Government science in postwar America: Henry A. Wallace, Edward U. Condon, and the transformation of the National Bureau of Standards, 1945-1951

Abstract

In the fall of 1945, Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace handpicked Edward Condon, a respected theoretical physicist, to become director of the National Bureau of Standards. Already regarded by many academic and industrial scientists as a second-rate research institution, the Bureau had deteriorated further during the Great Depression. An ardent New Dealer who favored government action to prevent anticompetitive behavior in the marketplace, Wallace claimed that giant corporations leveraged their extensive patent holdings and research capabilities to manipulate markets and restrict competition at the expense of smaller firms without similar resources. Through a revitalized Bureau of Standards, Wallace intended to mitigate monopolistic behavior among large companies by transforming the Department of Commerce into an effective clearinghouse for scientific research that would stimulate technological innovation in small businesses. The Bureau's postwar expansion, however, foundered on congressional efforts to dismantle the legacies of the New Deal, Condon's lack of commitment to the technical requirements of the small business community, and the intense competition for resources within an institutionally pluralist federal research establishment dominated by the exigencies of the Cold War. Without sufficient financial support from congressional appropriations committees, Condon turned to the military to fund new research programs at the Bureau of Standards. These programs, however, owed their institutional growth to the demands of the national security state, not to the fading influence of Henry Wallace's New Deal liberalism.