What's a "technical report" ?

A technical report is "an important means of... recording... the activities and the results of progress and research in... science and technology.

"Where once reports were simply the reporting of government-sponsored research, they are now used as a means of communicating information for technical development throughout the world."

[Report Series Codes Dictionary, 3rd edition, 1986]

MILITARY

DTIC (Defense Technical Information Center)

• DTIC's publicly available collection of military reports and documents, going all the way back to the beginning of the 1900's, is available through Science.gov

NASA

NASA Technical Reports Server [1915+] -- This is a continually growing collection of information about NASA's current and historical research and engineering. It contains:

• NACA [National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics] information covers 1915-1958
   
• NASA information covers 1958 to the present
   
• NIX collection includes images, photos, movies, and videos downloaded from the NASA Image eXchange

For reports from the Jet Propulsion Lab, the best thing to do (after exhausting all other options) is to contact the library directly at library@jpl.nasa.gov.

HISTORY OF NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY

Los Alamos Technical Reports site -- In 2002, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) terminated public access to thousands of unclassified reports about nuclear science and technology.

Fortunately, almost all of the withdrawn reports were acquired and preserved so that the public has access to them.