Vannevar Bush was the inventor of one of the first computers, the differential analyzer. He was also a key figure in directing United States scientific research during World War II. Bush was born in Everett, Massachusetts, where his father was a Universalist minister. After receiving B.S. and M.S. degrees in 1913 from Tufts College (now University), in 1916 he earned a doctorate in engineering at MIT and Harvard University. After performing acoustic research for the Navy during World War I, Bush joined the MIT faculty, becoming dean of the school of engineering in 1932. Bush patented his first engineering invention, a surveying device, while still in college. In the 1920s and 1930s he began to develop a series of differential analyzers, for solving differential equations with as many as eighteen independent variables. They were analog computer s, which used continuous values, such as distance and movement, rather than the...