Which U.S. president appointed Thomas Edison to lead the Naval Consulting Board in 1915?

President Woodrow Wilson appointed Thomas Edison to lead the Naval Consulting Board in 1915.

The board was created during World War I to encourage inventors and scientists to suggest technologies that could help the United States Navy. Edison served as its chairman and encouraged practical research rather than purely theoretical proposals.

The appointment reflected Edison’s national reputation as an industrial inventor. Although he was not a naval officer, his experience organizing laboratories and evaluating inventions made him a prominent choice to coordinate civilian technical advice. The board received many suggestions, with varying levels of usefulness.

This work is sometimes confused with Edison’s later military involvement during World War I. His leadership of the Naval Consulting Board began under Wilson in 1915, before the United States entered the war in 1917. It was an advisory scientific role, not command of a naval unit.