The chief of naval operations (CNO) is the highest-ranking officer of the United States Navy. The position is a statutory office held by an admiral who is a military adviser and deputy to the secretary of the Navy. The CNO is also a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and in this capacity, a military adviser to the National Security Council, the Homeland Security Council, the secretary of defense, and the president.
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory.
Charles Edison was an American politician. He was the Assistant and then United States Secretary of the Navy, and served as the 42nd governor of New Jersey. Commonly known as "Lord Edison", he was a son of Thomas Edison and Mina Miller Edison.
The history of the United States Navy divides into two major periods: the "Old Navy", a small but respected force of sailing ships that became notable for innovation in the use of ironclads during the American Civil War, and the "New Navy" the result of a modernization effort that began in the 1880s and made it the largest in the world by 1943.
Elmer Ambrose Sperry Sr. was an American inventor and entrepreneur, most famous for construction, two years after Hermann Anschütz-Kaempfe, of the gyrocompass and as founder of the Sperry Gyroscope Company. He was known as the "father of modern navigation technology".
Josephus Daniels was an American diplomat and newspaper editor from the 1880s until his death, who controlled Raleigh's News & Observer, at the time North Carolina's largest newspaper, for decades. A Democrat, he was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to serve as Secretary of the Navy during World War I. He became a close friend and supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy. After Roosevelt was elected President of the United States, he appointed Daniels as his U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, serving from 1933 to 1941. Daniels was a vehement white supremacist and segregationist. Along with Charles Brantley Aycock and Furnifold McLendel Simmons, he was a leading perpetrator of the Wilmington insurrection of 1898.
Frank Julian Sprague was an American inventor who contributed to the development of the electric motor, electric railways, and electric elevators. His contributions were especially important in promoting urban development by increasing the size cities could reasonably attain and by allowing greater concentration of business in commercial sections. He became known as the "father of electric traction". Demonstrating an aptitude for science and mathematics, Sprague secured an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1874 and, after graduation in 1878 and 2 years at sea, resigned to pursue his career in electrical engineering.
Ivan Alexander Getting was an American physicist and electrical engineer, credited with the development of the Global Positioning System (GPS). He was the co-leader of the research group which developed the SCR-584, an automatic microwave tracking fire-control system, which enabled M9 Gun Director directed anti-aircraft guns to destroy a significant percentage of the German V-1 flying bombs launched against London late in the Second World War.
William Frederick Durand was a United States naval officer and pioneer mechanical engineer. He contributed significantly to the development of aircraft propellers. He was the first civilian chair of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the forerunner of NASA.
Rear Admiral Bradley Allen Fiske was an officer in the United States Navy who was noted as a technical innovator. During his long career, Fiske invented more than a hundred and thirty electrical and mechanical devices, with both naval and civilian uses, and wrote extensively on technical and professional issues; The New Yorker called him "one of the notable naval inventors of all time." One of the earliest to understand the revolutionary possibilities of naval aviation, he wrote a number of books of important effect in gaining a wider understanding of the modern Navy by the public. For inventing the rangefinder, he was awarded the Elliott Cresson Medal of The Franklin Institute in 1891.
William Freeland Fullam was an officer in the United States Navy during World War I.
The Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane was a project undertaken during World War I to develop a flying bomb, or pilotless aircraft capable of carrying explosives to its target. It is considered by some to be a precursor of the cruise missile.
Clark Blanchard Millikan was a distinguished professor of aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and a founding member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Admiral Samuel Murray Robinson was a United States Navy four-star admiral who directed Navy procurement during World War II.
Rear Admiral William Nelson Little was a United States naval officer who was court martialed in 1915 on charges of negligence during his inspection of the submarine USS K-2. This was one of the few times that a retired military person was court martialed. He was not convicted, but Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels censured him for leaving the Navy no legal recourse against the Electric Boat Company for having supplied defective submarine batteries.
Andrew Murray Hunt was an American electrical and mechanical engineer who served on the Naval Consulting Board during the First World War and was president of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1921 and 1922. His obituary in The New York Times describes him as "nationally eminent".
Lawrence Addicks was president of the Electrochemical Society from 1915 to 1916. He was a member of the Naval Consulting Board during World War I starting in 1915.
Alfred Brooks Fry, was a marine, mechanical and civil engineer. He was head of the New York Naval Militia and served on active duty during the Spanish–American War and World War I. He was chief engineer of the United States Post Office., supervising engineer for the Port of New York. and chief superintendent of United States public buildings in New York City.
The Oregon Naval Militia is the unorganized naval militia of the state of Oregon. As a naval militia, the Oregon Naval Militia was a reserve unit organized as a naval parallel to the Oregon National Guard.
Submarine signals had a specific, even proprietary, meaning in the early 20th century. It applied to a navigation aid system developed, patented and produced by the Submarine Signal Company of Boston. The company produced submarine acoustic signals, first bells and receivers then transducers, as aids to navigation. The signals were fixed, associated with lights and other fixed aids, or installed aboard ships enabling warning of fixed hazards or signaling between ships. ATLAS-Werke, at the time Norddeutsche Maschinen und Armaturenfabrik, of Germany also manufactured the equipment under license largely for the European market.
