As the story goes, President Harry Truman, an inveterate early riser, announced
that he had signed the National Science Foundation Act of 
at six in the morning of May , , from the back of a train in Pocatello,
Idaho. This seemingly inauspicious event occurring far from Washington established
NSF as an independent agency of the federal government, the first
and only agency with the mandate to support basic research in all of the disciplines
of science. The impetus for the legislation was the very productive
partnership between the United States government and the scientific community
begun during World War II. It is interesting to note that NSF’s first
operating budget was $. million