Bush's Profile Tracer
1913
As this instrument was wheeled over land, it recorded the elevation on a rotating drum. Previously, obtaining such information for contour maps required a team of surveyers. Bush is shown running the machine.
Bush was an undergraduate student at Tufts University at this time. He was never successful in getting the invention adopted commercially.
Photo from the exhibit "A Computer Perspective" designed by the Office of Charles and Ray Eames for the IBM Exhibit Center, New York City, 1972.
Developed at MIT with F. G. Kear, H. L. Hazen, H. R. Stewart and F. D. Gage, the integraph was hailed as "an electrical machine that thinks for itself. Virually a 'man-made mind,' the Integraph transcends human reasoing in its ability to write the answer to mathematical problems too complex for the human brain to solve."
Today we would call it an analog computer that could be programmed to solve sets of first-order differential equations.
The top photo shows Bush setting a parameter mechanically. The bottom photo shows (left - right) Bush, Walter F. Kershaw, Frank G. Kear, Harold L. Hazen, and Murray F. Gardner. Note the Ford radiator above the machine, used for cooling the rheostats.
The differential analyzer, designed by Bush and Hazen, was the first general equation solver. It did not use electronics, but had greater capacity than the earlier integraph. It could handle sixth-order differential equations. The output was in the form of automatically plotted charts. The bottom photo shows Samuel Caldwell.
During the Second World War the machine was used at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds.
Financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, this machine used electronics. The input was from punched tapes. It weighed 100 tons and had 2000 vacuum tubes, 200 miles of wire, 150 motors, and thousands of relays. It provided an order of magnitude better accuracy than the differential analyzer. It was kept busy during the Second World War.
Use of relays, photographic film , electric motors, and typewriters allowed the composition of lines of text without movable type, and enabled automatic justification. The machine was invented by two French inventors, and improved by an MIT team including Samuel Caldwell (pictured with Bush) and Harold E. "Doc" Edgerton.
Left, after his retirement, in the 1950s, by the fireplace in his house in Belmont, MA. He was seldom seen for long without his pipe. Photo by Karsh, Ottawa. This famous photo is displayed to this day in the Bush Room at MIT, Room 10-105. Right, the dedication of the Bush Room in June, 1959.
Left, with MIT President Karl Taylor Compton, in the President's Office at MIT. The occasion was the appointment of Bush as MIT's first Dean of Engineering in 1932. Right, with Orville Wright (right) and Charles G. Abbot.
Left, with ex-President Herbert Hoover in 1938 (Associated Press Photo). Right, with James B. Conant after witnessing the first atomic bomb explosion at Alamogordo, NM, July 16, 1945.
Bush receiving the National Medal of Science from President Lyndon B. Johnson, January 13, 1964. Left to right, Cornelius B. van Niel (Stanford), Jerome B. Weisner, then Science Adviser to the President; Norbert Weiner (MIT), John R. Pierce (Bell Telephone Laboratories), Bush, Johnson, and Luis W. Alvarez (Livermore).
Left, sailing in 1931. This photograph was given to the MIT Museum May 3, 1995, by Katherine Hazen, wife of the late Harold L. Hazen. "The enclosed picture of Dr. Bush was probably taken in the summer of 1931 when he asked Harold to join him in a week's cruise to Maine. (I was not too happy about being deserted, caring for our older child with the second due to be born within the month!)" Right, Bush and his wife Pheobe, at a resort in Wickenburg, AZ, 1954.
Bush in his basement shop, 1956. Left, note the innovative sliding panels for holding hand tools. Right, the vertical milling machine used in the fabrication of surgical repair devices, which Bush made after his retirement.
Memorial service at Kresge Auditorium, MIT, October 4, 1974. James B. Conant, President Emeritus, Harvard University, speaking. Sitting, left to right, Howard W. Johnson, Chairman of the MIT Corporation; James R. Killian, Jr., Honorary Chairman; Caryl P. Haskins, Carnegie Institution; Rev. Daniel Novotny, Belmont, MA.