Endless frontier
by G. Pascal Zachary · first published 1997
71% recommend29% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Biography of Vannevar Bush, the engineer who shaped postwar American science policy. It is the only full biography of him and is well regarded, suiting readers interested in science funding and history.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
In the 20th - the American - Century, no visionary stands taller than Vannevar Bush. As the inventor and public entrepreneur who launched the Manhattan Project, helped to create the military-industrial complex, conceived of a permanent system of government support for science and engineering and anticipated the personal computer and the Internet, Bush is our century's reincarnation of Ben Franklin. Beginning with his boyhood as a turn-of-the-century tinkerer in his father's basement in Massachusetts, Bush went on to study and teach electrical engineering at Tufts and MIT. An early academic en
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"Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century" (1999 MIT Press)is an excellent biography of Bush by G. Pascal Zachary.
on “As We May Think (1945)” ↗For those who want to learn more, the book "Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century" [0] by G. Pascal Zachary is very good. (G. Pascal Zachary also wrote "Showstopper: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at…
on “As We May Think (1945)” ↗…article that speaks to that, notably writing from 1990. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-24-fi-444-st... By the way, I do recommend reading what remains the only biography of Vannevar, "Endless Frontier", written by the same author as OP's article, G Pascal Zachary. It is quite good. The subject probably merits multiple biographies just as many other pivotal people in history also have multiple biographies…
on “Vannevar Bush Engineered the 20th Century” ↗…he was right on the money on the timing. That was an audacious prediction back then. He influenced me the most by his columns on space development (A Step Farther Out, and a couple of anthologies The Endless Frontier). I don't clearly remember what was in them, but there was a kind of can-do attitude about developing technological civilization in a strategic way that seems more in tune with the 60s than anything happening…
on “Jerry Pournelle has died” ↗Thank you for the recommendation! That book looks great. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/475762.Endless_Frontier
on “Vannevar Bush Engineered the 20th Century” ↗…organize the American scientific effort during World War 2, and afterward was instrumental in setting up the modern university research system we have today. The main argument was that research was the "Endless Frontier" (hence the name of the book about him). Things like the National Science Foundation and DARPA are part of this compact, that the Federal government would fund research universities to do fundamental…
on “As We May Think (1945)” ↗…We Europeans have very little knowledge of exactly how to take the big bets that has served the US militarily and economically since then. Here’s some of my (slightly rambling) notes from reading the Endless Frontier with this aim: https://skaersoe.com/2025/03/19/lessons-from-vannevar-bush-o... Currently I’m looking for like minded people to communicate the gap: https://frontier.ngo/
on “Science, the Endless Frontier (1945) [pdf]” ↗