Extremely Sad News

[Tom Norris]

Right way, Wrong way, Navy way?


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         Navy's Technical Records of 20th Century Destroyed

Associated Press, Washington - Naval Research Laboratory records that
"chronicle some of the most significant technical achievements in the
20th century" were inadvertently destroyed by the National Archives.
        They were "pulped beyond recognition," the archives said Wed-
nesday.  The archives and the Navy blamed each other.
        Fed into the pulper sometime last summer were 4,200 scientific
notebooks and 600 boxes of correspondence and technical memos.
        "The historical record of our nation's scientific and techno-
logical heritage has suffered a serious and irreperable loss," Read Adm.
Paul G. Gaffney II, chief of Naval Research, wrote National Archivist
John Carlin, protesting the destruction of the records.
        Among the lost records, Gaffney said, were the correspondence
of American pioneers in high-frequency radio, work of the inventors of
radar "and the war records or the application of these technologies in
the campaigns against Nazi Germany and Japan."
        Also lost were records of "path-breaking acoustic and oceano-
graphic research" and materials tracing the early history of the Amer-
ican space program with V-2 and Viking rockets, records of Vanguard,
the first U.S. satellite program, "and much more," Gaffney said.

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