AMERICAN TECHNICAL REPORTS: Their Importance and How to Obtain Them

It was estimated in 1952 that the United States was then spending more than 3,000 million dollars a year on research and development. Over half of this was paid for by the Federal Government and, more particularly, two‐fifths of it by the Department of Defense. Much of the research made possible with these tremendous government funds is of a fundamental character and, in the military sense, unclassified; a further large proportion is in the nature of applied science or development and has far‐reaching industrial significance. The scientific work carried out for the Federal Government, either in its own laboratories or under contract in American industry and universities, is thus of interest to scientists and technologists everywhere. The sponsoring agency which pays for the work naturally has control over the distribution of the scientific information which results from it. The international scientific community has no prescriptive right to this information, but fortunately the agencies concerned do make much of it available.