Naval Consulting Board

The Naval Consulting Board, also known as the Naval Advisory Board (a name used in the 1880s for two previous committees), was a US Navy organization established in 1915 by Josephus Daniels, the Secretary of the Navy at the suggestion of Thomas Alva Edison. Daniels created the Board during World War I, but two years before the U.S. entered the war, to provide "machinery and facilities for utilizing the natural inventive genius of Americans to meet the new conditions of warfare." Daniels was worried that the U.S. was unprepared for the new conditions of warfare and that they needed access to the newest technology.

Thomas Edison gave a speech in which he proposed a group of scientists should be involved with the World War I effort.

Josephus Daniels, the Secretary of the Navy asked Thomas Edison to be president of the board.

William Lawrence Saunders later replaced Edison.

There were 24 original members, including Elmer Sperry, Peter Cooper Hewitt, Hudson Maxim, Matthew Bacon Sellers II, Howard E. Coffin, Andrew J. Riker, Thomas Robins, Willis Rodney Whitney, Leo Baekeland, Frank Julian Sprague, Benjamin Garver Lamme, Robert Simpson Woodward, Arthur Gordon Webster, Andrew Murray Hunt, Alfred Wingate Craven, William Lawrence Saunders, Benjamin Bowditch Thayer, Joseph William Richards, Lawrence Addicks, William Le Roy Emmet, Spencer Miller, and Henry Alexander Wise Wood.

...
Wikipedia