bbe noted is that one of the legacies of OR may well have been the consolidation of the advisory mechanism that had been developed during the war whereby civilians could interact with the military. A ‘comparison between the United States and Great Britain helps shed light on the matter. In Great Britain there existed a cadre of high level scientific personnel of the first rank within the government ~ people like Henry Tizard, Edward Appleton, John Cockcroft - whose advice could be sought on technical matters without recourse to people outside the government." This implied a fairly rigid separation between ‘insiders’ and “outsiders'."* In the US, no such cadre existed.630 Social Studies of Science The heads of Los Alamos, Argonne and Oak Ridge did not have the same standing as Cockcroft ~ and for that matter these were not government laboratories. They were run for the government by the University of California, the University of Chicago and by Union Carbide, respectively. The wartime experience gained with NACA, OSRD, the civilian-military OR teams, helped consolidate an ad- visory system that permitted great permeability, flexibility and efficiency, for which physicists in the US were particularly well-suited, Itshould also benoted that the flexibility and efficiency that werethe result of this collaboration between physicists, economists and social scientists, for the most part came to be organized around, and for the sake of, state-sanctioned violence or the threat of violencein the name of ‘national security’. The OR legacy of World War IT was trans- formed ~ by men such as Robert McNamara, the assorted RAND analysts he brought to the Pentagon, and others counted among the “best and brightest” toiling for such organizations as the Jason division of the Institute for Defense Analysis into the paradigmatic method for planning and waging the war in Vietnam.'” The rationality of systems thinking became the rationalization for an entire war system, as epitomized in the 1967 Report from Iron Mountain: 11 is uncertain, at this time, whether peace will ever be possible. Its far more ‘questionable, by the objective standard of continued social survival rather than that of emotional pacifism, that t would he desirable even if it were demonstrably attainable. The war system, forall its subjective repugnance to important sections (Of ‘public opinion’ has demonstrated its efectiveness since the beginning of ‘recorded histor: it has provided the hasis for development of many impressively ‘durable civilizations, inluding that which is dominant today. It ha consistent provided unambiguous socal priorities. Is, on the whole, a known quantity." Another point to be noted is that to the extent that physicists’ influence can be labelled, it derived much more from their skills as “systems analysts’ than as ‘operational researchers’. This is certainly the impression gleaned from a comparison between the post war developments in Britain and the US. As we noted in our second section, OR did not fare well in Britain after the war, neither in the civilian sector nor in the military sector. In fact, OR re-established a foothold in Europe only in the late 1950s, and then by virtue of NATO-sponsored activities."” Similarly, forall ofits successes in the US, OR had its limitations. In December 1950, Philip Morse, who spearheaded the efforts to have OR recognized as an academic andFortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War IT 631 professional discipline of great importance to industry and the mili- tary, chided his fellow physicists in an editorial in Physics Today," asking them, "Must we always be gadgeteers?”. He indicated that they could contribute to the resolution of the Cold War crisis not only by being ‘gadgeteers' at Los Alamos or the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, but also by helping to make decisions working in any of the operations research groups attached to the armed services. But the tone of the article indicated that, as valuable as their contribution ‘might be, and no matter what access to the top of the chain of command they might have ~ they would be ‘on tap, not on top’. The systems analysis and engineering approach and the institutional structures to give advice to the government using systems methods proved more challenging and rewarding to the physicists. The particular skills of the physicists are best observed in con- nection with their activities in projects such as Hartwell, Charles, Troy and Vista, which became known as ‘systems studies’. Tt precisely their ability to master the interplay of factors resulting from operating requirements in the field, from research projects in the laboratory, from new apparatus developed from research projects, from engineering and manufacturing constraints that physicists could see how to coordinate and steer the developments into a functioning operating system. Their accumulated collective expet- ence —and the ability ofthe project director to tap into that collective expertise by inviting the various experts to participate inthe project ~ paid rich dividends." These summer studies made clear that systems analysis goes far beyond operational research ‘in comparing the Fequirements of the field with the performance possibilities of new developments and coordinating the two’. In doing these things it also became apparent that their influence on management in industry and on the military command was much more authoritative than is the case with OR." They were more on top and less on tap. Finally, it should be noted that eventually physicists suffered the canonical fate: they were coopted by the system via the surest route devised - helping to construct the very system by which they would be coopted."632 Social Studies of Science ewores We would like to thank Harvey Brooks, Paul Forman, Charles Mair, Tom Hughes, ‘Allan Needell and the eferes for helpful comments The discussion tha followed the Presentation of this paper at the Smithsonian Institution in April 1990 and at the University of Pennsylvania in March 1991 were particulary valuable in deating its final orm |. D. Pest and G. Pancald have explored the consequences of World War Lon the scientific institutions in France and Hay in papers presente at a conference that ‘washed in Rome on 274 28 November 1990, on 'Ssience, Technology Insitutions in Europe (1900-1920)" organized hy the Consiglio Naziolane delle Ricershe (CNR), It ‘sinterestng to compare the subsequent history ofthe national research councils that ‘were formed during World War I. ln France, Great Britain, and Italy, these govern- rent sponsored and supported organizations had a substantial impact on science polly inthe interwar pero. Inthe United States, although influential the NRC femained a division of the National Academy of Sciences, and was supported primarily by the Rockefeller Foundation, See J. Heilbron and RWW. Seidel, ‘Lawrence and his Laboratory (Los Angeles, CA: University of Calforia Press, 1989), Fora discussion of Great Britain, see Philip Gummet, Seintiss tr Whichal (Man chester: The Universi of Manchester Press, 980), 2. lan Hacking, Was there Probsbilte Revolution 1800-1930 nL. Keugee, G.,Gigerenzer and M.S, Morgan eds), Phe Probabilistic Revolaion (Cambridge, MA‘ ‘The MIT Pres, 1987), Vol. 1, 45-58. 53. Thomas 8, Kuhn, The Essential Tension (Chicago, IL: The University of (Chicago Press, 1977), 78-224 The essay in question, ‘The Function of Measurement ‘in Modern Physical Scenes, was written in 1960 and appeared in sisin 1961, before The Structure of Scenic Revolutions was published in 1982 4. This sour paraphrase of Hacking. op. cit. note 2, 5. See David Cahan, n Institute for an Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1989). ‘6, Foran insightful assessment of some of these developments, see Brian Balogh, ‘Reotganizing the Organizational Synthesis: Federal Profesional Relations’ Studies in American Polcal Development, Vo. 5 (Spring 1991), 119-72. Tr Hendrik W. Bode, ‘Synergy: Technical Integration and Technological Inonation inthe Bll System (Mureay Hil, NJ: Bell Telephone Laboratories 1971) Bode res T.N. Vail, who became the president of ATAT and chief executive ofthe Bellsstem in 1907, with articulating the concepts ofthe systems approach’ ss early as 1009 His slogan was: ‘One Policy, One Sytem, Universi Service. Vail reorganized the numerous small autonomous units hat constituted ATA into a integrated and ‘more manageable structure with higher and more uniform standards See Alex Rolind, Model Research, NACA 1915-1988, Volume 1, NASA. SP-4103 (Washington, DC: NASA Scientific and Technical Information Branch, 195), 9. The National Committee on Research and Development (NCRD) was the progenitor of OSRD, which wasereated by executive orderin June 941, Fora history ff these developments and. their administrative setups, see R. Hewlett and (O. Anderson, Jr, The New World 1939-1946 (University Patk, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 1962) and Dantel Kevle, The Physicists (New York: Knopf, 197).Fortun & Schweber: Scientists and the Legacy of World War IT 633 10. FB. Llewellyn, ‘System Engineering with reference to is Military Applic cations’, Oppenheimer Papers, Library of Congress. TL. Our inguiry in the period ater World War Il extends only tothe early 1980s. ‘We have therefore not considered the connection between OR and military policy uring the 19805 and 1960s nor the extension of OR and systems analysis into the planning, programming and budgeting systems that were in vogue during the 1960sin ‘the USin both MeNamara's Department of Defenseandin the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Aa interesting exampleo the standing of OR i he 1960s was pointed out by one ofthe refers. At that time thos i control of the Operations Research Society of Ameria claimed that OR was a technique fr the analysis of| prospective military options so dependable and nerring that i could be used asthe ‘uluimate arbiter ofthe value of deployment of ABMs. Ths gave rise 10 a heated tichange between advocates and skeptics of the viewpoint inthe pages of ORSA’S journal (Operations Research, Vol 19 1971, 1123-258) and inthe New York Times ‘The linkage between instrumental rationality. operations research and systems analy sis and the role of the Vietnam War in casting doubt on the systems approach 35, practised until the late 1960s is analyzed in a paper by one of the authors: 5, Schwcher,“The Historical Context in the Devslopment ofthe Standard Media L Brown, M. Dresden, L. Hoddeson and M. Riordan (eds), The Rise of the Standard ‘Model Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1996, fortheoming). 12. In general sce PMS. Blackett, Studies of War. Nuclear and Conventional (Edinburgh: Olver & Boyd New York: il Wang, 1962) and the various papers of his eprinted therein in particular, “Tizard and the Science of War’. Pat I, 101-19; ‘Operational Research: 1948, Document 1, Par I, 169-96;"The Scope of Operational Research’, Document 2, Part I, 199-204, See also P.M‘S. Blacket, “Operational Research’, Adiancement of Science (published by the Brith Assocation), Vol. $ (April 1948), 28; Blacker, “Operational Reseach’, Operational Research Quarter Vol 1/1 (Mareh 1950) 3-6; Blacket, Operational Research: Recollections of Prob Jems Studied, 1940-48 Brassey's Amal (1953). 88-106, reprinted in Stdies of War, 205-3: Blacket. Evan James Willams, 1903-1985", Ohiuary Notices ofthe Fellows {ofthe Royal Society. Vo. § (1947, reprinted in Stues of War, 238-38. See also Sit Bernard Lovell, FRS, Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett” Biographical Memos of Fellows of the Roval Society. Vol. 21 (1975) 1-115; Sally Zuckerman, “Scenic [Advice during and since World War I, Proceedings ofthe Royal Socitof London, A, Vol. M2 (1973), 468-77; Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords: The Autobiography (1804-1846) of Solly Zuckerman (London: Harish Hamilton, 1978):C. Kite, The Nature and Development of Operations Research’, Sclence, Vol 105 (7 February 1947), 180-53: M. Stone, "Science and Stateral,Seience, Vol. 108 (16 May 1987), 507-10; W.J. Horvath, “Operations Research — A Scientific Basis for Exscutive Desisions’ American Staistcin, Vol, 2 (1987), 6-8: Florence N. Trefethen, “A History of Operations Rescarch’ in Joseph P. McCloskey and Trefeten (eds) Operations Research for Management (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1953) 13. EC. Willamsand P M. Morse, ‘The History and Development of Operations Rewarch’, Morse Papers, MIT Archives. Inthe early 1960s, E. Willams became CChietSeiemist forthe Minisey of Tansport, and later Chel Scents for the UK Ministry of Power 14. See RLV. Jones, "Henry Thomas Tizard, Biographical Memoirs ofthe Felons ofthe Royal Society, Vol. 71961), 336: P. Snow, Science and Government (Oxford: (Oxford University Press, 1961), and Postscript Science and Government (Onfor634 Social Studies of Science Oxford University Press, 1962}, R.W. Clark, Tizard (London: Methuen, 1965): Blacken, “Tard and the Science of War, op cit. note 12 15. Sir Charles Goodeve, ‘Operational Research’, Nature, Vol 161 (13 March 1948), 377-84 and 609. See also J. Roseabead and C. Trushurs, “A Materialist ‘Analysis of Operational Research’ Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol 33 (1982), 11-22, 16, EC. Williams and P.M. Morse, “The History of Operations Research talk

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