Production Laboratory

A classic muddle of scientific war research was tidied up by WPB's Donald Nelson last week. He finally created a long-awaited agency, the Office of Production Research & Development, named its director: 61-year-old Dr. Harvey Nathaniel Davis, president of Hoboken's Stevens Institute of Technology.

Originally called the Office of Technical Development, OPRD aims to: 1) provide Nelson with data on WPB's technical problems; 2) pass on suggestions which come to WPB through outside sources; 3) farm out experimental work; 4) when necessary, construct full-size pilot plants. Working on industrial problems, it will parallel rather than supplant the Office of Scientific Research & Development, which is concerned with research in munitions and war weapons.

OPRD was eleven months overdue. As far back as last April Nelson appointed a reconnoitering committee, headed by bombastic, nonscientific Maury Maverick, ex-Congressman, ex-mayor of San Antonio, to make recommendations for a bureau of production research. Maverick did his work quietly for once. Yet the result was a politico-scientific rumpus which brought to a head the issue: should WPB's research problems be assigned mainly to big, well-heeled research plants or to small, specialized laboratories? For a solution, much depended on the character of the man appointed to head OPRD. WPBoss Nelson has neatly avoided committing himself by picking his choice. Rhode Island-born Harvey Davis is neither the head of a big business laboratory nor a Maverick crusader for the scientific little man.

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