HAWB - How America Was Built
Though the US Constitution contains several explicit and implied benedictions on science, the history of national scientific institutions is one of struggle to exist on precarious and often miserly Congressional spending. Nonetheless, the national governments support and promotion of scientific inquiry and invention is the basis of the USA’s development as an industrial superpower. It is a history that flatly contradicts the conservative and libertarian myths of American economic development driven by hardy risk-taking entrepreneurs. No better examples exist than today’s computers and cell phones, which are comprised of scores of technologies, every single one of which began as one or another USA federal government research program.
Another example is steam engine design and building, which was not put onto a scientific footing until the 1850s when Captain Benjamin Franklin Isherwood of the U.S. Navy began a careful and meticulous collection of the operating characteristics of every marine and naval steam engine he could find. Isherwood would go on to become the Admiral in charge of the Bureau of Steam Navigation during the Civil War, overseeing the expansion of the fleet from around 50 steam vessels to over 600 – a quarter with steam engines of his own design. After the war, Isherwood created a curriculum for the Naval Academy to teach officers how to properly command a steamship, which was copied around the world, and formed the foundation for a new avocation, that of mechanical engineer.
Today, the idea of “progress” has been bowdlerized by corporate ad campaigns for “new and improved,” and a new awareness of the damage to the environment caused by modern industrial societies seeking the cheapest means to the greatest profit. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, the idea of progress was cherished and revered, for it meant quest to free humanity from the scarcity, toil, drudgery, and disease of humanity’s struggles against the forces of nature, at a time when life expectancy limited to 30s to 40s years.
“The great object of the institution of civil government,” President John Quincy Adams declared in his first annual message to Congress, December 6, 1825,
“is the improvement of the condition of those who are parties to the social compact, and no government, in what ever form constituted, can accomplish the lawful ends of its institution but in proportion as it improves the condition of those over whom it is established…. moral, political, intellectual improvement are duties assigned by the Author of Our Existence to social no less than to individual man.”
In the Introduction to his landmark history, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities to 1940 (Harvard University Press, 1957), — sponsored by Sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences — A. Hunter Dupree wrote
“…all the institutions of the country in which science exists have found the actions of the government in conducting research and and in contracting for it are factors of first importance…. Indeed, before the rise of the universities, private foundations, and industrial laboratories, the fate of science rested more exclusively with the government than it did later…. The idea that the federal government should become the patron of science was easily within the grasp of the framers of the Constitution. As educated men of the eighteenth century they knew that European governments had often supported science, and their set of fundamental values led them to hold all branches of philosophy in high regard.”
Dupree’s history should be required reading for economists as well as public servants, but today it is largely forgotten. This small excerpt, to be followed by others, is my humble attempt to change that. It is a five page section from "Chapter V. The Great Explorations and Surveys 1842-1861," pages 100-105.
The Coast Survey under Bache
When Alexander Dallas Bache took over the Coast Survey on death of Hassler in 1843, he found it in theory an ad hoc task which was permanent only in that completion seemed to most congressmen to be impossibly far in the future. Hassler's regime left to him important assets — a truly scientific approach to the problem, a tradition of civilian control in a civilian department, a coupling with the weights and measures problem, data on a small stretch of the coast, a body of officers in both the Army and the Navy trained in the work, and an annual appropriation which against continuous opposition had reached the order of $100,000. The redoubtable Swiss had also left a reputation for extravagance and lack of results that had kindled the enmity of economy-minded congressmen.
Bache, being at once a capable scientist in civilian life, a graduate of West Point, and a familiar in high political circles, was admirably situated to make the Coast Survey a "triple organization" which "brings the scientific and practical training of civilians and of officers of the army and navy to its aid." [41] He used a small number of army officers, topographical engineers when he could get them, for triangulation work on land, and a larger group of naval officers in hydrographic work offshore. The civilian element provided "a more permanent nucleus . . . than the wants of either the military or naval service could yield." For "concert of action" he relied on "a central authority, the department in which matters pertaining to the trade, commerce and navigation of the country centre." [42] This meant civilian control under the 'Treasury Department.
Mindful of the criticism that had hampered his predecessor, Bache, after biding his time for a year, divided the Atlantic and Gulf Coast into eight sections and placed parties in all of them simultaneously. In addition to gaining support from congressmen of all the coastal states both on the Atlantic and the Gulf, Bache could turn out immediately useful charts much more rapidly. He himself admitted he could expand in this way only because colleges and West Point "had been pouring out educated men . . . The science of the country was altogether upon a different level in 1845 from what it was when the survey was proposed in 1807, or when it was commenced in 1816." [43] Increased number of parties also took more money, and Bache proved a master in relations with Congress.
By explaining technical terms clearly, stating his needs and how he intended to use his money, by playing up projects of immediate usefulness, Bache avoided petty irritation of legislators' tempers. Watching closely the propensity of Congress for economy, he continually presented statistics to show that the Survey "not only furnishes accurate scientific details and practical results, but it affords lit at a very moderate cost." [44] He was careful to cultivate congressmen from inland districts, some of whom proved willing to get publicity into the newspapers for him. [45] Through the new American Association for the Advancement of Science he mobilized scientific opinion in his behalf and used it skillfully. [45] His extensive personal friendships made it easy to mold opinion among scientists and to shape common course with Joseph Henry.
Bache needed all this diplomacy, for, besides chronic attempts to cut his salary and his appropriation, enemies in Congress again made determined effort to give the Navy control of the Survey. The ostensible and oft-advanced reasons were the large use of the Navy's personnel and ships as well as its lively interest in the hydrographic side of the results. In 1851, for instance, eleven army officers were assigned to the Survey while as many as sixty-six naval officers were serving. [47] With Annapolis in its infancy, the Coast Survey was still the real counterpart of West Point in giving naval officers advanced scientific training. Bache could answer the arguments by citing the turnover of naval personnel, the need of operations on land as well as on sea, and the need of a civilian "permanent nucleus."
But the real drive for navy control arose out of the fact that the growing Western and overseas explorations were under military control and appropriations. Since the standing military establishment cost government in these years more than all civil and miscellaneous appropriations combined, it seemed attractively simple to let the Navy, whose equipment and officers had to be paid for whether used or not, do the work, thus eliminating a conspicuous item from the civil expenditures. Senator Thomas Hart Benton, for instance, w considered the Survey a sop to the commercial interests anyway, claimed that the shift would save $400,000 annually. [48] The friends of Bache, led by Jefferson Davis in the Senate, answered that to maintain the Survey at its present efficiency no saving would be possible in the Navy, which had failed miserably in the 1820's. Denying that civilian control reflected on the capacity of military officers, they pointed to the advantages of a chief who was neutral between the two services. With scientific support from the AAAS, Bache managed to weather the storm. By preserving civilian control he maintained the Coast Survey with a continuity and a relative permanency that the explorations to which it was so closely akin were unable to achieve.
The Coast Survey's tendency toward permanence received encouragement from territorial expansion. Bache, who continually had to answer the question of when the Survey would end, pointed out that Texas had added two years. "Since then Oregon has been made a territory, and California acquired, and thus the limits of our coast have been greatly extended, and . . . the importance of the survey has greatly increased." [49] He lost no time in getting operations under way on the Pacific coast, producing preliminary sketches by 1850. [50] Amid charges in Congress that the Survey was creating a "new corps of officers" responsible to the Treasury Department and that idle employees had used government ships as hotels and "headquarters for frolicking," Bache's friends were able to get through an addition to the appropriation to take care of the increased operations on the West Coast. [51]
Besides the simple geographical extension, the Coast Survey moved beyond its narrow functions of chart-making to a wider range of scientific inquiries. Bache saw that the practical studies necessary to make the Survey accurate had broad implications. His own specialty, terrestrial magnetism, he considered "eminently . . . practical . . . though reached by a scientific discussion which seems to pass beyond the bounds" of applied science. Even with this emphasis he claimed that the Coast Survey table for magnetic variation was "one of the contributions to general physics." [52] Thus, while never losing touch with its practical mission, the Survey energetically developed techniques and explored phenomena of basic scientific interest. Magnetism became a continuing study. [53] By 1858, 103 stations were spread over the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific areas. [54] The advantage of civilian personnel is illustrated by the career of Charles A. Schott, who served in the computing division of the Survey for 52 years beginning in 1848, contributing much to the science. [55]
When Bache inherited the office of superintendent of weights and measures from Hassler, he continued the distribution of standards and also carried out experiments on the accuracy and construction of standard bars. [56] The Coast Survey thus kept alive a continuing tradition concerning a subject explicitly provided for in the Constitution.
Accurate measurement of time was also a legitimate interest of the Survey. The telegraph obviously had possibilities for the simultaneous comparison of chronometers in widely separated places. This finally provided the basis for accurately determining longitude, a classic problem of navigation and surveying. Sears C. Walker of the Survey, coordinating the private efforts of several scientists, worked out the mechanica1 and organizational details necessary to put the telegraph to this use. He even made experiments on the human factor involved in observing and recording signals. [57] The progressive, experimental temper of the organization in seeking improved tools also showed itself in demands for steam surveying vessels and in the application of photography and electrotyping to the production of charts. [58]
Since astronomical observations are the raw materials for an accurate survey, Bache took a steady interest in them. He tended to look for his astronomy, however, not to the Naval Observatory under Maury, but to Harvard College, where Professor Benjamin Peirce served as the Survey's consultant. When Benjamin Apthorp Gould became head of the longtitude department of the Survey, he made his headquarters at the Harvard Observatory. Cambridge thus became a center of astronomical research in the 1850’d in part because of Coast Survey support. Harvard, although still primarily a college, was beginning to develop research facilities in a few departments. The strong personal and scientific ties established between Bache in Washington and Peirce and Gould in Cambridge made an axis of power within the scientific community.
In other ways the Coast Survey scientists showed vision and energy in attacking problems that came in their way. They worked out the pattern of tides in the Gulf of Mexico. [59] In the Atlantic they extended their interest sufficiently offshore to include the Gulf Stream, which was fairly definitely in the Navy's sphere. [60] Bache enlisted the greatest microscopist of the day, Professor Jacob Whitman Bailey of West Point, to study for organic remains samples of sea bottom collected on the Survey. [61] Later, Louis Agassiz became an adviser on these studies. This enthusiastic newcomer, who stirred up activity in every organization he touched, soon extended his work for the Survey to the origin, growth, character, and probable future progress of the coral formations of the Florida keys. [62] Hence biological research developed out of the Survey's mission.
While its tendencies in the direction of basic research never got completely away from the practical business of the Survey, they were sufficiently extensive to give some validity to the claim that this potentially perfunctory operation was in reality the general scientific agency of the government. Bache's personality, his ties with Cambridge and with the Smithsonian, aided its preeminence. In sheer size if nothing else the Survey dominated the scene. Its appropriation for 1854, which so dwarfed the Smithsonian, was $489,537.20, the high single one but not atypical. The appropriation in 1853 was near three times that for the railroad surveys. In the two years 1854 and 1855, Congress made available more money than the Wilkes expedition cost in four years' operation. [63] Before the Civil War the Coast Survey was the best example of the government in science.
Two important handicaps kept the Coast Survey from becoming. a fully developed national scientific institution. In the first place, for all the continuity of policy and personnel, and even though its job lay swelling in front of it to give an illusion of permanency, the Survey remained in theory an ad hoc enterprise. If the day ever came when Congress considered that the coasts had been adequately mapped, the Survey's reason for existence would vanish. This distinction, academic as it was in the 1850's, tended to discourage the development of the long-range objectives that are necessary in planning scientific policy. In the second place, by being tied to a specific mission, the Survey, however deeply it went into theoretical aspects of the science within its scope, could not easily break out into disciplines that had no connection with its work. All the science taken up by the Coast Survey were for obvious reasons on the list of those stimulated by the exploring expeditions. Astronomy, topogoraphy, hydrography, and terrestrial magnetism received most emphasis, with a minor measure to meteorology and natural history. As with the expeditions, the laboratory side of science received little encouragement.
Thus several of the general tendencies recognized elsewhere emerge in the history of the Coast Survey. A temporary agency tended become permanent. A practical agency tended to go into the theoretical aspects of the sciences it used. However, even when great generality was reached in this trend, a practical agency did not wander through those scientific disciplines too far from its area of primary responsibility. Finally, the expansiveness of an agency depended largely on the quality, drive, and continuity of its leadership. The it Survey, under two chiefs for the sixty years from 1807 to 1867, reached its pinnacle of influence under Bache.
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