Naval Consulting Board

William Lawrence Saunders was chairman of the Naval Consulting Board in 1916
Thomas Robins was an American inventor involved in the Naval Consulting Board.

The Naval Consulting Board, also known as the Naval Advisory Board (a name used in the 1880s for two previous committees),[1] was a US Navy organization established in 1915 by Josephus Daniels, the Secretary of the Navy at the suggestion of Thomas Alva Edison.[2] Daniels created the Board with membership drawn from eleven engineering and scientific organizations two years before the United States entered World War I to provide the country with the "machinery and facilities for utilizing the natural inventive genius of Americans to meet the new conditions of warfare."[3] Daniels was concerned that the U.S. was unprepared for the new conditions of warfare and that they needed access to the newest technology.[4]

  1. ^ "On This Day: June 20, 1885". New York Times. 2001. Retrieved 2011-01-05.
  2. ^ "Thomas Edison's Vision". United States Navy. Retrieved 2013-12-18. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels seized the opportunity created by Edison's public comments to enlist Edison's support. He agreed to serve as the head of a new body of civilian experts - the Naval Consulting Board - to advise the Navy on science and technology. ...
  3. ^ Pearson, Lee, Developing the Flying Bomb, Naval Air Systems Command
  4. ^ L. N. Scott, Naval Consulting Board of the United States (Washington, 1920), 286