Naval Consulting Board

[2] Daniels created the Board with membership drawn from eleven engineering and scientific organizations two years before the United States entered World War I to provide the country with the "machinery and facilities for utilizing the natural inventive genius of Americans to meet the new conditions of warfare.

In a statement issued in the New York Times on September 13, 1915, Josephus Daniels, the Secretary of the Navy asked Thomas Edison to be president of an advisory board.

"[6] There were 24 original members, including the following:[6][7] Later, the physicists Arthur Compton, Robert Andrews Millikan and Lee De Forest, inventor of the radio tube and William Lawrence Saunders later replaced Edison as chairman.

During World War I, the board was responsible for approving camouflage schemes for civilian ships, including one invented by William MacKay.

[8][9][10] On May 11, 1917 the United States Secretary of the Navy created a Special Board on Antisubmarine Detection "for the purpose of procuring either through original research, experiment and manufacture, or through development of ideas and devices submitted by inventors at large, suitable apparatus for both offensive and defensive operations against submarines".