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Vannevar Bush

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by GrahamColm 04:09, 15 June 2014 [1].


Vannevar Bush (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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Nominator(s): Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:50, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about an engineer, inventor and science administrator, who was the head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) during World War II. Part of a series of articles on the Manhattan Project. He is also known for his work on analog computers, for founding Raytheon, and for the memex, which introduced the concept that we now know as the hyperlink. Article passed GA and A class reviews back in 2012, but it now takes two years to bring an article to FAC. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:50, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support on prose per standard disclaimer. These are my edits. I've looked at the changes made since I reviewed this for A-class. "His office was considered one of the key factors in winning the war" becomes clearer as the reader moves through the article, but I'm not sure if the meaning is clear in the lead. Also, in American English, if I say I'm going to meet you for lunch, it's clear that I'm not saying "I'll encounter you for the first time" (though I would be!), but "Lincoln met Emerson in Washington in February 1862" means that's the first time they met. Someone has gone through changing every "met with" to "met", and that changes the meaning, or at the very least makes the meaning ambiguous. My understanding is that the rules are different in BritEng, which adds a complication, but not a sufficient complication to justify those edits. - Dank (push to talk) 00:05, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it would be! The Wiktionary says that In the sense "come face to face with someone by arrangement", meet is sometimes used with the preposition with in American English. This is also true is AusEng, but here "meet with" means to have a formal meeting — one of those meetings where there is an agenda and minutes. Looking through the change history reveals that change was made by an IP editor from Norway in April 2013. I've reversed it. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:45, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Someone wanted a reference for the pronunciation of Bush's first name. I've never heard of that being questioned before. I'm taking the word of the phonologists that the symbols are correct. However, I do know how it is pronounced. You can hear it straight from the man himself through one of the article's external links, thanks to a technology that lets us listen to dead people. (Wind through to the 13-minute mark.) Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:10, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • Truman caption should not end in a period
  • File:DA_Cambridge_c1937.jpg: this is missing a US PD tag, but I'm also concerned about the life+70 tag - who created the image, and what was his/her date of death?
  • File:Lawrence_Compton_Bush_Conant_Compton_Loomis_83d40m_March_1940_meeting_UCB.JPG: the given source link redirects here - why?
  • File:Hanford_Site_Selection_Team.jpg: source link is dead
  • File:Kepler-solar-system-2.gif: source link is dead, needs US PD tag. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:48, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Removed.
  2. I have no idea. WP:CONEXCEPT applies here. We are not allowed to query decisions made on Commons.
  3. The site imglib.lbl.gov no longer exists. There's a feature that displays a custom site for a 404 error. So instead of getting ugly 404s, we now get helpful spam.
  4. Added a link to another usage. It seems that Wayback is forbidden from archiving the site.
  5. Added a US PD tag.

Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:50, 19 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Er, what "decision"? AFAICT it's never been nominated for deletion or otherwise queried on Commons. And even if it had been and was deemed okay, we require that our FAs have appropriately licensed and sourced media. Nikkimaria (talk) 11:59, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
We're still not allowed to dispute Commons, so if they say it's okay, it is. I must confess that I find their ways mysterious. Consider this image, which Commons sources to the Wikipedia. Anyhow, I have switched the image to one with a clearer pedigree. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:36, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

SupportComments from Hamiltonstone

  • Tremendously interesting character.
  • Given the article is quite long, i thought this was detail that could be trimmed, from this: "Bush returned to Tufts in October 1914 to teach mathematics for $300 a term. This was increased to $400 per term in February 1915. He spent the summer break in 1915 working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as an electrical inspector." to this: "Bush returned to Tufts in October 1914 where he taught mathematics, and spent the 1915 summer break working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as an electrical inspector."
  • "He received his doctorate in engineering from MIT and Harvard University jointly in 1917, after a dispute with his adviser Arthur Edwin Kennelly, who tried to demand more work from him". This seems to be a bit of a non-sequitur for the reader: I didn't grasp why a joint award of a doctorate would be caused by an adviser wanting more work.
  • Again on length, I'd suggest that in a bio about Bush, all this detail could be omitted: "Tolman for armor and ordnance, Conant for chemicals and explosives, Jewitt for communications and transportation, Compton for controls and instrumentation (including radar), and Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks Conway Peyton Coe for patents and inventions."
  • The stuff about Tizard and the radar problem seems to detour rather a long way from being about Bush - can this be made more concise?
  • I get the strategic significance and extraordinary achievement of the proximity fuze, but again in a biography of a person wonder if there's a little too much detail about the process of its delivery and the technical challenges that attached. I'd like to see other editors' views, though; I'm open to it being appropriate.

Will try and come back another time. hamiltonstone (talk) 00:22, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Made the changes as suggested. Bush's greatest contributions to the war effort were radar and nuclear weapons. The Americans were convinced that they were the most technologically advanced country in the world. The Tizard Mission showed them that they were not. Knowing that they were behind Britain also created doubts that they were ahead of Germany. Bush was behind the creation of the Radiation Laboratory, and the Manhattan Project. Moreover, the scientists who were involved in the former usually moved on to the latter. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:41, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Nowadays he is most famous for his 1945 prediction that "wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them". Which is what you are looking at. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:07, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for those changes, Hawkeye, and your clarifications here. Depending on other reviewers, I'd still like to see the proximity fuze text tightened to focus more on Bush, particularly as you point out that his greatest contributions were radar and nuclear weapons. But I am very happy to wait and see if anyone else thinks the same thing. On some other occasion, I hope I will return and review the rest. hamiltonstone (talk) 13:14, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Noting what Ian Rose says below, i too feel the memex section has too many quotes. Can I suggest a slimming revision of this:
"He wanted the memex to behave like the "intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain", but easily accessible as "a future device for individual use ... a sort of mechanized private file and library" in the shape of a desk.[1] The memex was also intended as a tool to study the "awe-inspiring" brain, particularly the way the brain links data by association rather than by indexes and traditional, hierarchical storage paradigms".

To this:

"He wanted the memex to emulate the way the brain links data by association rather than by indexes and traditional, hierarchical storage paradigms, and be easily accessed as "a future device for individual use ... a sort of mechanized private file and library" in the shape of a desk.[1]
  • "...physical and medical sciences; he did not propose funding the social sciences.[84] In Science, The Endless Frontier, science historian..." Any chance you can find a way to ditch at least one use of the word "science" in this run of text?
  • There's something odd about the lack of details in the third paragraph of "later life" (which apparently begins in one's late 50s - yikes). He was a director of a bunch of companies, all pretty serious players in the corporate world of that time. What was he doing there? Do we really know nothing of his contributions when he spent five years as chairman at Merck? Fifteen years with AT&T, armed with all his military connections and knowledge? Was he just warming a chair? I appreciate that, if the sources don't say, then we're stuck, but I find it a stark contrast to the great detail about some of his wartime contributions.
    • It can be a bludge. You show up once a month or so and collect your money for signing off on things. Zachary devotes 25 pages to 1955-1970, and it's all about contesting his legacy. But this is also because historians of science and us military historians are not so interested. I recall that the books on Ginger Burston overlooked his contribution to horse racing and I had to approach the Moonee Valley Racing Club for information. I'll see what I can dig up. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:26, 27 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Found a bit about Merck. Hawkeye7 (talk) 12:16, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • Yes it can be a bludge - but my feeling is that there is generally a lack of scrutiny or analysis of corporate history. Big companies like AT&T transform the world, in good ways and bad, but the amount of effort that is expended by scholars on actually analysing them is pathetic compared to the endless production of historical analysis of every battle, every general and every technology in every war ever fought ;-) Well done you for finding that bit on Merck. If you can find more, do add it in, but I'm a support now. hamiltonstone (talk) 13:34, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise a great article. hamiltonstone (talk) 13:11, 27 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments -- recusing myself from delegate duties to copyedit/review:

  • He then attended Tufts College, like his father before him. -- "father before him" sounds almost biblical to me, though I admit I haven't yet come up with what I consider an ideal alternative.
  • I'm assuming you used the section header World War II period for a reason but I'd have thought simply World War II was good enough.
  • Bush was fond of saying that "if he made any important contribution to the war effort at all, it would be to get the Army and Navy to tell each other what they were doing." -- was that really Bush speaking, or his biographer relating Bush's thoughts?
  • his critics were right in seeing Bush's attitude as a failure of vision -- personally I'd say that's a fair call but in an encyclopedic article I think such a value judgement needs explicit attribution, or else should be toned down a bit.
    • Changed to Having delayed its funding, Bush's prediction proved correct in that ENIAC was not be completed until after the war, but his critics saw his attitude as a failure of vision. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:46, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • The last paragraph of Memex concept is a quote-fest, what appears to be a mix of words from Bush himself and from biographers, so suggest attribution to clarify things.
  • Otherwise, as long as you're okay with my edits, I'm pretty happy. Structure and level of detail seem fine; I'd prefer to leave image and source reviews to others but will see how things go. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:26, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Source review -- In the absence of any other comments I took a quick look at refs -- all look reliable, and no glaring formatting errors stood out. I suppose I'd expect that with all the book sources one of them would have all the details in the Find-a-Grave citation (whose template format is somewhat different to other the other online refs) but I don't think it's a show-stopper. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:27, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Replaced it with another source, but kept it in the external links so people can still see the grave. (It would be nice if some Wikipedian would go and photograph it, but Massachusetts is a long way away.) Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:26, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Replacing in main body and moving to ELs sounds like a good solution. Tks/cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:38, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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