/ J MEASURES FOR ' PROGRESS A HISTORY OF THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE k>- \' ^ I / II [ 'I //] f .?5 5!:::iv ^ J If ■i.^^r' ^l&^J ^M^: ^X <'j. ^^ .. r^m- l^iv n'¥ .9 V4 j0 ;^r»*" n* ^r "Vt; iir ^ "^ nr •4.D Jj^ ''-*«t-J»«^* '>^'«.;; ■^s^ - ^ *^i "^W C /^. /o ^ ^7^ C/:5. /^/^7^ MEASURES FOR PROGRESS A HISTOR Y OF THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS REXMOND C. COCHRANE Editorial consultant — James R. Newman ""fAU of 1966 NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress for the illustrations on pages 4, 10, and 113, the latter from the Herbert French collection: to the National Archives for those on pages 22, 40 (Public Buildings Service collection), and 230 (Bureau of Reclamation collection); to the Coast and Geodetic Survey for those on pages 25, 56, 516; to the Smithsonian Institution for those on pages 6 (Transportation Section) and 205 (National Air Museum collec- tion ) ; to the National Geographic Society for the copyright photograph used as the front end paper and that on page 481; to the Archives Library of M.I.T. for the portraits on page 652; to the Baltimore Sunpapers for the illustration on page 85; to Harris & Ewing for that on page 292; and to Charles B. Kipps of NBS for that on page 168. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 65-62472 FOREWORD If men are to accomplish together anything useful whatever they must, above all, be able to understand one another. That is the basic reason for a National Bureau of Standards. True, men may get together themselves and agree on terms and defini- tions. Those who make screws may, for example, agree to avoid confusion by manufacturing a common range of sizes and thread numbers. But in broad areas the only possible way of securing agreement is by authoritative action by an agency of the Federal Government. The early history of the confusion in this country demonstrates this clearly. There is also a genuine difference between the setting of fundamental standards and the practice of standardization as conducted in industry. The former has to do with definitions, with specifying clearly and exactly what technical words mean, in a fundamental and scientific sense. The latter may be concerned with commercial definitions, but it is primarily involved with the task of agreeing on limiting ranges of sizes and forms which shall be manufactured in large numbers. The former may sometimes go too fast, but it can never go too far. As applied science ramifies there are always new terms appearing, where am- biguity or inaccuracy can hold up progress, where undue delay in forming exact specifications can slow down accomplishment. Yet too much speed can sometimes pin matters down in ways that are later found to be clumsy or expensive. It requires good judgment, and this can be applied only when there is sound comprehension not only of the science involved, but also of the ways in which it is being applied, and, more subtly, of the ways in which it is likely to be applied in the future. Sound fixing of standards can hardly occur in an ivory tower. The latter can indeed go too far. The subject does not need treatment here. We have all witnessed commercial situations in which premature freezing of performance has throttled progress. Now there is a popular fallacy about this business of setting standards. It is the belief that it is inherently a dull business. One of the reasons that I am glad to see the present history appear is that I believe it will help to dissipate th 5 misunderstanding. Properly conceived the setting of stand- ards can be, lot only a challenging task, but an exciting one. Ill IV FOREWORD There are many examples of this as the history is traced. Let me mention just one. How long is a second? Certainly we ought to know that. Do we just take the time for the earth to revolve on its axis, and divide this by 86,400? The earth does not turn uniformly. Shall we use the time for the earth to complete a path around the sun? This depends, to a slight degree, on what other planets are doing in the meantime. How about the time for light to travel a measured distance? This would be in a vacuum no doubt, and the technique is difficult. There is even a possibility of becoming involved with questions of special relativity. Shall we use the time necessary for some specified atom to emit a certain number of vibrations? Now we are on sounder ground, but not entirely out of the woods. We have to be sure we have the right atom, and that we can count correctly. I am not of course attempting in this example to really explore this problem. I merely wish to indicate how deep an apparently simple question can lead. Should an agency that is committed to the duty of setting standards also do research? I believe the answer is clear. Those who would set scientific standards wisely cannot limit themselves to working with science, they needs must work in science. Only those who are practicing scientists can grasp clearly where need for definition lies, and what constitutes useful definition. The National Bureau of Standards has had a good history of accomplish- ment, and has contributed much to the scientific and technical progress of this country, to its security and well being. It is well that the story should be told. I assure you that the story will not be dull. s o\ s t^ *M »— i -e u ^C 1^ ^ •S "S o c o .2 ~e B g fe; ^ u ■*2 ^ •Sf •S £ S ,to £ « <» 1^ o e to S «S c "e o o *^ tc k. ^ 1^ ^ tt?^ o *^-. O o S e £ f*^ » B K •S s '.§) 1^ o O I- t-H « w ^ "e e o lO tJs ^ M - -c u c o § 3 S c IS e c S r':s Qi SAMUEL WESLEY STRATTON 51 fessor of physics and electrical engineering, another subject he acquired on his own. In 1892 the University of Chicago opened its doors, startling the aca- demic world by paying its head professors "the princely salaries, for those days, of $7,000 each." ^ At the invitation of the renowned experimental physicist, Albert A. Michelson, then organizing his department at Chicago, Stratton came as assistant professor of physics, his salary of $2,000 as great a persuasion as the opportunity to work with Michelson. Although Stratton, in addition to his teaching, worked on numerous experiments with Michelson or at his direction, and was promoted to associate professor in 1895 and to full professor in 1900, the association was not a happy one. According to Robert A. Millikan, who came to the university in 1896 as a $900 instructor in physics, Michelson was an intense individualist and did not like cooperative ventures in the laboratory. His absorption in his scientific work made him wholly indifferent to people in general and almost impossible to work with. As he once told Millikan, he wanted only a hired assistant who would do just as he was told, not expect any credit for himself, or make any demands other than to ask for his pay check. For Stratton who was outgoing, accessible, and without a trace of affectation, it must have been difi&cult, and as director of the National Bureau of Standards he was never to forget the Chicago lesson.* How much of Stratton's work at Chicago came out in the stream of papers Michelson published is impossible to say, but at least two bore both their names, one on a new form of harmonic analyzer, a device for high- precision measurement of electrical frequencies, the other a note on the sources of X rays.^ Millikan, a supreme egoist himself, was to say that he — never collaborated with Professor Michelson in any of his re- searches as both of my predecessors. Professors Wadsworth and Stratton, had done with somewhat unfortunate results in both cases. He never used me as an assistant, as he did some of the younger members of the staff. When Professor Stratton left about 1900 to assume directorship of the Bureau of Standards he warned me that my "turn would come next," meaning, of course, that friction would develop.'' ° The Autobiography of Robert A. Millikan, p. 224. ' Ibid., pp. 87-88; s.v., S. C. Prescott, "Stratton," DAB. ^Michelson and Stratton, "Harmonic analyzer," Am. J. Sci., 5, 1-12 (1898); "Source of X-rays," Science, 3, 694-696 (1896) . Stratton's principal research efforts in Michelson's laboratory were in interferometry, he said later, "the field of measurement in which I am personally interested and in which I was engaged when called to take charge of the bureau" (Hearings * * * 1923, Nov. 16, 1922, p. 191). * Millikan, Autobiography, p. 86. I 52 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) Commissioned in the Illinois naval militia unit that Michelson or- ganized in 1895, Stratton first left the University of Chicago in the spring of 1898 to serve as a Navy lieutenant in the Spanish- American War. He re- turned to the University that fall. Soon after, Arthur E. Kennelly, the Harvard dean of electrical engineering, said in his memoir of Stratton, he was asked to go to Washington to invite Admiral Dewey and Secretary Gage of the Treasury to give addresses at Chicago, and on that occasion fell into a discussion with Gage about weights and measures and the scientific work being done on them in the national laboratories abroad.'' Lyman Gage therefore knew Stratton when the Assistant Secretary, Frank Vanderlip, in the summer of 1899 brought up his name as the man to take charge of the falter- ing Office of Weights and Measures, and invited him to Washington. As Stratton recalled it: While on a visit to Washington in 1899, the Secretary of the Treasury asked me to accept a position as head of the Office of Weights and Measures in the Coast and Geodetic Survey, which was declined. However, I pointed out to the Secretary, the As- sistant Secretary, and the Superintendent of the Coast Survey the necessity for a government bureau having to do with standards and methods of measurement in the broad sense, and at the request of the Secretary of the Treasury drew up a plan for the establishment of such an institution. I agreed to devote a year's vacation [sabbatical], upon which I was just entering, to the preliminary steps for the establishment of the institution, the first of which was the securing of the necessary legislation.^ In later years both Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, superintendent of the Coast Survey, and Frank A. Vanderlip, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, claimed credit for bringing Stratton to Washington. Pritchett said that shortly after coming to the Coast Survey in 1897 he had — asked Congress to appropriate a salary sufficiently large to induce a physicist of high standing to take charge of the office, under direc- tion of the superintendent. An appropriation of $3,000 was made. With this sum some difficulty was found in inducing any physicist of standing and reputation to accept the place, and only after many interviews and considerable correspondence I succeeded in persuad- ' Natl. Acad. Sci., Biographical Memoirs, XVII, 254 (1935) . See also personal letter, L. J. Briggs to Prof. E. Merritt, Cornell University, Oct. 31, 1933 (NBS Box 359, IG.). "Letter, S. W. Stratton (hereafter SWS) to R. S. Woodward, president, NAS, Feb. 10, 1914 (Stratton Papers at MIT, Box 12; copy in NBS Historical File). SAMUEL WESLEY STRATTON 53 ing Professor S. W. Stratton * * * to become a candidate. The ap- pointment to the position was made after competitive examination." With this account Stratton agreed, in part at least : When I first came to Washington and met the Superintendent of the Survey, he asked me to join his force temporarily and make a re- port as to what could be done to place the weights and measures work upon the basis necessary in the present day of precision measurement of all kinds. Although he at first declined the offer, Stratton said that on the train back to Chicago he made notes for a plan to revitalize the weights and measures work at the Coast Survey. Persuaded by his note-making, he gave up his planned trip to Europe and agreed to work in Washington during his sab- batical year. In October 1899 he was formally appointed Inspector of Standard Weights and Measures and began preparation, says Stratton, of — two reports, one based upon the enlargement of that work [in the Survey office] to the extent possible in its present quarters, and dealing solely with weights and measures * * *. The other sug- gested the establishment of an institution having weights and meas- ures functions in the broadest sense, covering measurements in the various lines of physics, the properties of materials and physical constants, etc. * * *. It was the Superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, Doctor Pritchett, who saw that the second plan was the preferable one. He recommended it to the Treasury Department, and the Secretary of the Treasury directed that a bill be drawn looking toward the estab- lishment of such an institution.'" "Pritchett, "The story of the establishment of the NBS," Science, 15, 281 (1902). This account also appears in letter, Pritchett to Dr. Wolff, Nov. 16, 1926 (NBS Blue Folder Box 4, APW-301c), and Abraham Flexner, Henry S. Pritchett: A Biography (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943). '" Stratton, "The Bureau of Standards and its relation to the U.S. C. & G.S." Centennial Celebration of the U.S. C. & G.S., April 5-6 1916 (Washington, D.C., 1916) , p. 34. Strat- ton's reports, both dated Dec. 15, 1899, are in NBS Box 22, PRA. See also Science, 10, 941 (1899). Stratton's civil service appointment as "Inspector of Standards" is dated Dec. 12, 1899 (Stratton Papers, Box 12). Another who took the examination for Inspector of Standards (in July 1899) was Charles S. Peirce, member of the Coast Survey from 1871-91, who had been in charge of weights and measures in 1884—85 and was then in his 60th year. Although strongly endorsed by Henry Cabot Lodge and others, Peirce was not considered, and later protested to Pritchett at the outcome of the inspectorship (communications from Dr. Max H. Fisch, University of Illinois, Sept. 13, 1962 and Mar. 23, 1965, at work on a biography of Peirce) . 54 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) In his autobiography, written more than 30 years later, Frank Vander- lip recalled the event: In the Coast and Geodetic Survey there was a little sprout of an organization called the Bureau of Standards [sic]. Previously its function had been chiefly to serve as the depository of the nation's standards of weights and measures; although some other things were done there, the bureau was a puny affair. We wanted a new head for it and I found myself thinking of one who had been a close friend of mine at the University of Illinois, a boy named Sam Stratton. He had become a physicist, and at the University of Chicago Professor Stratton had come to rank next to Michelson, the measurer of light. On my recommendation the place was offered to Sam with the idea that he could develop the bureau into larger purposes. He was a thorough scientist with a great deal of imagination and not narrow in any part of him. It is satisfying even so many years afterward to realize that I had a hand in bring- ing such a valuable servant into the employ of the government. That Bureau of Standards grew to its present vast importance nourished chiefly in its growth by the intelligence of my old col- lege friend." Vanderlip may have called him "Sam," but no one at the Bureau was ever to approach that degree of familiarity. As a full professor, even with- out his doctorate, he had the courtesy title of "Doctor," as was customary then. Later he was awarded six honorary doctorates, the doctor of engi- neering from Illinois and doctor of science from Pittsburgh in 1903, two more doctorates of science from Cambridge in 1908 and Yale in 1918; Harvard in 1923 gave him an LL.D., and Rensselaer in 1924 the Ph. D. At the Bureau he was "Dr. Stratton" to his friends and colleagues, or the "Old Man," among the frivolous youngsters on the staff, behind his back. In appearance, Dr. Stratton at 40 was of medium height, mature, his sturdy frame and resonant voice commanding authority. He was a storehouse of specialized knowledge of industrial materials and mechanical devices of every sort and of the latest technical advances in physics and engineering. He delighted in constructing instruments and apparatus, and until his administrative duties became all consuming, maintained a private shop and laboratory near his office. Dr. Stratton never married, and he had as strong opinions about women in authority at the Bureau as in his home.'^ "Frank A. Vanderlip, with Boyden Sparkes, From Farm Boy to Financier (New York: n. Appleton-Century, 1935), p. 77. ^ He would not even accept women as clerks and secretaries at the Bureau until forced by the manpower shortage of World War I. SAMUEL WESLEY STRATTON 55 For over 20 years Samuel Stratton dominated the National Bureau of Standards, shaping it to serve the Nation and to hold its own or even surpass the national standards laboratories abroad. Like all good administrators, he recognized potential ability in young scientists he met or who applied to him. And as Kennelly says, he knew how "to organize them into cooperative effort for the purposes of applied science, without any consideration of his own personal advantage. His mind was dominated by the ideals of im- proving all engineering enterprise through scientific study and research." While it is true, as Kennelly implies, that his interest in technology was strong, Stratton knew that the Bureau must establish a solid basic research program and keep it at a high level if the Bureau was to fulfill its promise. Fundamental research was often difficult to justify to a cost-conscious Congress, but as he told a House committee in 1902, "If we are to advance we have to create original things." ^^ More often than not he got his funds for basic research. Stratton's office was to have its share of bureaucratic troubles, within the organization itself, with other government agencies, with members of the public, and with politicians. When differences arose. Dr. Stratton could be stern with the members of his staff — his flaming temper was famous — but he would defend them with all his might against the slightest interference or criticism that he believed unjustified. By its very nature, as impartial ruler and arbiter of standards, the Bureau could not escape controversy, but Strat- ton spoke with facts and a firm voice that kept controversy within bounds. He never allowed anyone to forget that the Bureau's mission was to serve science and industry in the Nation, and he himself became filled with concern when a commercial chemist wrote of his difficulties with a product, an engineer with his materials, or an enquiring citizen sought technical help or information. He would scrawl in the margin of their letters: "Can't we do something about this?" "Why can't we do this?" "This deserves answering." But he was impatient with armchair inventors who thought the Bureau ought to construct working models for them from vague de- scriptions of vague ideas. Incoming mail at the Bureau, particularly in 1918, was freighted with suggested weapons and materials for winning the war, many of them, as Stratton said of a flux of letters proposing new alloys, "products which, although found excellent enough, are not in any way unusual, except in the secrecy about the composition which is observed by the inventor." '^ And he could be withering when a colleague was vilified for trying to let a crank down gently : "It is perfectly evident that you are more "Hearings * * * 1904 (Dec. 4, 1902) , p. 70. '■'Letter, SWS to Dir, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Jan. 21, 1918 (NBS Box 11, IM). 786-167 O — 66 — ^6 56 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) .'^^^i^.ttfsgK^Bar'''vwsKfamifeKSfiififisasK9St.:i,.^^^^^ The Coast and Geodetic Survey building, home of the Office of Weights and Measures, in the 200 block of New Jersey Avenue, S.E., as Dr. Straiten saw it in 1900. The Butler building, into which the new Bureau of Standards expanded, is probably the structure next door. "Bushey House," at 235 New Jersey Avenue, is out of the picture, down the street. interested in giving information about a subject which, judging from your correspondence, you know little or nothing about, than you are in securing such information." '^ But that was years later. When in the summer of 1899 Stratton arrived at the Office of Standard Weights and Measures, in the Coast and Geodetic Survey building at New Jersey Avenue and B Street, S.E., where the present House Office Building stands, its staff consisted of Andrew Braid, officially Assistant-in-Charge; Louis A. Fischer, adjuster of weights and measures; Dr. Frank A. Wolff, Jr., verifier of weights and measures (but then spending most of his time on problems of electrical measurement), and four others, a mechanician, an adjuster's helper, a messenger, and a watchman. On October 28, 1899, Stratton replaced Braid, with the temporary title of Inspector of Standards, at $3,000 per year. Less than an hour was sufficient to tour the Office, see all its equip- ment, and comprehend its work. In Mr. Fischer's section "most of the ap- paratus * * * on hand [had been] designed many years ago." There was no "suitable instrument for the comparison of standards of length of "Letter, SWS, Dec. 27, 1920 (NBS Box 14, IPR). 57 Mr. Louis A. Fischer, veri- fier of weights and meas- ures, who came to the office in the Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1880 at the age of 16, when there were still men there who had worked with Hassler. This pic- ture may have been taken shortly after the Bureau was founded, but no later than 1910, the year Mr. Fischer began his weights and measures crusade across the Nation. Dr. Frank A. Wolff, Jr., who was able to certify standards of electromo- tive force but continued to send his other electri- cal measuring equipment to England and Germany for verification at the time this portrait was made. 58 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) 1 metre or less," nor was the Office "prepared to make comparison of ther- mometers at temperatures lower than zero or higher than 50 degrees Centi- grade." ^*"' Nevertheless, Fischer that year was to verify a number of thermometers, flasks, weights, and polariscopic apparatus used by the customs service in levying duties on imported sugar, adjust and verify the set of standards used in the State of Maine, and work on three sets of standards for States not yet supplied. He also prepared a set of metric standards for Puerto Rico, and graduated and verified 100-foot and 30-meter bench stand- ards for the city surveyor of Boston, to be used in reverifying tapes and chains submitted to him.^" In the intervals free from pressing routine work. Dr. Wolff had set up a number of Clark standard cells for measuring standards of electro- motive force and verifying direct-current voltmeters and millivoltmeters, had acquired equipment for testing resistance standards, and was at work on alternating-current testing apparatus, preparatory to answering some of the problems recently raised by long-distance transmission of power. But as Dr. Wolff said, "No claim to originality is made for what has been accom- plished." The Office was still "obliged, as heretofore, to send to the national standardizing laboratories of Germany and England for verification [of] the large class of alternating current measuring instruments, condensers, and photometric standards." ^® On June 30, 1900, the Office reported that in the past year it had com- pared 65 thermometers and 69 surveyors' tapes, had graduated and verified 772 sugar flasks, replied to 75 requests for information, and with routine weights, measures, and balance tests, had answered a total of 1,037 "calls" on it. Its appropriations amounted to $9,410.00, of which $8,237.44 was for salaries and $944.18 for contingent expenses.''' The law establishing the National Bureau of Standards, passed in March 1901, did not become effective until July 1, but within a week of its passage Stratton received his appointment as Director of the new Bureau from President McKinley.-" During the interim 4 months he was to find a site for the new laboratory, plan its equipment, find the additional personnel '" Annual Report, Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1899, p. 49. " Annual Report, Secretary of the Treasury, 1900, p. Ixviii. "* Annual Report, Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1900, p. 68; Annual Report, Secretary of the Treasury, 1900, p. Ixviii. Also, Wolff, "The facilities afforded by the Office of Standard Weights and Measures for verification of electrical standards and electrical measuring apparatus," Sci. Am. Suppl. 49, 20304 (1900) . '" Annual Report, Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1900, pp. 58-59, 69. Appropriations for 1899 had been |5,690 for salaries and |2,475 for expenses. ^^ The Presidents and executive secretaries under whom Bureau directors have served appear in app. D. SAMUEL WESLEY STRATTON 59 THE EVENING STAR, MONDAY, MARCH 11, 1901 CORRECT MEASURES DIrertvr iltrm«t«a. ■Istanta, to be appointed by the Secretary of the Treafiury: One physicist, at an an- nual salary of t:t..''iiil>: one rlipmlst. at tS.SOO: two assistant physicists or chemlsta, each at an annual salary of £2.2110; one laboratory assistant, at tl.-MIO: one lalwratury assistant, at fl.2riO; one secreiarj-. at I2.: one clerk, at I1.3J": one messenger, at fi'Jf*; one en- FnnotioD of the Bew Boreao of StaDdards. LABOBATOBT TO BE EBECTEB Prof. Stratton, the Director, De- tails Need of Establishment. A HANDICAP REMOVED A new bureau of the Kortnuneat, author- ised br the last Consress. will be established In this city In the near future and will give to be known as the national bureau of standards and Is to l>e under the control of the Treasury Department. A separate build- ing for a laboratory, to cost not to exceed 1230.000, Is to be erected on a site to be pur- chased at a cost of Cr>,000. Mr. Samuel W. Stratton of Chlcaco has been appointed by the President to be chief of the bureau at an annual salary of tS.OOU. Prof. Stratton la to bare the foUowlns as- One of the first newspaper notices of the new Bureau in the Federal Establishment appeared in the Washington Evening Star. A half page feature in the Sunday Wash- ington Times of August 23, 1903, included a picture of Secretary Cortelyou of the Department of Commerce and Labor laying the cornerstone of the main (.South) build- ing the day before, and described the ceremony as "a memorable event in the history of the country." the Bureau would need, visit the more important laboratories here and abroad to see their construction, equipment, and the work they were doing, and set in motion, in the present Office, some of the more important lines of investi- gation to be pursued by the new Bureau. It is not known in what order these tasks were taken up, but it seems probable that Stratton first secured additional laboratory space, in the Butler building, adjacent to the Coast Survey, hired a typist, which the Office had formerly lacked, and set the staff to work planning an expanded program. This included setting up an investigation of photometric measurements; developing means for testing high and low temperature instruments, clinical 60 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) thermometers, and chemical glass measuring apparatus; developing elec- trical apparatus for measuring alternating currents, and equipment for test- ing pressure gauges and meteorological instruments.'^ With his staff busy, Stratton may have begun visiting some of the larger Government laboratories in and near Washington, to see their work and learn what the Bureau might do for them. In April he sailed for Europe, to place orders for apparatus and equipment in Paris and Berlin, and to visit the International Bureau of Weights and Measures at Sevres, the Reichs- anstalt at Charlottenburg, the new National Physical Laboratory being organized at Teddington, and the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge.^^ If the recent establishment of Britain's physical laboratory at Tedding- ton helped prompt the creation of the National Bureau of Standards, the Reichsanstalt as the finest laboratory of its kind in the world was unques- tionably to serve as the model for Stratton's organization of the Bureau. It seems probable that from the beginning Secretary Gage intended the Bureau to be a second Reichsanstalt. Early in 1899 he had corresponded with Henry S. Carhart, professor of physics at the University of Michigan, con- cerning American representation at the electrical congress to be held at the Paris Exposition in 1900. Further correspondence is missing, but it is possible that Gage was instrumental in sending Carhart to Berlin in the fall of 1899, where he secured permission to work at the Reichsanstalt as a scientific guest for several months. While there he "learned rather intimately the methods employed and the results accomplished in this famous institution for the conduct of physical research, the supply of standards, emd the veri- fication of instruments of precision for scientific and technical purposes." - ' Carhart's detailed report on the organization and operation of the German institute, complete with architectural plans of the grounds and floor plans of the laboratories, was probably seen by Gage and Stratton before Carhart presented it as a paper to the American Institute of Electrical Engi- neers on September 26, 1900. It was published later that year in the Trans- actions of the Institute and also in Science magazine, and the next year "' Annual Report, Secretary of the Treasury, 1901, p. 59. "Notice in Science, 13, 515 (1901). In September 1902, Stratton was again in Germany "studying the Reichsanstalt with a view to the buildings to be erected in Washington" (Science, 16, 437, 1902). " Carhart, "The Imperial Physico-Technical Institution in Charlottenburg," Report of the Committee on Commerce, to accompany S. 4680 (1901), p. 6 (L/C:QC100.U58- 1901b). The first description, in English, of this institution appeared in Arthur G. Webster's ar- tide, "A national physical laboratory," The Pedagogical Seminary (Worcester, Mass.), 11, 90-101 (1892). The article, Webster later recalled (Science, 56, 170, 1922), had been refused by a number of scientific periodicals, their editors rejecting his plea for a similar laboratory in this country as an improper function of the Federal Government. SAMUEL WESLEY STRATTON 61 appeared as an appendix to a congressional report of the Committee on Com- merce, in the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1901, in the Western Electrician, and, for a seventh time, in the London Electrical Review. There seems little doubt that the report was regarded as a blueprint. With modifications, the Bureau was to organize its work, like the Reichsanstalt, in two spheres, scientific and technical, including "a division for pure scientific research, mechanical measurements of precision, electrical measurements and instruments, the measurement of large direct and alter- nating currents and electromotive forces, an optical department, a department of thermometry, a department of pyrometry, and a department of chemistry. To these as auxiliaries should be added the power plant and the workshop." '^ Their re-creation in Washington was only a matter of time. On his return from abroad, Stratton met with Lyman Gage to recom- mend members for the Secretary's Visiting Committee, a liaison group composed of prominent men of science and industry who were to keep Gage informed of such national interests as were within the Bureau's domain, and report annually to the Secretary on the work of the Bureau. Thoughtfully, Stratton suggested his former superior at Chicago, Professor Michelson, for membership on the Committee. Although Michelson was greatly interested in standards, had worked at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures in 1892-93, and served on the International Committee of Weights and Meas- ures since 1897, he declined the invitation.^'^ Letters were then sent by Gage to Albert Ladd Colby, chief metallurgical engineer at Bethlehem Steel and secretary of the Association of American Steel Manufacturers, as repre- sentative of manufacturing interests in the country; to Dr. Elihu Thomson, chief electrical engineer at General Electric, who held almost 500 patents for electrical inventions and improvements, and would represent electrical interests; to Dr. Ira Remsen, professor of chemistry and president of the Johns Hopkins University, representing chemical interests; to Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, now president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, rep- resenting technical education institutions; and to Dr. Edward L. Nichols, professor of physics at Cornell University, as representative of physical interests.^® '*Ibid., p. 7. ^ While at the International Bureau, Michelson with a new interferometer he had de- signed carried out a pioneer study in standards measurement, relating the cadmium red line to the meter, the first significant beginning of a wavelength definition of the meter. * Letter, Gage to Michelson, June 6, 1901, and letters, June 18, 1901 (Correspondence of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1900-1901, V series, vol. 6, NARG 56). A complete list of members of the Visiting Committee to the NBS from 1901 to 1960 appears in app. E. 62 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) Little is known of the Visiting Committee's assistance to Dr. Stratton in the early months of the Bureau except that it met for the first time in the summer of 1901 "to pass on proposed sites for the laboratory." ^^ Stratton had already toured the Washington area looking at possible sites and had tentatively settled on a location out on Connecticut Avenue, almost 31/2 miles from the White House and within 2 miles of Chevy Chase, Md. Just inside the site of the line of forts built to the North to protect the city during the Civil War, the heavily wooded height comprising nearly 8 acres rose more than 75 feet, the highest ground in the vicinity, overlooking Connecticut Avenue. A laboratory up there would be well away from the street noise and inter- ference from the electric cars running out Connecticut Avenue to Chevy Chase. The site, "one of the most beautiful in the District of Columbia," Stratton thought, was for sale, and its owner, the Chevy Chase Land Co., was persuaded to let it go for $25,000, the sum available.^* By July 1, 1901, when with minor ceremonies the old Office of Stand- ard Weights and Measures became the new National Bureau of Standards, two contracts had been let. One was for a mechanical laboratory, to house the power and service plant and shops of the main laboratory, scheduled to be completed by July 1902. The second, for the physical laboratory itself, was to be completed by January 1903. That same day, July 1st, Dr. Edward B. Rosa arrived at the Bureau. EDWARD B. ROSA Dr. Stratton's most pressing need upon his appointment as Director of the Bureau was to find an outstanding man to plan and direct the electrical research that had dominated the arguments for the creation of the Bureau. Demands for routine electrical testing now took all of Dr. Wolff's time, and original research or even planning such research was out of the question. Stratton's attention was drawn to a professor of physics at Wesleyan University who in the past decade had published a dozen papers on electricity. With Prof. Wilbur 0. Atwater, he had recently devised an ingenious respira- tion calorimeter that was to prove highly useful in subsequent pioneer in- vestigations of food values and problems of nutrition in this country.^® His "Notice in Science, 14, 340 (1901); Visiting Committee correspondence, 1902, in "General Correspondence Files of the Director, 1945-55," Box 6 (in process in NBS Records Management Office for NARG 167) (see Bibliographic Note). ^ NBS Annual Report 1905, p. 4; Remarks of SWS at the laying of the cornerstone of the Chemical Laboratory, March 23, 1916 (NBS Historicb! File); Remarks of SWS on the 30th Anniversary of the NBS, March 7, 1931 (Stratton Papers, Box 12). ^^ See Atwater and Rosa, "A new respirator calorimeter * * *," Phys. Rev. 9, 129, 214 (1899), and the special notice of it in William North Rice's article, "Scientific thought in the nineteenth century," Annual Report, Smithsonian Institution, 1899, p. 399. EDWARD B. ROSA 63 Dr. Edward B. Rosa, who set the pace for the high level of re- search at the Bureau in its first two dec- ades. Rosa probably sat for this portrait about 1915, but ac- cording to Dr. Sils- bee, who knew him, it could have been made at almost any time, for Dr. Rosa did not change much in all his years at the Bureau. name was Rosa (pronounced Ro-zay), and meeting him, Stratton knew he was the man he sought. Edward Bennett Rosa (1861-1921), of Dutch ancestry, had taught physics and chemistry after getting his B.S. degree at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and then entered the Johns Hopkins University as a graduate student in physics under Henry A. Rowland. Receiving his doctorate in 1891, he returned to Wesleyan as associate professor of physics, becoming full professor the next year. He came to the Bureau as a physicist at $3,500 and a decade later, his electrical group firmly established as the premier division of the Bureau, he was made chief physicist. Like Stratton, Rosa was of distinguished appearance. He was not as outgoing in temperament as the Director, yet he made a strong impression on scientific and administrative visitors to the Bureau and before long became its stellar ambassador at home and abroad. K Stratton was the autocratic paterfamilias of the Bureau, interested in every laboratory and its occupants and the soure of intense staff loyalties, it was Rosa, the autocrat of research, who set the pace for the high level of achievement in the early years of the Bureau. The names of Stratton and Rosa are inseparable in any considera- tion of the period. It is a tribute to Rosa's character, as those with long memories recall, that his own forceful personality rarely clashed with that of Stratton. The Director fully agreed with Rosa's concept of the importance of the electrical 64 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) work of the Bureau and saw that he had the best of equipment and the best of assistance to conduct his program. Where the Bureau was concerned, they acted as one, and during Stratton's frequent absences on official business, Rosa's decisions were final. A diligent investigator — he published over 75 papers while at the Bureau — Rosa demanded the same industry from his staff. But while their minds were kept firmly on electrical matters, his increasing administrative responsibilities, as well as his peripheral interests and zest for public affairs, drew him repeatedly out of the laboratory. Unlike Stratton, he enjoyed talking to groups of people and gave many lectures, later published, on the work of the Bureau, the progress of electrical research, and the range of scientific work being done in the Government. His most ambitious effort late in his career was an exhaustive study of Government research and its relation to the Federal budget, which was to lead indirectly to the establish- ment of the present Bureau of the Budget. It was said of Dr. Stratton that he was "continually on the lookout for worthy research and testing work, and so the staff always seemed over- l:)urdened." ^° It was equally true of Rosa, who followed closely each new development in the field of electricity, saw research projects everywhere, and brought in a stream of bright young men to investigate them. In its early years the Bureau regularly hired young men who were potential specialists in their fields, only to win them to the ever-increasing range of interests spanned by the Bureau. Before midcentury the advance of science would demand many at the Bureau working at the extremity of specialization. But Dr. Rosa, with wide interests himself, was wary of the possible narrowing influence of high specialization — ^that should be left to the universities, he said — and warned his division of its inevitable conse- quences, that "we grow taller and thinner." ^^ The justification for the Bureau's ranging research was the clause in its enabling act making it responsi- ble for the "solution of problems which arise in connection with standards." Since almost every aspect of science, technology, industry, and commerce is rooted in standards of some kind, all knowledge in these fields was by definition within the Bureau's province. So Stratton, who had written the clause, interpreted it, and under the guidance of Stratton and Rosa, the Bureau acted upon it.^^ ™Fay C. Brown, "Samuel Wesley Stratton," Science, 74, 428 (1931). " W. W. Coblentz, "Edward Bennett Rosa," Natl. Acad. Sci., Biographical Memoirs, xvi; 356 (1934). "' Years later Stratton was to say that he thought an enumeration of the organic functions of the Bureau covered "about 99 percent of the field of research." Only food, drugs, and materia medica were exempt. SWS address on the 25th anniversary of the NBS, 1926 (Stratton Papers). EDWARD B. ROSA 65 Free exercise of the clause, as we shall see, enabled the Bureau to conduct an abundance of original research, some of it only vaguely con- nected with standards. At the same time, it subjected the Bureau to a plethora of investigations for Federal agencies and the public that at times tended more to dissipate its energies than to increase its knowledge. The legacy of accommodation left by Stratton and Rosa created occasional diffi- culties in later years. Periodically, as its investigations became too far ranging, the Bureau found it necessary to stop, reassess its scope and func- tions, and shift course. But it never lost sight of its primary responsibility, and the whole focus of its early research, the pursuit of standards. During the 3^/> years in its temporary quarters in downtown Wash- ington, the Bureau was completely taken up with planning new work on standards, searching for personnel, acquiring or designing new equipment, and overseeing the construction of its new laboratories. In September 1901 Henry D. Hubbard, who had been private secretary to President Harper at the University of Chicago, came as secretary to the Bureau, his desk in Dr. Stratton's office in the Butler building. He was to serve the Bureau for almost four decades.*' That same month Dr. Charles W. Waidner, a young physics instructor trained at Johns Hopkins, who had taught there and at Williams College, arrived to organize the Bureau program in heat and ther- mometry. In the laboratories over in the Coast Survey building, Rosa, Wolff, and their assistants continued to acquire equipment and carried out electrical tests, while Fischer, with his new assistant, Roy Y. Femer, looked after the weights and measures work. Orienting a growing staff and organizing its work permitted little forward motion. One new member was later to say that while he did some testing of instruments, the major part of his time in his first year at the Bureau "was spent in library work. * * * Only the functions of the old Office of Standard Weights and Measures were operating normally." ^^ In December 1901 Dr. Stratton announced in Science, apparently in answer to inquiries, that the range of Bureau services was as yet limited. More exact determination of values for certain of the fundamental electrical con- stants, better photometric measurements, and calibration services such as those requested for clinical thermometers, pressure gages, and many other instruments, while urgently needed, were simply not yet possible. For the time being the work of the Bureau was confined to the comparison of a few standards and measuring instruments, that is, to length, weight, and capacity "'A contribution to scientific literature, Hubbard's modernization of Mendeleev's per- iodic table of the elements, first printed in 1924, is currently published by the Welch Scientific Co. of Skokie, 111. ■" MS, N. Ernest Dorsey, "Some memories of the early days of the NBS," Oct. 28. 1943 (NBS Historical File). 66 a 4) S S "« -a =i s. ■ 2 On C ,^ cq !*< EDWARD B. ROSA 67 Dr. Charles W. Waidner, a decade after he came to the Bureau, who with Dr. Burgess in the heat and thermometry division attempted to construct an absolute standard of light, not to be experimentally realized until 1931, 20 years later. measurements, testing of ordinary commercial thermometers, polariscopic apparatus, hydrometers, resistance instruments, standards of electromotive force, and direct current apparatus.^^ By July 1902 the original staff of 12 had increased to 22, and the 15 offices and laboratories of the Bureau were crammed with crated and un- crated apparatus and machinery. To get elbow room, Stratton rented a four-story house at 235 New Jersey Avenue, not far from the Coast Survey building, converting its space into an instrument shop, dynamo, and storage battery rooms, and additional laboratories. Approximately equivalent only in their antiquity, the high, narrow residence at 235 was promptly christened "Bushey House," after the stately mansion in England that had recently become the home of the National Physical Laboratory. Much of the new apparatus was moved there to be set up and tested, while on the upper floors preliminary studies began in alternating current measurement and in pyrometry.^'^ During the summer of 1902 Wolff and Waidner went abroad to visit the principal government laboratories and instrument makers in Europe, taking with them a number of electrical and pyrometric standards to verify while in Berlin. The next summer Fischer visited Paris with his copies of 'Stratton, "Circular of information on the NBS, No. 1," Science, 14, 1019 (1901). ' MS, Dorsey, "Some memories of the early days" ; NBS Annual Report 1902, pp. 4-5. 68 ' FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) the international meter and kilogram, but like Wolflf and Waidner he spent most of his time in Germany, securing new instruments and apparatus and ordering equipment for the laboratories under construction at home. In Washington a change of departmental administration was in the making that was to have important consequences for the development of the Bureau. THE NEW BUREAU LABORATORIES Dr. Stratton and his staff were still in downtown Washington when the Bureau was transferred from its original home in the Treasury Depart- ment to the newly created Department of Commerce and Labor. For more than a hundred years the head of the Treasury had been in fact "secretary of commerce and finance," but with increasing fiscal responsibilities and the growth of agencies required by the commercial expansion of the Nation, his Department had become unwieldy. In December 1901 a bill was intro- duced in the Senate to transfer some of his functions to a separate Department of Commerce. The Commissioner of Labor (first appointed in 1888) was seeking cabinet rank at the time, but loath to expand the President's Cabinet by two. Congress compromised by merging a number of bureaus in the Departments of the Treasury and Interior with those in the OflBce of the Commissioner of Labor. On February 14, 1903, the new Department of Commerce and Labor came into being, its Secretary, George B. Cortelyou." With 13 subdivisions, the new Department was at once one of the largest and most complicated branches in the Federal Government. Curi- ously enough, the transfer of the Bureau of Standards to Commerce and Labor was an llth-hour decision. Like the Coast and Geodetic Survey, whose transfer had occasioned some discussion before it was included in the new Department, the Bureau was apparently considered by Congress to be a purely scientific agency, with only a remote relation to commerce. A member of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Com- merce, aware late in the proceedings that the Bureau was likely to be left out, rose to urge its transfer : "The newly created National Bureau of Stand- ards is a bureau which necessarily goes into a department primarily devoted to manufacturing and commercial interests. This Bureau is destined to " Organization and Law of the Department of Commerce and Labor, Doc. No. 13 (Washington, D.C., 1904) , pp. 7, 12, 450. A genius of managerial efficiency, Cortelyou had been stenographer to Cleveland, assistant secretary to McKinley, and secretary to Roosevelt before his appointment to the nev^ Department. Two years later he was appointed Postmaster General, and in 1907 became -Secretary of the Treasury. In 1909 he left Government service to head the Consolidated Gas Co. in New York. THE NEW BUREAU LABORATORIES " 69 exercise great influence upon the development of business and commerce of our country." Commerce and Labor was already outsize, but the Bureau was voted in.^* Had it remained in the Treasury, the Bureau might well have become a giant in precision measurement alone, its research almost certainly more narrowly confined to the functions of its enabling act. But under a succes- sion of strong Secretaries of Commerce, vigorously promoting business and industry, the Bureau was to be used unsparingly to introduce scientific methods more rapidly in industry, to urge the standardization of parts and products, and the use of new and improved materials, and even do the spade- work to encourage the manufacture of products previously imported. The wonder is that the Bureau accomplished as much basic research as it did in the years that followed. Except for the change of name to "Bureau of Standards," omitting the word "National," the transfer to the new Department was without inci- dent. Relations between the new Secretary and "Prof. S. W. Stratton," as Cortelyou addressed him in correspondence, were cordial, and Cortelyou will- ingly approved a Bureau request for an increase in its staff from 28, authorized by a previous appropriation act, to 58, authorized on February 25, 1903.^'' Finding room for the growing staff in the downtown quarters of the Bureau was another thing. Construction of both buildings out on Connecti- cut Avenue was behind schedule. The smaller mechanical laboratory, well under way, was now promised for September of 1903, but work on the main building, the physical laboratory, had just begun that March. It would not be ready for occupancy before October 1904, almost 2 years later than originally planned. Some of the delay was understandable, for the site was distant and transportation of materials was slow. The teams of horses under their heavy loads had to rest frequently on the long grade uptown and more often still as they struggled up the steep of Pierce Mill Road, the dirt track through the woods to the top of the hill. Four- and eight-horse teams were fre- quently needed to haul building materials up the height, and it is possible that some of the big equipment for the mechanical building may even have required a 16-horse hitch. The Bureau site was, for that time, truly remote. In the 2^2 mile stretch of Connecticut Avenue between Cleveland Park, then a sparse resi- dential section to the north of the business center of Washington, and Chevy ^ James R. Mann (111.), Chairman of the Committee, Jan. 30, 1902, quoted in Orga- nization and Law of the Department of Commerce and Labor, pp. 529, 539. Ibid., pp. 415-417, 417n. Graphs and charts of congressional appropriations and other working funds of the Bureau, of special appropriations, of the rise in the Bureau staff, and its output of publications appear in apps. F, G, H, and L 70 The remoteness of the Bureau made it necessary to send vest-pocket transit maps to earl) visitors to show them the way out. When they arrived they were to look for the board- walk that led up the hill to the Bureau grounds, since the first buildings were invisible from Connecticut Avenue. THE NEW BUREAU LABORATORIES 71 Chase, the small Maryland community on the border of the District of Colum- bia, there were but two buildings, occupied by a preparatory school. The Bureau up on the hill was invisible from the avenue, and these lone school buildings, just north of what is now Upton Street, served to show staffers and strangers alike on the way to the laboratories where to leave the electric cars.*" The mechanical building was above ground but excavation for the physical laboratory had not begun when Dr. Rosa, with the architect's plans before him, described for Science magazine the Bureau plant as it would appear when completed. Both buildings were to be constructed of dark red brick with Indiana limestone trim, the smaller mechanical laboratory two stories tall but with its basement at ground level on the north slope of the hill. The physical laboratory, four stories tall, would be supported solidly on concrete piers in a largely unexcavated basement. Since the principal experimental work of the Bureau was to be car- ried on in the physical laboratory, later called South building, it had to be free from mechanical and magnetic disturbances and therefore housed scarcely any machinery. All heavy equipment was located in the mechani- cal laboratory or North building, its basement and partial sub-basement con- taining the boiler room, engine and dynamo room, storage battery room, and a refrigeration plant with a capacity equivalent to melting 30 tons of ice a day, phenomenal for that time. Through a spacious tunnel 170 feet long leading out of North building's sub-basement, a maze of air ducts, steam, gas, and water pipes, and electrical circuits supplied the major facilities of the laboratories in South building. On the first floor of North building were the heavy current and alter- nating-current instrument testing laboratories, the instrument shop, and stock and shipping rooms. High potential laboratories and magnetic and photo- metric laboratories occupied the second floor, with a proposed hydraulic laboratory on that floor extending through the ceiling into the attic. Another photometric laboratory and storage rooms occupied the other half of the attic. With its heating and ventilating plants, machinery, and special facili- ties, North building was to cost $125,000. Additional laboratory space was created in 1931 when the roof was raised and a third story added to the building.^^ In the huge physical building, facing south overlooking the city of Washington, all the laboratories were to be provided with gas, compressed air, vacuum, hot and cold water, ice water, and distilled water. All windows '" MS, Dorsey, "Some memories of the early days." " Ostensibly added to make North building conform architecturally with the other build- ings in the quadrangle. NBS Annual Report 1928, p. 42. 786-167 O— 6€ 72 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) in the first and second floor laboratories were double-paned and sealed tight, and each room could be darkened completely. Filtered air, artificially cooled in summer, circulated in the building, and each laboratory was equipped with controls to regulate room temperature and humidity .precisely. Special fa- cilities available in certain of the laboratories included cold brine, carbon dioxide, and liquid air for low temperature work; gas and electric furnaces for high temperature studies; direct electric currents at potentials up to 20,000 volts and currents up to 20,000 amperes. Weights and measures, optical research, high and low temperature laboratories, and electrical standards laboratories occupied the ground floor. On the second floor were additional weights, measures, and optical laboratories, the inductance and capacity laboratories, and electrical measure- ments rooms. The director's office, a reception room, the library, a publica- tion and mailing room, and Dr. Stratton's private laboratory occupied the third floor, and on the fourth were to be the thermometer laboratories. A large lecture room (subsequently diverted to storage) and apparatus space utilized the attic. With its connecting tunnel, but exclusive of equipment. South building cost $200,000. In this initial complex, based on Bureau specifications and designed by the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department, said Rosa, the Bureau intended "an intimate association between research and testing in the domain of physics, extending into the field of chemistry on the one hand, of engineering on the other." *~ The program of work then planned by no means utilized all the labora- tories provided in the two buildings. But Congress had said that the build- ing appropriations must cover the first 5 years of the Bureau, and it took little imagination to see that as its resources and range of skills were recog- nized, the demands on the Bureau would increase. Even then Stratton and Rosa foresaw the necessity of East and West buildings, to complete the quadrangle, although their purpose, except to provide additional laboratory space, was not yet plain. Startlingly plain, once spotted, however, was something entirely omit- ted in the original architectural plans of the two buildings. There was no place to eat. The "thermometer and photometric standards laboratories" on the fourth floor of South building had to give way to a council lunch room (later the senior lunch room) and a junior lunch room, with a kitchen be- tween. By the time the staff moved in, these were equipped with tables "Rosa, "Plans for the new buildings for the NBS," Science, 17, 129 (1903). For later modifications in the interior planning and details of facilities and equipment, all more or less minor, see Stratton and Rosa, "The National Bureau of Standards," Proc. AIEE, 24, 1039 (1905). ACQUIRING NATIONAL STANDARDS 73 made in the Bureau workshop and furnished with chairs, dishes, and kitchen equipment carted out from the city. Discussions about providing a more expensive lunch for the seniors and a less expensive one for the juniors found- ered on the single kitchen they shared, and the staff was not yet large enough to afford a cafeteria, ft became the great insoluble problem of the first decade.*^ But that problem was not in sight when, during the winter of 1903^, the instrument shop downtown was moved out to the North building and its great dynamos, motor generators, refrigeration plant, storage batteries, gas- making machine, air compressor and other apparatus were installed. In the spring. Dr. Rosa and his group, bringing their lunches with them each day, moved into North building as the remainder of the staff spread out in the vacated rooms downtown. ACQUIRING NATIONAL STANDARDS No one knew better than Dr. Stratton that the Bureau had started trom scratch and that for a long time it w^ould have nothing spectacular or even noteworthy to show for its efforts. The Bureau would have to live on borrowed time, borrowed standards, and borrowed instruments while it acquired the materials and methodology for research. Members of the Bureau visiting abroad had found the standards laboratories of France, Germany, and England openhanded, the instrument-makers of those coun- tries helpful in the extreme, and they came home laden with the best equip- ment and knowledge of standards then available. At the end of its third year the Bureau had achieved a sense of unity and purpose, and sufficient personnel to do something more than make com- parison of a limited number of standards. It was ready, as Rosa said, to "do in its field what the Coast Survey and the Geological Survey and the Department of Agriculture are doing in theirs." ** It had acquired almost $225,000 worth of apparatus and equipment, much of it abroad, some bought from instrument-makers and manufacturers in this country, and not a little constructed in its own shops. Two of the three divisions were well advanced in their organization (see below), although with the limited staff Dr. Stratton not only directed the Bureau but was in personal charge of a division and of one of its sections, while Dr. Rosa in his division also supervised two of its sections. For the first time it was possible to see just what had been ac- " MS, Dorsey, '"Some memories of the early days." " Rosa, "The organization and work of the Bureau of Standards," Science, 19, 937 (1904) . Much of the material of this chapter is based on this article. 74 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) complished, what the Bureau was prepared to do, and what were the im- mediate tasks before it. The Staff of the Bureau of Standards, June 24. 1904 ' Director — Dr. Samuel W. Stratton (University of Illinois, University of Chicago) Division I — Dr. Samuel W. Strafton 1. Weights and measures: Louis A. Fischer (Columbia Univer- sity) Llewelyn G. Hoxton ( University of Virginia) Roy Y. Ferner ( University of Wis- consin) Nathan S. Osborne (Michigan School of Mines) Lloyd L. Smith 2. Heat and thermometry: Dr. Charles W. Waidner (Johns Hop- kins University) Dr. George K. Burgess ( MIT, Univer- sity of Paris) Dr. Hobart C. Dickinson (Williams College, Clark University) 3. Light and optical instruments: Dr. Samuel W. Stratton Dr. Perley G. Nutting (University of California, Cornell University) Dr. Frederick J. Bates (University of Nebraska) 4. Engineering instruments: Albert S. Merrill (MIT) 5. Office: Henry D. Hubbard 6. Instrument shop: Oscar G. Lange Division II {Electricity) — Dr. Edvifard B. Rosa (Wesleyan University) 1. Resistance and Emf: Dr. Frank A. Wolff, Jr. (Johns Hop- kins University) Francis E. Cady-(MIT) Dr. George W. Middlekauf (Johns Hopkins University) 2. Magnetism and absolute measurement of current: Dr. Karl E. Guthe, (Uni- versity of Marburg, University of Mich- igan) 3. Inductance and capacity: Dr. Edward B. Rosa Dr. N. Ernest Dorsey (Johns Hopkins University) Frederick W. Grover (MIT, Wesleyan University) 4. Electrical measuring instruments: Dr. Edward B. Rosa Dr. Morton G. Lloyd ( University of Pennsylvania) Herbert B. Brooks (Ohio State Uni- versity) C. E. Reid (Purdue University) Franklin S. Durston (Wesleyan Uni- versity ) 5. Photometry: Edward P. Hyde (Johns Hopkins University) 6. Engineering plant: Charles E. Sponsler (Pennsylvania State College) 'Source: Science, 19, 937 (1904). Details of the education and experience of the original Bureau staff and a resume of current activities appear in Report of the Dir, NBS, to the Visiting Committee, June 12, 1903 ("Gen Corresp Files of the Director, 1945-1955," Box 6). Charts of the organization of the Bureau and its supervising personnel, at 5-year inter- vals from 1901 to 1960, appear in app. J. ACQUIRING NATIONAL STANDARDS 75 Division III (Chemistry) —Dt. William A. Noyes (Johns Hopkins University) Dr. Henry N. Stokes (Johns Hopkins University) [Additional personnel included 1 librarian, 1 computer, 1 draftsman, 4 clerks, 2 messen- gers, 1 storekeeper, 4 mechanicians, 2 woodworkers, 3 apprentices, 2 laborers, 1 assistant engineer. 1 electrician, 2 firemen, 2 watchmen, 1 janitor, 1 charwoman — a total of 58 at the Bureau.] But first a word about the hierarchy of standards with which the Bureau was, as it still is, concerned.^' At the apex are the prototype stand- ards, those of length, now defined in terms of the red radiation from krypton 86, and mass, the platinum-iridium kilogram cylinder maintained by the Inter- national Bureau of Weights and Measures at Sevres; and of time and temper- ature, based on the revolution of the earth around the sun and the freezing and boiling points of water (now, the triple point of water) .*" These are the standards which, with certain defining relationships, fix the size of all units in a measuring system and are absolute in the sense that they do not depend on any other standards. National standards are those which fix the prototype or international value on a national basis, as in the instance of the copies of the prototype meter and kilogram maintained at the Bureau; or are derived standards, such as the standards of frequency, volume, or electricity, depending by definition upon natural or material standards of the prototype category.*^ Thus until the establishment of the absolute ohm in 1948, the ohm was defined by an act of Congress of 1894 as "the resistance offered to an unvary- ing electric current by a column of mercury at the temperature of melting ice, 14.4521 grams in mass, of a constant cross-sectional area, and of the length of 106.3 cm." *« ^ The nomenclature for standards of measurement has itself never been entirely stand- ardized. What are called prototype standards are also known as international stand- ards. Primary (now, reference) standards were those either maintained at the PTR or constructed as such by the Bureau and intercompared with the standards abroad. Secondary and working ( now, derived and calibration ) standards were lower orders of primary standards. The hierarchy of standards described here is largely based on A. G. McNish, "Classifica- tion and nomenclature for standards of measurement," IRE Trans. Instru. 1-7, 371 (1958) , and "Measurement standards report," ISA J., February 1961, pp. 1^0. *° As the standard of length, long based, as Stratton knew it, on the international meter bar at Sevres, gave way to the wavelength of krypton 86 light, with superior standards possible in mercury 198 and later sources, so the standard of time, long based on the ephemeris second, is now provisionally based on the resonance frequency of the cesium atoms in the atomic clock. See ch. VIII, pp. 462-463, 477. ^' See flow chart in NBS C531 (1952), p. 2, for the Bureau's experimental establishment of the eletrical units by absolute measurement. ^ For the absolute ohm, see ch. VI, p. 337. 76 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) Since national standards, whether definitions or materials made of precious metal or of delicate construction and necessarily preserved under special conditions, may be impractical, or frequent use may impair their accuracy, the Bureau maintains national reference standards, often of its own construction, the values of which are derived directly from the national standards, but of suitable material or form for more frequent service. Next are the ivorking or calibration standards, those which are ordi- narily used in calibration and which are themselves calibrated in terms of the corresponding reference standards. They are compared as frequently as necessary with the reference standards and sometimes even with the national standards. In most instances it is the Bureau's reference or calibration stand- ards that are the immediate source of industrial and commercial standards and of the precision measurements of science. Against these are calibrated the laboratory reference standards of science and industry. Whether a pre- cision thermometer, a kilowatt hour meter, or a standard of length, weight, or mass, it is brought to the Bureau periodically and carefully calibrated against the Bureau's reference standard. Returned to the factory or plant, the laboratory reference standard then becomes the basis for calibration and adjustment of the laboratory ivorking standards, by which shop instruments and measuring apparatus in daily use by technicians and inspectors are calibrated.*® This sequence of standards is of course meaningless without special comparison equipment — longitudinal and geodetic comparators for length standards, the balances used in comparing masses or weights, the potentiom- eters, bridges, and consoles used in electrical measurements — by means of which all standards of a given type are intercompared in order to determine the order of agreement among them. Differences naturally exist between the nominal value of any standard (except a prototype) and the value it is found to have when compared with a known standard, by reason of differences in their composition or construction, circumstances of measurement, or other ir- reducible factors, but the discrepancy as an observable quantity, can be ad- justed or compensated for, or even within certain limits may be accepted as a permissible tolerance. In the relatively uncomplicated world of 1904, scientifically speaking, American industry had need for stability and accuracy of measurement rather than high precision. Industry had little requirement as yet for work- ing measurements closer than a thousandth of an inch, but to achieve that with a milHng machine, for example, the accuracy of the company master standard had to be on the order of a ten-thousandth of an inch, the Bureau's '' For the operation of laboratory standards, see NBS C578, "Suggested practices for electrical standardizing laboratories" (1956), p. 1. ACQUIRING NATIONAL STANDARDS 77 reference standard a hundred-thousandth of an inch, and its primary stand- ard a millionth of an inch.'^'^ A time would come when industry would have need for that millionth of an inch, and science for the ten-millionth. Con- tinual research looking toward more precise standards, instruments, and tech- niques was to narrow the gap everywhere in the hierarchy of standards. Apart from length and mass and certain electrical units, few standards were inherited by the Bureau from the old Office of Weights and Measures. The major part of the Bureau's activities in its early years was thus spent in establishing the discipline of standards for this country, such as other nations already possessed, and obtaining or making the measuring apparatus and instruments to carry out the calibrations required by science and industry. Besides new measurements of length and mass, there was need for new stand- ards of electrical quantities, standards of heat and temperature, of light and radiant energy, density and pressure, and even new values for the factor of gravity. Only the most immediate of these had been accomplished by 1904. Not all of them were wholly satisfactory as yet but an impressive beginning had been made. In the weights and measures section (see above), soon to become an independent division, as were the heat, optical, and engineering groups, the Bureau had the two platinum-iridium copies of the international meter bar, to which all length measurements, both customary and metric, were reduced. Fischer had taken one of the platinum-iridium bars to Paris the previous year and with new apparatus acquired there recompared it with that at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures at Sevres and found it satisfactory. The Bureau was now prepared to determine any standard of length from 1 decimeter to 50 meters, to calibrate the subdivisions of such stand- ards, and to determine their coefficients of expansion, that is, the slight changes in dimensions when in use at ordinary ranges of temperature. Work- ing standards derived from the Bureau's two platinum-iridium copies of the international kilogram made it possible to verify masses from 0.1 milligram to 20 kilograms. For their comparison, a number of precision balances were under construction to give the Bureau a complete series of the very best balances possessed anywhere. For determining the density of solids and liquids, the section had secured two sets of Jena glass hydrometers and verified them at the Normal Eichungskommission in Berlin. The section was working on means for standardizing capacity measures from 1 milliliter to 40 liters and also on • "^ * * where ordinary reading of micrometers to thousandths of an inch is pretty generally understood, reading to 10-thousandths is not." Joseph V. Woodworth, Ameri- can Tool Making and Interchangeable Manufacturing (New York: Norman W. Henley. 1911), p. 270. 78 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) methods for testing a variety of chemical measuring apparatus in large quan- tities, for which there had been insistent demands. Apparatus designed at the Reichsanstalt for testing aneroid barometers had been secured, and in the planning stage was a new program, the testing of watches and other time- measuring apparatus. As primary standards, the heat and thermometry section had acquired a number of specially constructed mercury thermometers in Paris, verified at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in the range —30 to 550 °C. Gas-filled thermometers and copper-constantan thermocouples, also verified at Sevres, were available for low temperature work down to —200 °C. In addition. Dr. Waidner had himself constructed as further primary standards several platinum resistance thermometers in the interval between TOO and 600 °C, as well as the necessary apparatus for their comparison. As working standards in this same interval were special mercury thermom- eters of both French and German make, and these were intercompared from time to time with the platinum resistance thermometers. The Bureau was therefore prepared to certify almost any precision thermometer used in scientific work, most low-temperature engineering and industrial thermometers, and all ordinary commercial thermometers. In addition, special apparatus had recently been designed and constructed for testing clinical thermometers on a large scale, permitting 600 of them to be read at any given temperature in half an hour. For high-temperature measurements between 600 and 1,600 °C, the Bureau had as primary standards a number of thermocouples acquired in Berlin, their scale that used at the Reichsanstalt. ( Here it might be mentioned that America's dependence upon German science and technology before World War I was never more clearly demonstrated than in the cir- cumstances of the Bureau's acquisition of its initial basic instrumentation.) With its German instruments, the Bureau was ready to test and calibrate extrem.e range thermocouples, platinum resistance thermometers, and ex- pansion and optical pyrometers; determine the melting points of metals and alloys, as well as their specific heats and coefficients of expansion at high temperatures; and to determine the calorific value of any fuel in common use. Establishment of these standard scales and the development of the necessary testing apparatus had taken most of the effort of this section since 1901. Now with much of the basic work completed, Waidner and Burgess were beginning exploratory research in some of the problems raised by these scales. Work in the lifiht and optical instruments section had thus far been chiefly confined to preliminary investigations in spectroscopic methods of analysis and the determination of standard wavelengths and their use in optical methods of measurement. While waiting on facilities to be provided ACQUIRING NATIONAL STANDARDS 79 in the new physical laboratory, Nutting was in the midst of an investigation of electrical discharges in gases in connection with spectrum analysis, and Bates was at work on new methods and apparatus looking toward improved polariscopic standards. At the request of the Treasury, Noyes and Bates had already begun supervision of the polariscopic analysis of sugar at the customhouses. The engineering instruments section was currently occupied with planning tests of gas meters, water meters, pressure gages, and other instru- ments used in large numbers by public utilities for production control and for determining consumer rates. By far the largest piece of equipment destined for this section was a 100,000-pound machine for testing the strength of building materials. It seems possible this was acquired not long after the Bureau learned that the Reichsanstalt had under construction a new laboratory structure, the Material Prufungs Amt, for testing engineering and building materials. ^^ The Bureau similarly planned studies in the behavior of structural and building materials when this crushing machine and other equipment on order were properly set up in North building. In the resistance and electromotive force section of the electrical division, Dr. Wolff and his assistants had been kept busy making tests for Government agencies and for the electrical industry, verifying resistance standards for current measurements, testing standard cells, and determining the temperature coefficients and thermoelectric properties of resistance ma- terials. Every calibration of an electrical instrmnent, all ratings of electric light bulbs, and practically every meter by which electricity was sold to home or factory started with a measurement of the device against a 1-ohm standard of resistance and a standard cell, by which the electrical pressure (electromotive force), and the current were determined. The Bureau had a number of 1-ohm manganin standards acquired at the Reichsanstalt and reverified there from time to time, using the primary mercury standards maintained in that laboratory. Wolff intended soon to construct a number of his own primary mercury standards in the Bureau shops. No such effort at independence was necessary in the case of the Clark standard cell, the legal standard of electromotive force. At the electrical congress held during the Columbian Exposition in 1893, its value had been established as 1.434 international volts at 15 °C. Since then the Reichsan- stalt, using the same cell as its standard, had determined a new value, 1.4328, nearly 0.1 percent smaller, and the Bureau hoped to settle this discrepancy at the next international electrical congress. Work had just begun in the magnetism and absolute measurement of current section, where Guthe and Rosa were in the midst of two important "See Hearings * • • 1906 ( December 2, 1904) , p. 233. 80 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) researches. One was a study of the silver voltameter, used in measuring current; the other comprised two closely related studies, a redetermination of the electrochemical equivalent of silver and of the absolute value of the Clark standard cell and its rival, the Weston cell.^^ Dr. Rosa's account of the inductance and capacity section suggests that he thought it probably one of the best and most completely equipped at the Bureau. As section chief, with Dorsey and Grover running the research, he had high hopes for the work it had begun. Hundreds of mica and paper condensers had been purchased from German, English, French, and American firms and studies made to find the best performance among them as standards of capacity. Two large air condensers had been constructed as loss-free working standards against which commercial condensers sent to the Bureau were compared. In conjunction with new apparatus under construction, these air condensers were to make possible absolute measurement of currents and electrical pressures up to 1,000 volts. With a carefully constructed absolute standard of inductance (an electrical quantity analogous to mechanical inertia), the section planned, "by a method never before used," a new determination of the ohm, prelimin- ary to an extended investigation in the absolute measurement of the funda- mental electrical units, the ohm, volt, and ampere. '^^ Establishment of the Bureau's standard of inductance would also make possible a thorough study of common sources of error in inductance measurements, of considerable concern to new developments in the communications industry. The electrical measuring instruments section, also under Rosa's fervent eye. possessed a wonderful array of precision instruments for measuring electric current, voltage, and power, both direct and alternating, acquired from the best instrumentmakers at home and abroad or designed and built in the Bureau shops. The section was prepared to test and calibrate any labo- ratory or commercial instrument then in use. Its heavy equipment included powerful direct-current as well as alternating-current generators and allied equipment, and in testing direct-current instruments the section was pre- pared to handle capacities up to 1,000 amperes and 1,000 volts. The first high-voltage studies would begin with the installation of a giant storage battery with a potential of several thousand volts, then under construction for the Bureau. '■^The Clark cell, invented in England, had been in use since 1872. The American Weston cell, using cadmium instead of zinc, appeared in 1893, and at the turn of the century, because of the availability of better chemical components, was being made in Berlin. The superiority of the Weston cell had led to its adoption as a working standard by the PTR. In 1908, by international agreement, it displaced the Clark cell as the standard of electromotive force. ""Stratton and Rosa, "The National Bureau of Standards," Proc. AIEE, 24, 1075 (1905). ACQUIRING NATIONAL STANDARDS 81 The work begun by Dr. WolflF in photometry had been turned over to Mr. Edward Hyde, who was studying a number of photometric standards acquired from the Reichsanstalt. Among his problems was the ratio of the candle to the Hefner amylacetate lamp which he had determined as I to 0.88. In preliminary tests the Hefner lamp, generally accepted abroad as a pri- mary photometric standard, proved to have so many defects as to be unfit for measurements of the accuracy he hoped to attain. The Bureau had there- fore established a temporary standard by arbitrarily assigning a mean value for a number of ordinary 16-candle commercial carbon filament lamps. By means of potentiometers, current and voltage to the lamps could be kept constant to within one-hundredth of 1 percent while making comparisons. Thus very accurate comparisons and very exact copies of standards were possible. The Bureau had recently requested a number of lamp manufacturers in this country to submit carefully rated samples of their 16-candlepower lamps for comparison with the Bureau standards. They were found to vary from 15.4 to 17.6 candlepower, averaging 16.48 candlepower or about 3 percent high. This fairly close agreement resulted, the Bureau learned, from the manufacturers' use, as standards, of incandescent lamps rated at the Reichsanstalt. But these were "model" lamps that had been sent to the Bureau. Sub- sequent testing of the commercial product was to reveal wide variations in their performance. Meanwhile, until the Bureau had devised methods for testing commercial lamps on a large scale, it could only verify those used as industrial standards or make special investigation of any particular lamps submitted to it. Better lamp and light standards and many other aspects of photometry remained to be explored, and this work would be pressed when the section moved into its new quarters. The chemistry division, not yet organized, was to be headed by Dr. William A. Noyes, who had come to the Bureau from Rose Polytechnic In- stitute, where his starting salary had been the highest ever offered to a professor there. Through the courtesy of Professor Remsen, he was now at the Johns Hopkins University making a study of chemical standards needed in research laboratories, his quest interrupted by occasional trips away to supervise sugar analyses at the customhouses. His associate, Dr. Stokes, appointed from the Geological Survey, was at Dr. Wiley's Bureau of Chem- istry in the Department of Agriculture, investigating equipment and measure- ment problems of its chemists with which the National Bureau of Standards might assist. As soon as Noyes and Stokes moved into their new laboratories and acquired assistants, they would begin much needed work on the standard- 82 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) ization of some of the more important chemical reagents. They would be busy, too, assisting the other sections of the Bureau in the chemical analysis of materials going into the construction of standards.®* In addition to all the work on standards, instrumentation, and plan- ning of research in that period, the number of tests made for universities, industry, and Government agencies had increased eight times over that pos- sible in the former Office and would more than double again within the year. Surveying this program, Dr. Stratton had cause to be proud of the bureau he had constructed. In a little more than 3 years he had put together the men and materials for an organization that, "judged by the magnitude and im- portance of the output of testing and investigation," said Rosa, "ranked second only to the great German Reichsanstalt among the government lab- oratories of the world doing this kind of work." ■''' A sound beginning had been made in the formulation of standards and the main lines of their further investigation were laid out. The Bureau was humming. Fresh from a tour of the highly complex laboratories near- ing completion on Connecticut Avenue, Stratton reported to a subcommittee of Congress: "You will not find the same combination of apparatus nor as complicated machinery except in ... a battleship." ^^ It was a neat thrust, considering that the entire cost of the Bureau to date came to less than a sixth of the price of just one of the great fleet of battleships President Roose- velt was currently building. AN AUTUMN FIRE AND A CONSUMERS' CRUSADE As the Bureau announced itself ready to expand its testing program in the late spring of 1904, the electrical division, with the help or advice of practically everyone else at the Bureau, was building a special electrical testing laboratory to take out to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The fair, celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the purchase of the territory, and the first of countless occasions for exhibiting Bureau activities, opened in St. Louis that summer.®^ '"' For additional notes on the early chemistry division, see letter, Campbell E. Waters to John F. Waldron, Jr., Aug. 15, 1940 (NBS Box 442, IC) . " Rosa, "The National Bureau of Standards and its relation to scientific and technical laboratories," Science, 21, 162 (1905). Based on an address given at Wesleyan Uni- versity, Dec. 7, 1904. '"Hearings * * * 1906 (Dec. 2, 1904), p. 230. " Details of this and other NBS exhibitions from 1904 to 1922 will be found in NBS Box 21, PE. . , AN AUTUMN FIRE AND A CONSUMERS' CRUSADE 83 Once there, several members from Dr. Stratton's division presided over an historical exhibit of weights, measures, and instruments located in the Government building, while 10 from Rosa's division, at the request of the Exposition authorities, were kept busy in the great Palace of Electricity verifying the measuring instruments used by the jury of awards in testing electrical machinery, instruments, and apparatus submitted by exhibitors in competition. The German exhibits, as might be expected, won hands down. But for its design as a working exhibit and for its service to the many electrical interests at the fair, the Exposition authorities awarded the Bureau's laboratory one of the grand prizes.®* When free from Exposition commitments, the electrical staff carried out considerable routine testing and even some research in its Palace lab- oratory. More a novelty resulting from Nutting's gas spectra work than a piece of serious research, however, were the luminous script signs in glass tubing exhibited by the staff at the fair. When excited by electric dis- charges, the noble (inert) gas in the tubes — it was neon — lit up with a reddish glow.®^ Its commercial application came 26 years later. The Bureau's self-contained electrical exhibit, cooled all that hot humid summer by a 10-ton refrigerating machine, "was a favorite retreat for the electrical jury," and its wizard equipment remained a special attraction until the end of October. Elsewhere on the fair grounds was another kind of "cooler," the first liquid hydrogen plant seen in this country, designed by James Dewar of the Royal Institution in London and exhibited at the fair by the British Oxygen Co. As an instrument of research, particularly in low-temperature thermometry, it was a prize, and Rosa at once began nego- tiations to acquire it. In Washington, Dr. Stratton approached Congress and obtained not only the asking price for the plant, £500 ($2,400) , but an addi- tional $12,000 for the construction of a low-temperature laboratory to house ""MS, Dorsey, "Some memories of the early days"; Stratton and Rosa, Proc. AIEE, 24, 1084-1090 (1905). ■"' Dr. Nutting's neon signs — two special glass tubes blown by Mr. Sperling in the Bureau shops, one reading "HELIUM," the other "NBS" — resulted from a modification he made in the laboratory instrument known as the Pliicker tube and reported in NBS Scientific Paper No. 6, "Some new rectifying efiEects in conducting gases" (1904). The Pliicker tube, like the earlier Geissler tube, was used in the study of spectra of gases and metals. By substituting rod or disk aluminum electrodes for the thin platinum wire in the tube. Nutting obtained a much steadier and brighter light. Although never made public, the neon phenomenon has long been considered the Bureau's first notable laboratory accom- plishment, and the forerunner of modern neon signs and fluorescent lamps. Interview with Dr. William F. Meggers, Aug. 4, 1964. A series of charts of significant scientific and technologic achievements of the Bureau, for each of the decades covered by the chapters of this history, will be found in app. K. 84 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) it, adjacent and connected by tunnel to the North building.'" The first cryogenic (low-temperature) investigations at the Bureau were begun by Franklin Durston that same year. The new building was not completed until the spring of 1906. Although the Bureau up to this time had been principally concerned with establishing fundamental standards and planning basic research pro- grams, an incident late in the autumn of 1904 sharply reminded the staff of its responsibilities in the field of commercial standards. One evening a fire started in the dead leaves near the railed boardwalk that had been built from the top of the hill down through the woods to the avenue. Franklin Durston. who as a very junior member of the electrical division was also acting night watchman, got out all the hose in the North and South buildings to get a line to reach the fire. He found that because of differences in the threads the hoses could not be coupled. With some difficulty and damage to his shoes, the fire was finally stamped out. The next day "there was quite a discussion as to how it happened that hose from two buildings of the National Bureau of Standards was not sufficiently standardized to admit of mutual coupling." "^^ The same lack of uniform threads had been largely responsible for the raging destruction of the great Baltimore fire back in February of that year. Engine companies arriving by special train from Washington within 3 hours after the fire began found themselves helpless when their hoses would not fit Baltimore hydrants. As one by one "completely fire-proofed" build- ings burned like torches all that day and the next, and the fire raced through block after block of the business district, additional fire units from the nearby counties, from New York, Philadelphia, Annapolis, Wilmington, Chester, York, Altoona, and Harrisburg, arrived in the city only to discover ihat few of their hoses matched any other or fitted the local hydrants. "If there had been nozzles enough, we could have flooded the burning district." the Baltimore Fire Chief said afterward, for at no time was there any shortage of water. Instead, 1,526 buildings and all electric light, tele- graph, telephone, and power facilities in an area of more than 70 city blocks ^ Stratton and Rosa, Proc. AIEE, 24, 1056 ( 1905) . Stratton foresaw need of still another buildin).', attached by tunnel to the opposite or east end of North building, to house labo- ratories for the testing of engineering instruments and structural materials, and two additional buildings, each about the size of South building, at the east and west ends of that structure, one exclusively for electrical work, the other for chemical and metal- lurgical studies (ibid., pp. 1041-1042). These four new structures, as detached wings of North and South buildings, were to be enclosed by the east and west buildings pro- posed earlier. Why the Bureau plant did not expand in this fashion has not been learned. " MS, Dorsey, "Some memories of the early days." 85 The Baltimore fire of 1904. The turn of the century was still an age of kerosene lamps and wooden cities, except in the business districts which were largely of "fire-proof" brick and stone. But there were wooden stables and sheds behind the buildings, and the structures, themselves were filled with highly combustible partitions and furnish- ings, and there was actually little that was fireproof in building construction. Despite progress, as late as 1964 firefighters in at least one county adjacent to Baltimore were confronted with two types of hydrants in use, one with the national standard thread and the other with the Baltimore steamer thread. Although they had adaptors, the firemen were asking that fireplugs be coated with colored fluorescent paint, to distinguish the two threads at night and reduce delay in hooking up. The Baltimore Evening Sun, Oct. 1, 1964, p. D2. 86 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) in the business district were razed before the fire burned out, 30 hours after it began.*" For over a quarter of a century the National Board of Fire Under- writers and the National Fire Protection Association had been advocating standard couplings for all fire departments but had received little support. Shortly after the disaster, a Baltimore steamship line called on the Secretary of Commerce for help with shipboard hose and couplings and the Bureau of Standards was asked to investigate. Thus several months before its own humiliating experience. Stratton had already set Albert Merrill of the engi- neering instruments section to work on the problem of fire-hose couplings.®^ Before the investigation ended, over 600 sizes and variations in fire-hose couplings were collected across the country. In 1905, a year after Merrill began his study, the National Fire Pro- tection Association, with the active concurrence of the Bureau, adopted as the national standard what it considered the most serviceable hose coupling then in use. together with an interchangeable device for nonstandard cou- plings. But the expense of converting or replacing fire hose, as well as normal civic inertia, made agreement in the cities of the Nation a slow proc- ess. By 1914, 9 years later, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers reported that only 287 of 8.000 cities and towns had fire-hose couplings and hydrant outlets conforming to the standard. Up to 1917, 897 cities had agreed to adopt them, but only 390 had put them in service. By 1924 the number of cities with standard fire-hose couplings had risen to 700. Con- version was to continue at this slow pace. In many cases, municipalities would make the change only when they had experienced their own version of the Baltimore fire.'''* Efforts at standardization in another direction offered somewhat better, and certainly more spectacular, results. They began in the spring of 1901 when Louis A. Fischer visited some of the larger cities in New York State to inquire about their inspection of commercial weights and measures. The answers were discouraging. On his return he made a compilation of the laws of all the States relating to weights and measures, revealing a hope- less tangle of regulations, as remarkable for their variety as for their inade- quacy. Fischer's section subsequently drew up designs for simple, accurate, "-'Harold A. Williams, Baltimore Afire (Baltimore: Sclineidereith. 1954). pp. 11, 20, 43. '''' Stratton and Rosa, Proc. AIEE, 24, 1070 (1905) . "* NBS C50, "National standard hose couplings and fittings for public fire service" (1914, 2d ed., 1917). Press release, American Engineering Standards Committee (AESC), June 25, 1924, "Screw threads for fire hose couplings approved as American standard" (NBS Box 77. IDA). Note. — C designates Circular of the NBS, as M, when cited hereafter will designate an NBS Miscellaneous Publication. AN AUTUMN FIRE AND A CONSUMERS' CRUSADE 87 inexpensive working standards for the use of State, county, and city sealers and put them in the hands of several manufacturers. Thus sealers for the first time could buy sets of standard weights, measures, and scales specifically designed for their use and send them to the Bureau to be verified and certi- fied.'^" But it was not enough. The old standards had been around a long time and there was no rush to acquire the new sets. The States had to be stirred up. Dr. Stratton's first proposal to the Governors of the States in 1903 for a meeting of State sealers fell through, it was said, for lack of State travel funds. In November 1904, shortly after moving out of downtown Washington and into the new buildings on Connecticut Avenue, Stratton renewed the invitation. Although there were few acceptances, he was deter- mined to hold the meeting anyway. The first conference, meeting in January 1905, with representatives from seven States and the District of Columbia, disclosed that in most of these States the laws relating to weights and measures were "exceedingly lax * * * with nothing obligatory" or were "practically a dead letter," that the State sealer's office was usually unsalaried, and the duties of county sealers were often imposed on the county treasurer or even the superin- tendent of schools. In more than one State, the county and city sealers were not compelled to procure standards, and several of the State repre- sentatives knew nothing about their State standards or even where they were to be found. In one State Hassler's standards had been destroyed by fire some years earlier and the $550 necessary to replace them had never been appropriated. In another instance the standards were said to be "hoary with age from long confinement in the dingy and dark recesses of the basement of the capitol." The consequence of this almost studied disinterest, it was admitted, had long made fraud and trickery in weights and measures commonplace in most of the States represented at the conference. And as Dr. Stratton com- mented: "Remarkable as have been the statements made today we have not heard the worst, as there are States in which absolutely nothing is done and which are not represented here today." The Bureau agreed to host further meetings in order to discuss means for securing uniform laws and inspection of commercial weights and measures."'' At the second conference, in April 1906, it was decided to set up a permanent organization of State officials, make the conference an annual event to discuss the testing and sealing of commercial weights and measures, *" Letter report, Fischer to 0. H. Tittmann, Supt., U.S. C. & G.S., June 15, 1901 (Stratton Papers. Box 12) ; NBS Annual Report 1904, pp. 6-7. "'*■ "Conference on the weights and measures of the United States * * * January 16 and 17, 1905," NBS M4 (1905), pp. 26, 27, 31, 40, 42. See the voluminous correspondence with State officials in NBS Box 18, IW, 1901-11. 786-168 O — 66 8 88 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) and work toward adoption of uniform laws. Seventeen States were repre- sented at the third conference in 1907, and as at the previous meetings the discussion soon centered around "the question of honest weights and meas- ures in all business transactions," the almost infinite variety of laws affect- ing weight and measures, and the meager funds provided by the States for their inspection. The conference began work on a model weights and meas- ures law, to be offered for adoption by all the States, and recommended unanimously that additional powers be given the Bureau of Standards to make the State laws effective.''^ Such enforcement, of course, the Bureau could not undertake, but it offered its cooperation to State governments in establishing effective inspection systems while it sought other means to "police" weights and measures. The means was exposure. Since 1901, as Stratton said, "a great reform [had been] going on throughout the country," its principal target the commercial oligarchy that ruled the Nation.®* It had been touched off by journalists such as Ida M. Tarbell. Lincoln Steffens, and Ray Stannard Baker through their exposure in the periodical press of the knavery in big business, the roguery of politics and politicians, of labor leaders and employers alike. Aroused by the literature of exposure, a passion for change, for honesty, and for justice swept the Nation. Among the consequences of the reform wave were Roosevelt's indictment of the meat-packing trust in 1905 and passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. Before the wave receded, the whole Nation became aware of the presence of the Bureau of Standards in the Federal Government. Beyond anything its proponents could have contemplated, the coincidence of the founding of the Bureau with the age of reform shaped its history for the next 30 years. Weights and measures was to be the trigger. The annual conferences of State sealers at the Bureau made it clear that through ignorance and neglect of State responsibilities the American public was being robbed of enormous sums daily in the marketplace. Since the State governments showed little interest in weights and measures reforms, said Stratton, the Bureau "must reach the public through State and city officials by testing their standards." In December 1908 he asked Congress for a special grant of $10,000 "to investigate what the States are doing with their standards, and to encourage them to take up and supervise the local work as they should." ^^ It was the Bureau's first request for special funds, and Congress approved it without question. What Stratton intended was an investigation to reveal the extent of false and fraudulent weights and measures in use throughout the Nation. "' NBS Annual Report 1907, p. 6. '"'Hearings * * * 1908 (Nov. 30, 1906) , p. 351. •■"Hearings * * * 1910 (Dec. 4, 1908) , pp. 185-186. AN AUTUMN FIRE AND A CONSUMERS' CRUSADE 39 Between 1909 and 1911, inspectors from the Bureau visited every State of the Union, testing over 30,000 scales, weights, and dry and liquid measures in 3,220 different shops and stores. They were not surprised to find that almost half the scales tested were badly inaccurate, that 20 percent of the weights, half the dry measures, and a quarter of the liquid measures were in error, or that with remarkable consistency these scales and measures favored the storekeeper. The Bureau estimated that in the case of print butter alone the annual loss to the consumer, through rigged or faulty weighing devices, amounted to more than $8,250,000.^" From the start, journalists and reporters followed the track of the Bureau inspectors, and with the first disclosures of what the journalists termed "the knavish distortion of weights and measures," the crusade began. New York State's superintendent of weights and measures, Dr. Fritz Reich- mann, and Mayor Gaynor of New York City soon launched investigations of their own and other States followed. Over the next 2 years almost a hun- dred articles in the periodical press reported the weights and measures campaign across the country.'^ As a result of the widespread demand for better laws and better inspection of trade weights and measures in the wake of the survey, first New Jersey and then other States enacted the model law proposed by the Bureau, and State after State exhumed and submitted for verification to the Bureau the standards that had been furnished them some 50 years earlier or purchased new equipment for their State sealers.^^ Answering urgent ap- peals, the Bureau drafted a model weights and measures ordinance for municipalities, and detailed its experts to first one and then another of the States which requested aid in setting up their inspection departments. A Bureau proposal to require that the net weight, measure, or numeri- cal count of contents be printed on sealed packages was accomplished by an amendment to the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1913, and in 1915 Congress passed a standard barrel law; but efforts of the Bureau to promote national legislation to define the weights and measures used in everyday trade, to Louis A. Fischer, "Recent developments in weights and measures in the United States," Pop. Sci. Mo. 84, 345 (1914) , reported the Bureau's findings, State by State. See also NBS Box 18. ■'For example, F. T. Cordage, "Serious leakage: short weights and measures," Good Housekeeping, 48, 744 (1909): F. Reichmann, "The necessity of the supervision of weights and measures," Am. Stat. Assoc. 12, 146 (1910) : Sloan Gordon, "Is the housewife guilty?" Cosmopolitan, 50, 73 (1910) ; Francis J. Dyer, "The Government to the rescue," Good Housekeeping, 52, 334 (1911). In Reichmann's "Savings through proper super- vision of weights, measures and standards," Ann. Am. Acad. Pol. Sec. Sci. 50, 94 (1913), he estimated that as a result of reforms in New York State, annual savings to consumers in the past several years had amounted to $15 million. "NBS Annual Report 1909, pp. 11-12. 90 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) fix the sizes of other common shipping units besides the barrel (such as the bale, box, and basket), and to require certification by the Bureau of aU weights and measures apparatus manufactured and sold in the United States, got nowhereJ^ The crusade ended, but not before the Bureau had made the Nation conscious of the meaning of measure at the market — temporarily, at least. Ninety-eight officials representing 25 States and 34 cities attended the Bureau conference held in February 1912, and except during wartime years, these conferences have been held annually ever since. ^* Through the conferences, the continuing research at the Bureau, the training of sealers, and the fur- nishing of informaton and assistance to State and local officials, the pioneer work of Louis A. Fischer lives in the weights and measures control we know today. THE BEGINNING OF GOVERNMENT TESTING The era of exposure not only served to acquaint the general public with the name of the Bureau of Standards but it brought to the notice of other agencies of the Government a new and versatile auxiliary in the Fed- eral family. Even before the weights and measures crusade began, the Federal Government, alerted by the hue and cry of the reformers calling citizens and consumers to arms, discovered that as a consumer it was itself being victimized. Incandescent lamps, bought by the Government at the rate of a million a year, were burning out at a fearful rate in Federal ofiBces. When a pur- chasing agency sent one of its recent shipments to the Bureau for tests, the Bureau promptly threw out three-quarters of the bulbs. They were neither uniform in accordance with the manufacturer's own standards, nor did they even come up to the simple specifications suggested by the Government. The Bureau was soon to find similar shortcomings in the clinical thermometers, electric meters, chemical glassware, inks, mucilages, and indeed the whole catalog of supplies purchased for Government use.'^^ "NBS Annual Report 1911, pp. 13-15. NBS C61, "Specifications and tolerances for weights and measures and weighing and measuring devices" (1916, 2d ed., 1920), was adopted at the weights and measures conference of 1916 for use in ordinary commercial transactions and had wide acceptance. " By 1929 the Bureau reported there were almost 300 officials on the State level dealing with weights and measures work and 1,400 on the local level (NBS letter report. May 2, 1929, NBS Box 285, IW) . For later reports, see NBS M172, "Index to reports of the National Conference on Weights and Measures, 1905-41" (McCormac and Smith, 1942). "Hearings * * * 1906 (Dec. 2, 1904), pp. 231-232; Hearings * * * 1909 (Jan. 30, 1908) , pp. 496-497. THE BEGINNING OF GOVERNMENT TESTING 91 The light bulb incident occurred in 1904. By 1906, Stratton reported, there was "a wave of reform going on all through the Government service as to proper specifications and proper tests to determine whether goods purchased complied with specification." ^^ And Bureau testing for the Gov- ernment began to double annually as increasing varieties and quantities of Government supplies and materials were sent to the Bureau before accept- ance. The Bureau was called on to test the tensile strength of a new cable for the elevator in the Washington Monument, the cement used in the con- struction of the new House Ofiice Building, paper and inks for the Govern- ment Printing Office, paints, oils, and varnishes for the Lighthouse Board, and virtually every instrument and piece of apparatus destined for a Federal laboratory. Congress, concerned over the repeated increases in personnel and funds that Dr. Stratton found it necessary to ask for, complained that it was "shocked a little bit by the way [the Bureau] is developing." In answer to the question, "Do you not think that you are broadening the scope of the work of your Bureau?" Stratton described the growth of the Government testing program." This testing had not been specified in the organic act, nor even contemplated when the Bureau was founded. But the Bureau laboratories were uniquely well fitted to make such tests, and great economies accrued to the Government as a result. It was, Stratton told Congress, al- most entirely "commercial testing" and offered little opportunity for original investigation or research; still, it necessitated hiring specialists in many fields and large numbers of aids, apprentices, and assistants. By 1908 two-thirds of all testing at the Bureau was for Federal agen- cies alone. During that year it carried out tests for 37 bureaus and divisions of the Government, analyzing rag and wood papers for the Post Office Department and the Government Printing Office, investigating naphthas and celluloids as cargo hazards for the Steamship Inspection Service, assisting in Pure Food and Drug Law analyses, and carrying out a long series of cement and concrete examinations for the Panama Canal Commission. As an illustration of the usefulness of its tests, said Stratton, the Bureau had recently rejected outright 4 of 6 samples of varnish and 14 of 24 samples of paint submitted for analysis by the Lighthouse Board.'^* So extensive had this testing program become by 1909 that the Bureau had to restrict its own research and was experiencing difficulty in handling "Hearings * * * 1908 (Nov. 30, 1906) , p. 351. ''Hearings * * * 1904 (Dec. 2, 1904), p. 229; Hearings * * * 1907 (Feb. 23, 1906,) p. 657. "Hearings * * * 1909 (January 30, 1908) , pp. 495^96; Hearings * * * 1910 (Dec. 4, 1908), p. 171. 92 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) requests for investigations from university and industrial laboratories. Strat- ton feared for the Bureau: "Nothing could cause the institution to deteriorate more quickly than to flood it with routine testing. It must do a certain amount of original investigation to develop standards and methods of meas- uring or it will soon become a second-rate institution." ''^ Yet in addition to greater economy in Federal housekeeping, much good was coming from the Government testing, as Stratton was well aware. It was supplying a much needed incentive to industry. The high rate of rejection by the Bureau and the impartiality and justice of the tests thor- oughly alarmed hundreds of firms supplying goods and materials to the Government. Supplying the Government was good business, and even though the Bureau did not publish its findings by brand name, word got around. A manufacturer or supplier who lost a Government contract found he lost other contracts. Manufacturers began beating a path to the lab- oratories on the hill for advice and help with their materials, measuring, and testing apparatus, and methods of quality control.^" "Scarcely a day passes," Dr. Stratton reported, "that some manu- facturer does not visit the Bureau to learn how to measure or to secure standards." In many instances the Bureau did not have the answers indus- try sought, since no criteria existed for the products or materials in question. But with the manufacturer's assistance, the Bureau would agree to under- take the necessary research and establish the required standard. In this manner industry, and Government agencies as well, were to provide the kind of research the Bureau wanted to do. The Bureau was quick to see the importance to the public as well as to industry of expanding its random commercial testing for the Government into a large-scale research program that would cover as widely as possible the range of materials and products of commerce. As early as 1905 the Bureau reported that "numerous cases of dispute regarding the quality of construction materials, such as iron, steel, brick, stone, cement, concrete, etc., have been referred to the Bureau for a determination of the physical properties in question." -' Virtually no data existed, for example, on the tensile and compressive strength, specific gravity, and time of set of cement and cement mortars, or on the thermal conductivity and effects of tempera- ture upon the compression, expansion, and durability of concrete aggre- " Hearings * * * 1910 (Dec. 4, 1908), p. 177. ^ At, Henry S. Carhart pointed out in Pop. Sci. Mo. 79, 209 (1911), the Government purchased only about 1 percent of the incandescent lamps made, the other 99 percent being sold to the general public, but Bureau testing elevated the quality for all. "NBS Annual Report 1906, p. 15. THE BEGINNING OF GOVERNMENT TESTING ' 93 gates, poured concrete, or concrete building blocks. And so with other construction materials. Search of the literature on materials submitted for Government pur- chase disclosed that no standard methods or apparatus existed for the test- ing of wood, paper, twine, textile fabrics, inks, mucilages, and related mate- rials, or for the testing of lubricating oils, resins, varnishes, protective coatings, and glues, all of whose qualities were as important to the buying public as to the Government. In order to provide proper specifications to industry for the manufacture of these materials, the physical, chemical, and other properties of their composition had to be investigated. The program of structural, engineering, and miscellaneous materials research thus begun was to consume much of the Bureau's energies for many years to come. By 1911 the program, originally scattered throughout the laboratories, had at- tained divisional status. It had a special appropriation of its own, and was well on the way to becoming the largest single activity at the Bureau. Allied to this research in commercial and industrial products, but actually derived from the function calling for "the determination of physical constants and the properties of materials," was the Bureau's standard samples program. This began in 1905 when the American Foundrymen's Associa- tion turned over to the Bureau its work of preparing and distributing samples of standardized irons to its member industries. To prepare these samples, a quantity of iron was reduced to fine borings and then carefully analyzed, divided into samples of known composition as certified by the Bureau, and sold to manufacturers as a check on their own laboratory analyses. Preparation of like samples of a number of alloys, iron ores^ and copper slags prompted Albert Ladd Colby, representing engineering interests on the Visiting Committee to the Bureau and a leading authority on metal- lurgy, to suggest that the Bureau produce samples of steels as well. The work began the next year when the Association of American Steel Manu- facturers requested preparation of a series of 17 standard steel samples. The Bureau's samples won high praise and requests for similar certification of other basic materials. When the American Chemical Society assigned its standard sample work to the Bureau, Dr. Stratton announced the Bureau's intention of preparing an entire spectrum of sample materials, covering hundreds of products, for American industry.*^ The chemistry division, increasingly involved in its investigation of properties of materials for the Government testing program, found itself ■^NBS Annual Report 1906, p. 16; Annual Report 1907, p. 13. The methods of analyses and range of samples were described in NBS C14 (1909), NBS C25 (1910), NBS C26 ( 1910) and their successive editions. 94 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10) pressed for time and staff as the work on standard samples grew. Never- theless it borrowed time from these efforts to launch a much needed investiga- tion of impurities in analytical chemicals. Other groups at the Bureau, now grown to divisions, were also pushing out exploratory parties into new lines of inquiries. The weights and measures staff had begun its investiga- tion of State standards, the pyrometry and heat divison sought new methods and instruments for high-temperature measurement in industry, the optics division attacked theoretical problems in polarimetry, spectroscopy, and radiometry, and the electrical division became involved in absolute measure- ment, electrical instrumentation, and photometry. But making constant in- roads into the research efforts of all divisions was the acceleration of routine testing and calibration for science, industry, and above all for the Govern- ment. Between 1905 and 1910 the number of such tests increased from 16,500 to almost 50,000, the Government's share rising from 26 to 70 percent of all calibration and testing. And complicating the testing was the demand for new research in technology, in order to establish a methodology and instrumentation that would put testing on an increasingly scientific basis. The volume of testing, doubling in 1909 over the previous year under the impact of Government work, soared again the next year when, to con- solidate effort and responsibility, the staff and equipment of the structural materials laboratories of the Geological Survey were transferred to the Bureau of Standards.®^ The transfer on July 1, 1910, involved 53 engineers, chemists, and assistants. It included a small group in Washington under Dr. Samuel S. Voorhees, who with his chief assistant Phaon H. Bates was engaged in chemical research in mineral pigments, paints, and other building materials, mainly for the Supervising Architect's OfiBce; a Pittsburgh labora- tory under Dr. Albert V. Bleininger, where cements for navy yard and dry dock construction, as well as clays, ceramics, lime, steel, and other structural materials were tested; a Northampton, Pa., laboratory under R. L. Humphrey, testing cement at the plants supplying the Isthmian Canal Commission ; and still another laboratory at Atlantic City under Rudolph J. Wig, where the effect of sea water upon concretes and protective coatings was being investi- *■' The Geological Survey, ordinarily concerned with assaying and mapping the earth resources of the Nation, began its structural materials program in 1904 when it was persuaded to make tests of cement-making materials, building stones, and clays for an exhibit of the American Portland Cement Manufacturers at the St. Louis fair. By 1910 the Survey, since restricted by law to research for the Government, was testing a wide range of structural materials, principally for the Panama Canal (under construction from 1904 to 1914) and for some 400 public buildings planned or under construction in the United States. See Annual Report, Department of the Interior, 1910, pp. 202, 206; Weber, The Bureau of Standards, pp. 48-49. 95 1^ - c ki Is '-1 C JJ ^' ^ S >- 1^^ w 1^ .s t^ 4) s 1*, 53 s ^ o c k-' ■^*J s Ci 8 fe' e S S s ^ -c «J O o ^j ~c o »j c/2 c (^ 4) s a: § ^ 4) c "3 C5 ■ S a S ii! .,,^ 1^ 4) k. 4j ^ o c O 4) Vi •K> ' ' 6C •K> ^ a 4) s to O O CO Q ~e 41 ^ -13 _5 _ c oi STANDARDS FOR THE AGE OF ELECTRICITY 107 Most of the early research in Rosa's division, however, was specifically concerned with electrical standards, and before long the work of the Bureau and that of the national laboratories abroad had sufficiently increased the possible accuracy of the values established for the primary electrical stand- ards to call for a new international agreement. At the International Con- ference on Electrical Units and Standards held in London in 1908 a resolution was drawn up to adopt a new international ampere, ohm, and volt. Two years later a technical committee representing the British, French, German, and American national laboratories, with Dr. Rosa as chairman, met at the Bureau in Washington to carry out the resolution of the Conference. In May 1910 the committee completed its work, reaching agree- ment on new values to be assigned to the ampere and ohm and from these deriving a new value for the international volt. Adoption of these values promised for the first time international uniformity to a high degree of pre- cision in the electrical units. With high satisfaction, Rosa wrote: "There is reason to believe that the values adopted now will be satisfactory for a generation at least without change." * The progress made by the committee had been reported in the Wash- ington newspapers, and Congress was ready for Dr. Stratton when he appeared on Capitol Hill just prior to the announcement of worldwide adop- tion of the committee's work. In the Bureau budget before the Subcom- mittee on Appropriations was a request for a new electrical laboratory building, needed to regroup Rosa's division, now scattered all through North, South, and West buildings. Members of the subcommittee im- mediately challenged the need for the building. To Congress it seemed that the most pressing task of the electrical division of the Bureau was finished. Dr. Stratton had to reassure Congress that the recent work of the inter- national committee did not mean that electrical measurements were "all done." "The work in connection with these standards," said Stratton, "is go- ing on all the time. Some of them must be continually produced. For in- stance, the standard of electromotive force must be produced from year to year. The work in connection with the standard [of] current is not nearly completed * * * . We must maintain continuously the standards of resist- ance, of current, of electromotive force, of inductance and capacity, and the magnetic standards. Every electrical problem goes back to these standards." " Stratton's argument may only have heightened the mystery of electricity to the layman, but Congress was convinced. The electrical laboratory was 'Rosa in Science, 31, 601 (1910), and Engr. Mag. 39, 263 (1910) ; NBS C29, "An- nouncement of a change in the value of the international volt" (1911) ; correspondence of 1911 in NBS Box 8, IE; Annual Report, National Physical Laboratory, 1912, p. 7. •Hearings * * * 1912 (Dec. 2, 1910), p. 267. 108 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) The silver voltameter used to determine a new value for the international ampere. The experiments at Washington in 1910 made it possible to assign mutually consistent values to the standard cells and standard resistors used in the respective national standardizing laboratories, in terms of the resistivity of mercury and the electrochem- ical equivalent of silver. The units thus established formed the basis for all electrical measurements throughout the world for the next 37 years. approved and the sum of $175,000 appropriated for its construction. As East building, it completed the quadrangle on the hilltop, and Rosa and his division moved in during the spring of 1913.'" Useful and even necessary as the new international values were to electrical science and industry, they were, as Stratton had said, far from per- manent. Continued research in instrumentation and procedures resulted in greater refinements of the values and the standard resistances and stand- ard cells slowly began to drift. By 1925, serious discrepancies were evident among the standards maintained in the national laboratories here and abroad. Where measurements had been made with once satisfactory accuracies within a few parts in 100,000, certain of them could now be kept constant within a few parts in a million. There was need for agreement on the new values possible. "The building was accepted in June 1913 but not actually completed until several months later, after members of the electrical division themselves installed the wiring. See correspondence in NBS Blue Folder Box 77. That wiring was still functioning satis- factorily when it was replaced with modern fireproof conduits in the 1950's (interview with Dr. F. B. Silsbee, Jan. 29, 1963) . STANDARDS FOR THE AGE OF ELECTRICITY 109 In 1929 the International Committee of Weights and Measures at Sevres, to which the establishment and conservation of electrical standards had been assigned in 1923, approved a resolution to replace the international system of electrical units by the absolute or CGS system originally proposed for them. The need for conveniently reproducible standards had diminished with the expansion of testing services in the national laboratories. Elec- trical methods of measurement, of increasing importance to science and engi- neering, demanded higher and higher degrees of precision that apparently only an absolute system of measurement could satisfy. Also the discovery of isotopes in 1913, with their hitherto unsuspected variation among different samples of silver and mercury reduced the certainty of international units defined by properties of these elements and favored absolute units independ- ent of isotopic variations. The conference of 1929 agreed that the pursuit of "ideal" measure- ments must be resumed within the framework of the absolute system, and from the 1930's on this became the direction of fundamental electrical re- search. The same decade saw a marked acceleration in the work of extend- ing the range of measurement of electrical quantities. Here, earlier pioneer work such as Dr. Herbert B. Brooks' development of the deflection potentiom- eter for measuring current and voltage in lamp testing came to full fruition. It was the first of many highly specialized potentiometers he subsequently designed. ^^ These lines of research continue to the present day at the Bureau and in the electrical standards laboratories abroad. Bureau research alone in the field of modern electrical measurement has been reported in almost 300 separate publications. The early work of Rosa, Wolff, Grover, Agnew, Wen- ner, Vinal, and Lloyd was continued in the 1920's and 1930's by Curtis, Brooks, and Silsbee, by Sanford, Snow, Thomas, and Moon, and from 1940 on by Curtis, Snow and others. ^^ In the early years of electrical research at the Bureau, something more than international agreement on standards of measurement, and provision of quantitative standards and instruments for the industry, was at stake. Out of its research, the Bureau also recommended to the industry equally im- portant, if not equally welcome, standards of a quite different nature, those of service and safety. "S33 (Brooks, 1906). "Lyman J. Briggs, "Early work of the NBS," Sci. Mo. 73, 167 (1951) ; F. B. Silsbee, "Establishment and maintenance of the electrical units," NBS C475 (1949) ; F. B. Silsbee, "Extension and dissemination of the electrical and magnetic units by the NBS," NBS C531 (1952). 110 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) STANDARDS FOR PUBLIC UTILITIES Still developing along the empirical lines evolved in the previous cen- tury, the electrical industry in the early century was as much in need of standards of quality, of performance, of safety, and of service as it was of standards of quantity. A contemporary historian's indictment of the gas industry, that owing to its monopoly in many cities it used fraudulent meters, supplied inferior gas, and collected excessive rates from helpless consumers, applied equally well, he said, to the electric lighting industry, street rail- ways, and the telegraph and telephone companies.^^ The Bureau was more charitable. Talking with utility company representatives, manufacturers, and industrial scientists, Stratton and Rosa found that many of the shortcomings of the industry were "not entirely [the fault] * * * of the manufacturer, but [resulted from] the lack of uniform standards and specifications." ^^ So Stratton reported when in 1904 the Bureau threw out three-quarters of a shipment of electric light bulbs sub- mitted for testing by a Government purchasing office. Not long after, the Bureau of Corporations, the new watchdog agency set over trusts in the Department of Commerce (and predecessor of the Federal Trade Commis- sion, organized in 1915), asked the Bureau to investigate the relative illumi- nating power of a number of kerosene oils on the market. Their quality proved no less dubious than that of some of the gas and electric lamps already determined by the Bureau. Standards of illumination and uniform specifi- cations for the lighting industry were manifestly needed. And because the Bureau's investigation began with the incandescent lamp, photometry or the scientific measurement of light became a function of Rosa's electrical di- vision and remained so for 40 years before it was transferred to the optics division of the Bureau. Before long the Bureau became involved with much more than gas, oil, and electric lamps. In the wake of Roosevelt's crackdown on the trusts, the public service monopolies came under fire. Many States and cities, goaded by the press, the muckraking periodicals, and reforming citizenry, instituted reforms of their own, first attempting to regulate the utilities by legislation and lawsuit and then setting up public service commissions and other local regulatory agencies. Beginning in 1907, city and interurban street rail- ways, gas and water companies, electric light and power companies, the telegraph and telephone, and even the all-powerful railroads found their rates and services increasingly subject to a measure of regulation. "Harry T. Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic: 1885-1905 (New York: Dodd Mead, 1906), p. 315. "Hearings * * * 1906 (Dec. 2, 1904) , p. 232. STANDARDS FOR PUBLIC UTILITIES 111 Very much aware of the weights and measures investigation of the Bureau and its assistance in setting up inspection systems in cities and States, the new public service commissions turned to the Bureau for help. The ensuing research that began with the measurement of lamp light was even- tually extended to almost every aspect of public utility service. One difficulty in establishing a uniform standard of light hinged on the use of the term "candlepower," based by tradition on a natural light source, the light value of an open flame measured by comparison with a sperm oil candle. By reason of the varying sizes and designs of the sperm candles used, the values originally derived from them differed considerably. Thus the "candles" of the electric lamp and illuminating gas industries bore little relation to one another, and even within the same industry the Bureau found the "candle" had little constancy.^® As working standards, some gas and electric companies referred to the English parliamentary candle. Most electric lamp manufacturers, how- ever, had turned to the standard of light maintained by the Reichsanstalt, the Hefner amylacetate lamp, for their "candle" value. The flaws that Rosa's group found in the Hefner standard shortly after the establishment of the Bureau led him to propose as a new standard for the electric lamp industry the mean value of a number of 16-candlepower commercial lamps, and to make this applicable to gas light as well as to electric light. ^*' When the value of this new standard "candle" proved to be only slightly greater than the unit maintained by the national laboratories of England and France, the Bureau proposed an adjustment of its own value looking to an international candle. The proposal was accepted, and in 1909 the new value, based on a simple relationship between the British Hefner unit, the French bougie decimale, and the carbon-filament unit maintained in Washington, became the standard for all photometric measure- ments in this country.^" Interestingly enough, a year earlier, in 1908, Waidner and Burgess in the heat division of the Bureau attempted to construct an absolute standard •^ NBS Annual Report 1909, p. 7. ^° See letter, SWS to Edison Lamp Works of General Electric, Harrison, N.J., Apr. 30, 1904, and attached correspondence (NSB Box 8, lEL) . In July 1904 an instructor at Cornell, Eugene C. Crittenden, was brought to the Bureau to investigate flame standards in photometry. He remained for more than 50 years. Under his guidance the problems of a light standard were finally resolved by the inter- national acceptance of a "new candle" in 1948, based on two accomplishments of the Bureau, the platinum black body standard of Wensel, Roeser, Barbrow, and Caldwell, and the determination of spectral luminosity factors by Gibson and Tyndall. See ch. V, p. 245, and ch. VI, p. 337. "NBS CIS, "The international unit of light" (1909; 3d ed., 1911). The Reichsanstalt's Hefner unit was assigned the value of 0.90 international candle. 112 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) of light, for use in pyrometrical measurement. For lack of suitable materials at that time, 20 years passed before the work was resumed and an absolute prototype standard was at last experimentally realized. With it the incandes- cent lamp standard, always difficult to maintain, was reduced to a working standard. A uniform standard of light was not enough to assure acceptance of the lamps made by the electric industry, and 2 years before adoption of the inter- national candle representatives of the lamp manufacturers in this country met with Government engineers at the Bureau to adopt standard specifica- tions for electric lamps. Although the General Electric Co. had introduced its G.E. metalized (GEM) carbon-filament lamp in 1905, and in 1907 put its first tungsten-filament (Mazda) lamp on the market, the first specifica- tions were based on the Edison carbon-filament lamp, then owned and manu- factured by General Electric and its subsidiaries and the most widely used of electric lamps available. It was agreed that the carbon-filament lamps sold to the Govern- ment must initially consume no more than 3.76 watts per mean spherical candle (the Bureau standard) and their "life," before decreasing to 80 per- cent of their original light value or burning out, must be 300 to 450 hours. Failure of 10 percent of the test lamps in any lot would automatically result in rejection of the entire lot. The details of these specifications were pub- lished in NBS Circular 13 (1907) and revised editions of the circular ap- peared with the adoption of the international candle and as each of the new types of electric lamps came into general use.^* Although Bureau testing of incandescent lamps was the entering wedge, it was not by electric light but by old-fashioned gas light that the Bureau prepared its first proposals for the regulation of a public utility. For years the illuminating gas and oil industry had referred to Hefner and pentane lamps for its photometric standards. How unreliable these stand- ards were the Bureau learned in 1906 when some 40 kerosene oils were sub- mitted to it for tests of their composition and illuminating power.^® Preliminary studies revealed the necessity of a thorough investiga- tion of gas and oil illuminants, and in 1908 the Bureau requested and re- ceived from Congress a special 2-year appropriation to work on this problem, in cooperation with the American Gas Institute. Russell S. McBride, a bright young graduate in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, was brought into Rosa's electrical division, sent to school for courses in gas engi- neering, and put in charge of the investigation."" '* The last edition of C13, "Standard specifications for incandescent electric lamps," was the 10th, in 1923, after which the Federal Specifications Board, recently established in the Bureau of the Budget, took over the function of promulgating lamp specifications. "Hearings * * * 1907 (Feb. 23, 1906) , p. 653. -"° See Hearings * * * 1915 (Feb. 26, 1914) , p. 910. 113 Laboratory setup for testing the candlepoiver of incandescent lamps about 1910. was the brightness test, using a horizontal bar photometer. This Dr. Brook's deflection potentiometer permitted the measurement of direct current and voltage more precisely than with any former laboratory indicating instrument. The potentiometer has come into wide use in the manufacture and rapid checking of precise indicating instruments with direct reference to a standard cell. 114 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) The work that McBride and his group did between 1909 and 1911 resuhed in new methods for calibrating pentane lamps in terms of the Bu- reau candle and laid the basis for establishing standards of gas service, both illuminating and heating. The results were furnished to State and municipal authorities that had requested Bureau assistance in drafting gas service regulations. The Bureau urged that the quality of gas be determined by its heat- ing value rather than its candlepower, as was then the practice in most cities, and that it be sold on the basis of the British thermal unit (Btu), not by the cubic foot. Gas company engineers argued that the consumer was not concerned with heating value, certainly not in gas lamps; but statistical studies by the Bureau showed that the usefulness of gas to the consumer was almost exactly proportional to its heating value, whether used in heating appliances or in gas-mantle lamps, and successfully refuted the claims of some of the companies that the amount of gas used by consumers was not increased when the heating value was reduced. So long as gas was sold by the cubic foot, the gas companies had little incentive to purify their product, and it permitted them to sell excessive and useless quantities of nitrogen and sulfur compounds in their gas, introduced during the manufacturing process.-^ The Bureau circular putting standards of gas service into the hands of public service commissions recognized the hostility of the utilities to the regulations it recommended. It reassured the industry that the Bureau "in no way concerned itself with the financial regulation of gas companies * * * [or with their] works management." It carefully stressed that "the attitude of the Bureau is entirely advisory, and its intention is only to place in the hands of the technical and general public an impartial and, as nearly as may be, accurate summary of the facts which must be considered in connection with the inspection and testing of the quality and distribution of * * * gas." The circular also pointed out that the utilities stood in need of public con- fidence and would therefore gain much from the passage of local laws and ordinances regulating their services.'^ But a decade passed before the in- -^ Elmer R. Weaver, MS, "History of the gas chemistry section, NBS, 1910-1957" (October 1964), pp. 2, 6 (NBS Historical File). "NBS C32 (1912), pp. 5-6. "Drastic" was the word Henry L. Doherty used to describe some of the Bureau's proposed regulations. A self-made gas utilities magnate, whose Cities Service holding company was to take over 53 independent operating companies in 1913 alone, Doherty spoke for the industry when he wrote to the Bureau: "I cer- tainly do not want to see any burdens placed on the gas companies that will be hard for them to meet." Confidential letters, Doherty to NBS, Mar. 9 and Apr. 2, 1912 (NBS Box 7, IGC). The original and somewhat intimidating title of C32, "State and municipal regulations for the quality, distribution and testing of illuminating gas," was changed to "Standard STANDARDS FOR PUBLIC UTILITIES ' 115 dustry accepted the findings of the Bureau and agreed to sell gas on the basis of its heating value. One of the early investigations of the Bureau's gas engineering group led to modifications in the street gas lamps in the District of Columbia that increased street illumination by 50 percent, with no rise in the cost of service.-^ The gas industry was further aided, against its will, by later Bureau investigations of gas appliances, gas stoves, and gas furnaces. The results led to notable increases in gas efficiency and safety, as well as in sales. ^* Dr. Rosa's division continued its research in gas photometry and gas engineering until the early 1920's when the work was transferred to a section in the chemistry division under Elmer R. Weaver, and gas instruments re- search became the province of the weights and measures division. By then the electric light had begun to replace gaslight almost everywhere and gas appliances were rapidly making wood and coal stoves obsolete. For lack of a satisfactory Btu meter, gas continued to be measured in cubic feet, as it is to this day, but in more and more States it was gas monitored by State laboratories equipped with chemical and calorimetric test equipment. Four years passed before the Bureau undertook to establish standards of service for the electrical utilities as it had for gas. Meanwhile, the electrical industry continued to seek Bureau help with its measuring instru- ments, in particular the ammeters, voltmeters, wattmeters, and watthour meters by which its power production and consumer rates were measured. For almost 40 years, beginning with his arrival at the Bureau in 1903, Dr. Herbert B. Brooks dominated this section of the electrical division, devising a long series of ingenious new instruments for more accurate and rapid measurement of current and voltage. And the Bureau aided in other ways. As electric power consumption rose, not only Federal agencies, but business firms, and the public reacted to what they considered excessively high electric bills and called on the Bureau for meter tests. The meters were not at fault. The tests proved them to be much more reliable than generally supposed, and if neglected they actually tended to favor the consumer.'^ The Bureau was swamped as company meters poured in for calibration. As long-distance power transmission developed out on the Pacific coast. Dr. Paul G. Agnew began his pioneer studies in the analysis and testing of current transformers for high-voltage power stations. Out of the work came the insulating materials (dielectrics) program of the Bureau, begun regulations for manufactured gas and gas service" in the second edition, 1913, and to "Standards for gas service" in the third edition, 1915. A fourth edition came out in 1920, and in 1934 was superseded by C405. -'NBS Annual Report 1911, pp. 8-9. "-' See ch. V pp. 263-265. ^Letter, Rosa to Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Dec. 2, 1910 (NBS Box 9, lEP). 116 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) about 1912, and 2 years later the first high-voltage studies.^*' Other investi- gations in Rosa's enterprising electrical division in that decade included preparation over several years of a complete set of copper wire tables, for the American Institute of Electrical Engineers; preliminary studies in color photometry, a development of the gas flame standards work, later transferred to the optics division; and photometric measurement of locomotive head- lights, carried out at the request of several States preparing new regulations for the railroads.^' Another kind of railroad problem came to the Bureau when the Interstate Commerce Commission, aroused by mounting complaints, re- quested that a study be made of railroad, elevator, grain-hopper, and other large-capacity scales used in determining freight charges in interstate ship- ments. Few States inspected scales, the Bureau found, and many railroads maintained such scanty supervision over their freight scales that some were little more than "guessing machines." As a result, railroad freight scales, upon which more than $2 billion annually in revenues were determined, had long been a source of bitter complaint and litigation. So high had feeling run against the railroads. Dr. Stratton reported, that they were more than willing to cooperate with the Bureau in order to "get right" with the public again.'* In 1913, with an appropriation from Congress of $25,000 for the investigation, the Bureau had a special railway scale test car built, hitched it to a series of slow freights headed north, and began testing railroad scales in the States of New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. The results matched the earlier experience with market weights and measures. Allowing a fair tolerance for such scales, between 75 and 80 percent of the track scales tested were candidates for outright rejection, some weighing short by as much as 1,349 pounds with a load of 35,000 pounds and 2,459 pounds with loads of 70,000 pounds. Acquiring another test car, the Bureau extended its investigation of scales into the Midwest and the South.^^ ""The first high-voltage work began in a room in North building in 1911, when the Bureau acquired 3 voltage transformers, none with a maximum voltage exceeding 2,300 volts. The Bureau's high-tension laboratory, adjoining East building and housing two 100,000-volt transformers, was completed in July 1914. Present-day surge generators at the Bureau deliver 2 million volts. (See correspondence in NBS Blue Folder Box 80, and interviews with Dr. Silsbee.) ^NBS Annual Report 1909, pp. 5, 7; Annual Report 1911, p. 8. For the extensive correspondence on the copper wire tables program, 1910-14, see NBS Box 9, lER. Rosa's range of interests is displayed in his article, "The work of the electrical division of the Bureau of Standards," Science, 35, 8 (1912). =' Hearings * * * 1914 (Nov. 26, 1912) , pp. 305-306. '"NBS Annual Report 1912, p. 14, et seq.; Science, 37, 937 (1913) ; NBS C83, "Specifica- tions for * * * railroad track scales" (1920; revised as C333, 1927). For correspond- ence on the investigation, 1912-20, see NBS Box 20, IWS. 117 The first NBS railway scale test car for the standardization of railroad track and master scales. Its equipment consisted of eight 10,000-pound weights, four 2,500-pound weights, 10,000 pounds of 50-pound weights, and the truck itself, a 5,000-pound weight which carried the test load on the rails. Together with small auxiliary weights, the total testing equipment made it possible to determine weights between one-ten thousandth pound and 105,000 pounds or over 50 tons. The crane for handling the weights was powered by an electrical generator driven by a gasoline engine. The equipment, mounted in a standard boxcar, was constructed for the Bureau by the A. H. Emery Co. of Connecticut, which built many of the Bureau s heavy test machines. 118 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) As the railroads, as well as manufacturing concerns and State agencies, set up inspection procedures under Bureau direction and large- capacity scales began to register more nearly true (i.e., with a tolerable error of 200 pounds in 100,000 pounds gross weight), the Bureau test cars with their master scales still continued their rounds, adjusting track scales and calibrating the scale cars that were acquired by the railroads. At a standstill during the war, the Bureau cars resumed their travels across the Nation into the 1930's, when the depression curtailed all but a fraction of this work.^° Yet another railroad investigation was prompted by a series of alarm- ing statistics that appeared in the Interstate Commerce Commission annual report for 1912. Legislation enacted 2 years previously had for the first time required monthly reports of railroad accidents, and the returns, dis- closing deaths and injuries resulting from collisions and derailments alone at the rate of almost 13,000 a year, shocked the Commission into further study. Going back into records for the years 1902 to 1912, the ICC came up with a total of 41,578 derailments caused by broken rails, broken wheels, flanges, and axles. Faulty maintenance, inferior iron and steel, severe service, and excessive wheel loads were suspected. The Secretary of Com- merce urged the Bureau to make a thorough study of the cause of railroad accidents and related problems.^^ Specimens of failed parts, sent to the Bureau by the ICC and the railroads, were subjected to chemical, microscopic, and mechanical tests. In every instance of rail failure, hidden defects or splits, identified as transverse fissures, were found in the interior of the rails. In track in- spections made by the Bureau in the field, as many as four or five of these fissures or points of internal stress were found in a single mile of track.^^ With the cooperation of the big steel companies, the recently organized metallurgical division at the Bureau and the engineering and chemical divisions began an investigation of the constitutents of railroad iron and steel, of heat stress and heat treatment and related problems in the manufacturing process. Here seemed to be the source of failed rails and wheels. The steel industry, behind Europe in this technology, had insuffi- '" See track scale testing appropriations, NBS Annual Report 1934, p. 76. In 1917 Bureau scale testing was extended to the scsJes used in weighing coal at mines (NBS Annual Report 1918, pp. 28-30), and in 1936 to vehicle or truck scales (NBS Annual Report 1937, pp. 61-62). As the programs began, the relative gross errors in the scales on which miners' wages were based and those on which safe operation on the highway depended matched or even exceeded those found earlier in railroad scales. "ICC Annual Report Dec. 16, 1912, pp. 53, 63; letter, Secretary of Commerce Redfield to SWS, July 1, 1913, and attached correspondence, 1913-15 (NBS Box 11, IM) . ^"Report on the formation of transverse fissures in steel parts * * *" (ICC Report by James E. Howard, NBS engineer physicist, 1923) L/C: TF258.U6. STANDARDS FOR PUBLIC UTILITIES 119 cient knowledge of rail and wheel characteristics, the Bureau metallurgists reported, and had not established uniform practices in their manufacture.^^ The Bureau investigation of railway materials, begun with special funds appropriated by Congress in 1912, continued until 1923 when the program was absorbed in the statutory research work of the metallurgical division. Answers were slow in coming, and during the war years railroad accidents hit an alltime peak. But from 1921 to 1930, as better steel through better technology went into rails and rolling stock, the rate of acci- dents from these causes fell by more than two-thirds.^* When the Bureau began its "high iron" investigation, it was already deeply involved in another rail problem, this one concerning city street cars. Of all its public service investigations, few defied the concerted efforts of Bureau physicists, utility company engineers, and municipalities as did the problem of electrolytic corrosion. The trouble began in the year 1887 when Frank J. Sprague laid out the first commercially successful trolley system in this country, 12 miles of track in the streets of Richmond, Va. In the next decade more than 2,000 miles of trolley track were put down in cities and towns and out into their suburbs. By 1917, over 40,000 miles of street and interurban railways spidered the Nation. New York City alone con- tained almost 700 miles of trolley track, and it was actually possible to ride from Brooklyn, up the length of Manhattan, out through Westchester to Bridgeport, on to New Haven and Providence, all the way to Boston by street car, paying a total of 48 five-cent fares for the trip.^^ The majority of the trolleys operated on Sprague's overhead wire system, with the electric current flowing into the rails through the car wheels after passing through the car motor. In theory, the current then flowed back to the generating station by way of the tracks and earth, com- pleting the electrical circuit. In fact, much of the current strayed on its return, following paths of least resistance through underground pipes, cables, and metal structures. The first signs of trouble turned up in Boston in 1902 when, ex- cavating to repair a break, the water mains under Boylston Street were found badly corroded. The moisture and ordinary salts in the earth ''Hearings * * * 1913 (Feb. 10, 1912), pp. 761-762; Hearings * * * 1915 (Jan. 27, 1914), p. 677. ■" From an annual average of 13,000 collisions and derailments in the period 1902-12, they rose to 25,000 in 1918 and 1919, to more than 36,000 in 1920, and then began a steady decline. By 1930 the total had dropped to 12,313. See Annual Table No. 61 in ICC Accident Bulletin Nos. 70 (1918), 74 (1919), 78 (1920), 99 (1930). L/C: HE1780.A2. '^Robert A. Futterman, The Future of Our Cities (New York: Doubleday, 1961), pp. 52-53. 786-167 O— 66 10 120 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) made soil a fine conductor of electricity, and current straying from the trolley tracks into nearby water pipes and gas mains ate away the metal by electrolytic action as the current flowed out again. The same condition was found elsewhere in the lead sheathing around telephone and telegraph wires that had been put underground after the series of city conflagrations around the turn of the century. When elec- trolytic pitting and corrosion was also discovered on underground light and power cables, at the foot of bridge structures, and in the reinforced con- crete supports of piers and buildings, the press, the utilities, and construction people raised cries of alarm. Losses were estimated in the millions of dollars as a result of leakage from gas and water mains, the necessity of repairs and replacement, and devaluation of capital investment, to say nothing of the fire hazard traceable to electrolysis and the losses due to interruption of service. In 1910 Stratton reported to a Senate committee that the problem had become nationwide, and the Bureau was granted a special 3-year appropriation to investigate earth electrolysis and find ways to mitigate its effects. Dr. Rosa's first move was to bring in Burton McCollum and Kirk H. Logan, two talented young electrical engineers then teaching in the Midwest, to head the investigation. Working with municipal authorities and engineers in St. Louis, Chicago, Philadelphia, in Elyria, Ohio, and Springfield, Mass., McCollum and Logan identified the nature of the problem, developed procedures to enable utility engineers to make their own electrolysis surveys, and as the congressional appropriations came to an end, had devised an insulated feeder system as one way of mitigating electrolytic corrosion. The street railways, confronted with litigation brought by the utilities and hoping for a more economical solution than insulation, pressed the Bureau to continue its research. Aware that the problem was yet far from solution, the Bureau resumed the investigation under its regular funds. With the organization in 1919 of the American Committee on Elec- trolysis, representing the principal national associations of utility com- panies, a research subcommittee was appointed to work with the Bureau. Of considerable importance was the development by the Bureau of an earth-current meter in 1921. In maintenance testing of pipe systems that the utilities established, it accurately measured the currents directly re- sponsible for electrolytic corrosion and hence the rate of corrosion. Al- though electrolysis seemed impossible to eliminate entirely, almost 20 methods of mitigating it were devised by Bureau and utility engineers.''*'' ''NBS Annual Reports 1911, et seq.; NBS C401, "Abstracts * * * of NBS publica- tions on stray-current electrolysis" (Shepard, 1933). STANDARDS FOR PUBLIC UTILITIES 121 One phase of the electrolysis problem, the study of the corrosive action of soil itself on metals, without the agency of stray currents, con- tinued. Urged by the utilities, particularly the gas companies transporting and distributing natural and manufactured gas via pipelines cross country and in the cities, the Bureau set up its Corrosion Laboratory in 1922. After more than two decades of research in corrosive-resistant materials and protective coatings, a new approach through cathodic protection came to seem most promising. Its principle was well known, going back to early 19th-century experiments made by Sir Humphrey Davy. As applied to soil corrosion, it involved the use of replaceable zinc anodes attached to the underground structure to be protected, making the structure cathodic or resistant almost indefinitely to the adjacent soil.^' If electrolysis wrought great damage to property but posed little life hazard, almost every other manifestation of electricity, from its generation to its consumption, threatened both. The mining industry that produced the coal for electricity was among the first to electrify mcmy of its operations. But electric sparks often proved disastrous in the mines, and in 1909 the American Mining Congress called on the Bureau for assistance in setting up standards of electrical practice in mines and mining practices.^* The Bureau investigation for mines led to other studies of life and property hazards in the generation of electricity, both in its distribution at high voltages and in its industrial and domestic uses. These in turn promp- ted studies of lightning hazards, particularly as they affected the power in- dustry.'^* In 1914, assembling the data amassed, the Bureau published a comprehensive set of safety rules for the electrical industry. A year later it prepared the first nationwide electrical safety code.^° Like the standards proposed for the gas industry earlier, the electrical safety code met strong resistance for a number of years. The very formula- tion of a safety code, protested the industry, gave imdue publicity to the haz- ards of electricity. Its recommendations, and above all its origin in a Federal ''NBS C450, "Underground corrosion" (Logan, 1945), superseded by NBS C579 (1957); RP1876 (Dension and Romanoff, 1948). '^ NBS C23, "Standardization of electrical practice in mines" (1910). Although the Bureau of Mines for a time protested the NBS investigation, it later acknowledged that its own interest was in "improving mining practices," not standardizing them. Letter, SWS to Director, Bureau of Mines, Oct. 14, 1914, and attached correspondence (NBS Box 9, lES). With the NBS circular as guide, the Bureau of Mines assumed responsibility for electrical safety in mining operations. Letter, SWS to Congressman William B. McKinley, May 28, 1920 (NBS Box 10, IG) . '^ T56, "Protection of life and property against lightning" (Peters, 1915), superseded by M95 (1929) and H13 (1929) ; M92, "Code for protection against lightning" (1929), superseded by H12 (1929), HIT (1934), H21 (1937), H40 (1945). '" NBS C49, "Safety rules * * * in the operation and maintenance of electrical equip- ment and lines" (1914) ; NBS C54, "Proposed national electrical safety code" (1915). 122 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) agency, seemed an infringement of management and a threat to the inde- pendence of the industry. ^^ Not a few city and State commissions, persuaded by the industry that the Bureau was setting intolerable standards, took up the proposed code only to let it languish. The Bureau, with no authority but the congressional appropriation for the work, found it necessary to issue a special circular explaining the code and its scope, "to give [it] more publicity * * * and gain wider acceptance of it." Driving home its point, the circular included accounts of 100 typical electrical accidents, most of them fatal, taken from the newspapers of 1913, as representative of what was happening daily throughout the United States. Yet up to 1920 less than half the States had adopted the code or any part of it." But the years of unregulated operation of public utilities were running out. The State of Wisconsin had set up the first public service commission in 1907. Less than a decade later some 30 States and twice as many cities had established similar commissions or enacted regulating ordinances. Con- fronted with often hastily drawn and confusing rules and regulations by State and city authorities, the utilities in time came to welcome the Bureau's efforts to apply scientific and uniform principles to their services. In 1913 Dr. Rosa reported that the Bureau, in cooperation with the Interstate Commerce Commission or with State commissions, was engaged in almost a score of investigations involving engineering problems and standards relating to the natural monopolies. All in one way or another looked to the resolHtion of "the mutual distrust and mutual misunderstand- *^ The utilities misunderstood Bureau recommendations and for years complained that by its appropriations Congress was "extending the field of regulation and control by the Bureau of Standards over the public utilities of the country." Letter, Acting Secretary of Commerce to Congressman Carl Hayden, May 26, 1919, and other correspondence in NBS Box 2, AG. *' NBS C72, "Scope and application of the national electrical safety code" (1918). Letter, Rosa to Prof. A. C. Lanier, University of Missouri, Feb. 26, 1918 (NBS Box 9, lES) , recounted Bureau efforts to promulgate the code. NBS C72 (3d ed., 1920), also issued as a handbook, H3, said the code had been ap- proved by the American Engineering Standards Committee and adopted by administrative authorities in nearly half the States. The revised fourth edition in 1926 (issued as H4 in 1928) said this revision "more nearly meets the views of the various interests involved, some of which are to a certain extent conflicting." For many years the able assistant of Dr. Lloyd in negotiations on the electrical safety code was- Dr. J. Franklin Meyer, who represented the Bureau on the AESC electrical com- mittee. Much of the success in establishing a national code was through his efforts, and the series of handbooks on safety rules in the operation of electrical stations and electrical equipment that appeared between 1920 and 1944 were the joint work of Lloyd and Meyer. STANDARDS FOR PUBLIC UTILITIES 123 ing existing between the leaders of the financial and industrial world, on the one hand, and the great body of the American people, on the other." *^ Dr. Stratton, however, did not feel that these scattered investigations by the Bureau in a few of the public utilities were enough. Standards of service and safety applied to all the utilities, he told Redfield, the new Secre- tary of Commerce, and could best be provided by making the Bureau the central "place of reference and * * * clearing house for scientific and tech- nical matters pertaining to the public utilities." ** The Secretary agreed, and with his support Stratton proposed to Congress a large-scale study covering the public interest in all utilities, in- cluding gas, water, light and power, telephone, and street railways. It would include "the study of public relations questions, the preparation of specifica- tions regarding the quality of service, methods of testing and inspection em- ployed by municipalities and commissions, safety rules for use by the utility companies to safeguard their employees and the public, and the collection and distribution of information by published papers and through correspondence." *' With little debate. Congress in 1914 appropriated a special fund of $25,000 for the investigation of public utility standards. (By 1920 the annual appropriation exceeded $100,000 and continued at that level into the 1930's.) To allay the misapprehensions and continuing hostility of the utilities, the Bureau in articles, talks, and through friendly editors assured industry that its work was "not inquisitorial * * * but is thoroughly scientific, being handled by impaitial engineers concerned only in the study of economic problems." ^'^ With its congressional appropriation and, by inference, the directive to proceed, the Bureau began the preparation of a circular (4 years after that for the gas industry) on uniform standards for electric service. Thirty-three States and the District of Columbia, in many cases with the help of the Bureau, had already enacted laws regulating electrical service to some degree or another; evidence, said the Bureau circular, that "it is now generally recognized that the supply of electrical service is a natural monopoly and should be regulated." The standards proposed, the circular " Senator Root, quoted in Rosa's article, "The function of research in the regulation of natural monopolies," Science, 37, 579 (1913). " See letter, SWS to Director, Department of Public Works, Philadelphia, Dec. 9, 1913 (NBSBox4, AGO. •*NBS Annual Report 1915, p. 60; SWS letter of Mar. 10, 1914, inserted in Hear- ings * * * 1915 (Jan. 27, 1914), pp. 977-980. " Herbert T. Wade, "The NBS and standards for public utilities," Eng. Mag. 49, 240 (1915). Wade was science and technology editor for the New International Encyclo- pedia and author of many books and articles on weights and measures, the metric sys- tem, electricity, and popular science. 124 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) explained, were principally to unify existing laws and regulations, to ensure the adequacy and safety of electrical service, and to establish procedures for inspection laboratories set up by the State commissions.^" Still educating the public and the utilities, another circular issued in 1917 described the scope of Bureau investigations on behalf of the utilities, its gas and electric work, gas analysis studies, the progress made in gaining acceptance of the national electrical safety code, its work on electrolysis, and its railroad investigations. All these were to continue and be extended as new problems arose, while in the planning stage were a gas safety code and circu- lars on street lighting and on telephone service and apparatus.*'* The Bureau was well on the way to becoming the clearinghouse Dr. Stratton intended, its investigations springing from the need of the utilities to avoid long-drawn out or expensive litigation, or unfair and inconsistent regulation by local authority. As a spokesman for the Bureau said, it assembled facts in field and laboratory studies and reduced them to standard practices, "which may be adopted or not as those concerned may elect, and the published record of which will be available to all." *" Held temporarily in check by the war, by 1920 special appropriations to the Bureau for public utility standards were exceeded only by those for industrial research, the testing of structural materials, and the testing of Government materials. TESTING GOVERNMENT MATERIALS While electrical, optical, pyrometrical and other fundamental measure- ment work at the Bureau grew steadily in the years prior to the war, struc- tural and miscellaneous materials research and testing and calibration soared. In the period 1911-17 the volume of testing work at the Bureau almost tripled, with engineering, structural and miscellaneous materials tests alone rising from 38 percent to 84 percent of the total. ^'^ The establishment of a General Supply Committee in the Treasury Department in 1910, encouraging purchase by specification and standardization of miscellaneous supplies bought for the "' NBS C56, "Standards for electric service" ( 1916, 2d ed., 1923) . *' NBS C68, "Public utility service standards of quality and safety" (1917). Of the cir- culars projected, only that on standards of telephone service later appeared in a new publication, as NBS CI 12 (1921). *° Wade, "The NBS and standards for ijublic utilities." ™ In the fiscal year 1910-11, approximately 62 percent of the 80,100 tests and calibrations carried out in the Bureau laboratories were in weights and measures, temperature, optics, photometry, and chemistry, the remaining 38 percent in engineering, structural, and mis- cellaneous materials. By 1916, less than 16 percent of the year's total of 217,400 tests and calibrations were in basic measurements; all else comprised physical and mechanical tests of materials. In 1917, as the Bureau shifted to wartime research, the number declined to 155,800, still almost 80 percent in materials. See NBS Annual Reports 1911-17. TESTING GOVERNMENT MATERIALS 125 Government, sharply increased Bureau testing. The transfer to the Bureau of the Geological Survey materials program occurred less than a month later. The two events coincided with a Government building boom just getting under way, and Dr. Stratton with his enormous interest in the artifacts of commerce saw for the Bureau an opportunity for research in the widest sense, in the instruments, materials, and products of American industry. The principal structural materials that the Bureau began testing were cement, clays, lime, structural iron and steel, and protective coatings. Mis- cellaneous materials included Government housekeeping items ranging from rubberbands and rubber belting to paper, ink, paints, textiles, and cordage. Initially limited to the determination of their physical, chemical, and me- chanical properties, the tests soon raised problems of their manufacture and performance, requiring full scale investigations. What began as simple test- ing solely for the information of Government agencies in many instances be- came programs of product research, necessitating close cooperation with the industries and trade associations involved. While not entirely representative of the development in each of the materials investigated, a brief account of the Bureau's work on cement is illustrative. In 1911 the cement laboratories of the Bureau tested over 23,900 samples, representing almost 2^2 naillion barrels of cement purchased for Government construction projects. The sampling required 521,000 physical tests, for fineness, specific gravity, tensile strength, and time of setting. These tests did little more than determine whether the samples met current Govern- ment specifications. In many instances the specifications were far from clear or consistent, and nowhere did the Bureau find any two Government agencies purchasing cement upon the same specifications. Early in 1912 the Bureau called manufacturers and Federal engi- neers to the first Portland Cement Conference, in order to consider prepara- tion of a single standard specification. As a result, a Presidental Executive order was issued on April 30, 1912, declaring that all portland cement pur- chased by the Government was to conform to the specification agreed upon. Four years passed before final concurrence was reached and an acceptable specification was adopted by the principals, the American Society for Test- ing Materials and the American Society of Civil Engineers."^^ Even the most elementary of physical and chemical tests of cement disclosed the inadequacy or imprecision of many procedures and instru- ments in common use in the industry, and the test sections and the engineer- ing group at the Bureau set to work developing better test methods and °' NBS C33, "U.S. Government si>ecifications for portland cement" (1912); letter, Secretary of Commerce to Engineer Commissioner, Washington, D.C., Dec. 26, 1916 (NBSBoxl5,IRC). 126 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) equipment. Under Stratton, the lines of research at the Bureau were far from rigid, and he worked hard to keep them from becoming so. After- noons he toured the laboratories inquiring about the work in each, beginning his tour the next day where he had left oil the previous afternoon. In this way he carried ideas and problems from one division to another. Thus it was that Dr. Wilmer Souder, in the weights and measures division, hearing of the extreme difficulty with cement sieve measurements, became interested and devised new 100- and 200-line ruled scales for testing and certifying the sieves used by the cement industry.^- Improved test procedures and instruments disclosed the need for better understanding of the constitution and characteristics of cement ma- terials, and as testing became routine, the Bureau extended its investigations. A petrographic laboratory set up at Pittsburgh studied the raw materials of cement, and an experimental cement plant with grinding apparatus and rotary kilns made it possible to determine changes in cement properties by various methods of manufacture. Next, Bureau staff members developed a granulometric analyzer and separator, to study fine grinding of cement. Before long the test principles and equipment developed for cement were being applied to other building materials, to sands and silica cements, con- cretes and concrete aggregates, mortars and plasters, stucco, marls, stones, and paving blocks. Meanwhile, engineers at the Bureau subjected blocks of concrete and full-scale concrete columns to compression and tensile strength tests. The group at Atlantic City, investigating the action of sea water on cements, mortars, and concretes, established a second exposure station at Charleston, S.C. At Pittsburgh and Washington studies were made of the effect of alkali salts on cement, of temperature on its hardening, of the permeability of cement to water, and its resistance to heat, moisture, and pressure. The steady stream of reports announcing the results of these investigations brought inquiries from architects, engineers, contractors, and builders for still other tests and investigations that they were not equipped to make, and from the general public, for help with cement problems in and around the home. Much the same pattern of development, from simple testing of Gov- ernment purchases to devising test procedures, new instrumentation, and finally to the establishment of a full-fledged technological research program in the product, occurred in other materials used in large quantities by Gov- ernment agencies — in clays and clay products including brick, building tile, porcelain, terra cotta, fire clay, glass, and white-ware china; in lime, lime mortar, and gypsum; protective coatings such as asphalt, felt, paints, oils, NBS C39, "Specifications for and measurement of standard sieves" (1912) ; cor- respondence in NBS Box 19, IWL; interview with Dr. Souder, Jan. 16, 1961. TESTING GOVERNMENT MATERIALS 127 and varnishes; lubricating oils; rubber and rubber materials, papers of all kinds, textiles and fibers, rope and cordage, and leather and leather goods. '^ Gradually a procedure evolved to bring the Bureau's testing program Jnto closer association with the industries making these materials. At an early stage in each investigation, manufacturers' representatives, laboratory personnel, and industrial engineers were invited to the Bureau to discuss their problems. To assure as wide cooperation as possible, the Bureau held conferences with industrial associations, technical societies, and educational institutions concerned with the materials investigated by the Bureau. And research that started with establishment of a specification before long enabled the Bureau to suggest better materials or methods in the manufacture of the product, improved quality control, new uses for the product, and even utiliza- tion of waste materials. The Government testing program that began with a batch of incan- descent lamps in 1904 achieved its main outlines by World War I. Almost three-quarters of the work of the chemical division was in materials testing and research. Dr. Stratton, in addition to heading the optical group, had taken over the new engineering research division, to supervise personally the construction of special test apparatus and to study and test instruments, devices, or machinery of intere^ to the Bureau but outside the province of its scientific divisions.^* And out of the testing of structural iron and steel came another new division, for research in metallurgy, under Dr. George K. Burgess. In charge of high temperature investigations since 1903, Dr. Burgess had done notable work in optical pyrometry, high temperature platinum resistance thermometry, determination of melting points of pure metals, and with Dr. Waidner, chief of the heat division, had proposed a theoretical absolute standard of brightness that was destined to be realized experi- mentally two decades later. Meanwhile, the testing of engineering instru- ments, metals, and metal materials — from alloy wire and flexible copper hose to car couplers, boilers, and girders — to see that they met Government spec- ifications, had led the Bureau into the chemistry of metals, into studies of their electrical, magnetic, and mechanical properties, and into the field of stress measurement. Frequently consulted on these tests. Burgess became especially interested in the properties of metals at high temperatures and in the working of metals in foundry processes. Despite the fact that iron and steel was the industrial giant of America and its metallurgical processes were carried out with great technological virtuosity. Burgess found a distressing lack of application of scientific principles.'"'^ ^ See NBS C45, "The testing of materials" ( 1913) . " NBS Annual Report 1914, p. 15 ^ Burgess, "Metallography and metallurgy at the Bureau of Standards," Met. & Chem. Eng. 10, 1 (1912). 128 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) In 1911, at the suggestion of Henry M. Howe, professor of metal- lurgy at Columbia University and a recently appointed member of the Visiting Committee to the Bureau, Burgess undertook the determination of the critical points on their heating and cooling curves of a number of spe- cial steels. As the investigation continued. Burgess won Dr. Stratton to his proposed plan for a long-range investigation of basic physical metallurgy. In 1913, as the investigation of rail and wheel failures for the Nation's railroads began, his metallurgy section in the heat division was raised to divisional status.'^'' An allied field even more empirically operated at that time than metallurgy was that of electrodeposition, the deposition by electrolysis of metallic coatings on a variety of materials. As electrotyping, it was widely used to produce facsimile plates of metal type from a wax impression. Elec- troforming was employed in the phonograph industry to make master plates and molds to produce recording discs. Electroplating coated metals to im- prove their appearance and protect them against corrosion. In 1913 the Government Printing OfBce asked the Bureau for help with their electrotyping baths. A young man in the chemistry division, Dr. William Blum, who had been preparing standard samples since his ar- rival at the Bureau in 1909, was sent to see what he could do. The GPO, he found, had no method for controlling the composition of the bath, and there was little or nothing in print on the subject. His calculations for re- storing the sulfuric acid content of the solution as it was used up in the plating process solved the difficulty, and Blum's career in electrodeposition began. "^^ Blum's work on the structure of electrodeposits, on current distribu- tion and throwing power in solutions, on pH control of the baths, and on alloy deposition was among the first scientific studies in this country to supplant the hit-or-miss information upon which the industry rested. His introduction in 1921 of electrolytic reproduction of plates used in printing currency at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing replaced the hand method of rolling into case-hardened soft steel, which was capable of approximately 70,000 impressions at best, while electrolytic plates with a chromium sur- face that could be recoated permitted as many as a million impressions. He directed electrodeposition research at the Bureau for over 30 years. Not all Bureau work with metals was to be as rewarding as that in Burgess's division or in Blum's section. One such instance was the ingenious instrument developed during the early work on metals, a new type of permeameter, devised in 1909 by Dr. Charles W. Burrows of the magnetic " Bureau Announcement No. 28, July 1, 1913 (NBS Box 3, AG) . "NBS C52, "Regulation of electrotyping solutions" (1915, 2d ed., 1916); Hear- ings • * * 1918 (Dec. 1, 1916), p. 483; interview with Dr. Blum, Oct. 15, 1963 TESTING GOVERNMENT MATERIALS 129 section, from an idea supplied by Rosa. For several years Burrows' permeameter became the standard instrument for determining the magetic properties of irons and steels, and was used in the preparation of magnetic standard bars which the Bureau sold as standard samples to manufacturers of electrical equipment.'* Elated by early results with the permeameter, Burrows became con- vinced that a close correlation existed between the magnetic and mechanical properties of materials and went on to develop magnetic test equipment which he was certain had great promise. The iron and steel industry had long sought a simple and effective means for detecting flaws produced in metal during the manufacturing process, as in rifle barrels and prison bars, in steel beams and track rails, to avoid the slow and costly destruction tests otherwise necessary. During the Bureau investigation of railroad materials involved in derailments and wrecks, Burrows and his group worked to develop a magnetic method for quick determination of such flaws as the mysterious transverse fissures found in steel rails. So promising did the first tests appear that the Bureau reported the method might "possibly become commercially feasible." '^ In 1918, with special apparatus he constructed incorporating his permeameter. Burrows left the Bureau to set up a magnetic analysis firm to do this kind of testing. Subsequently, other workers at the Bureau found that magnetic and mechanical properties in metals showed little true correlation, and as a result the Bureau abandoned its magnetic standard sample work. For almost a decade the Bureau continued its efforts to develop magnetic tests for proving metals. Except in the case of soft steel and small metal objects the tests in most instances were inconclusive. So, to his disappointment, were Burrows' private efforts, and his firm folded with his death in 1925. Continuing research at the Bureau indicated that with the permeameter it was "not possible to realize any units of magnetic quantity in concrete form," and that it was "only by the greatest care in the selection of test specimens and manipulation of testing apparatus that an accuracy of 1 percent can be attained." «" Although this early work on the magnetic properties of metals — a phase of Bureau research in the physical constants — led to largely negative results, some of the most successful work on the determination of physical constants was soon after to be done in the temperature laboratories of the ^'NBS C17, "Magnetic testing" (1909). =»NBS Annual Report 1915, p. 50; Annual Report 1917, pp. 52-54; Hearings * ♦ * 1920 (Dec. 12, 1918), p. 955. °"NBS C17 (4th ed., 1926), p.. 22, and repeated in its sucessors, C415 (1937), and C456 (1946). 130 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) Bureau, particularly that on the temperature scale and on refrigeration constants. In 1909 the American Society of Refrigerating Engineers, in search of physical data for more efficient refrigeration, asked the Bureau to determine the specific heats of several calcium chloride brines. Upon completion of the work several years passed while the heat division which had made the study went on with investigations in the constants of gases for the use of gas engineers, in heats of combustion, its preparation of standard combustion samples, and its experiments preliminary to establishing new fixed points on the standard temperature scale maintained by the Bureau. Then in 1913, at the request of the refrigeration industry. Congress appropriated the sum of $15,000 for an investigation of the physical constants involved in the construction and operation of large-scale refrigeration ma- chinery, such as that used in meat-packing and other cold storage plants and in refrigerated cars. Under Dr. Hobart C. Dickinson, D. R. Harper 3d, and N. S. Osborne, studies were made of such fundamental constants as the specific heat of ice, the specific and latent heats of the liquids and vapors used in refrigeration, and their density and pressure-temperature relations. Engineering aspects of the investigation included the study of insulating and other materials used in the construction of large-scale refrigeration structures. It was, Stratton reported to Congress, "a splendid piece of work" and a dis- tinct contribution in the field of physical constants.®^ By 1918, when most of the original staff was diverted to military research, the basic investigation had been completed and the accumulated data were reported to the industry. The chemistry division took over certain portions of the work as a long-term project. A year after the study of refrigeration constants began. Congress authorized an appropriation for another special investigation, a study of fire-resistant properties of building materials. Fires were claiming thou- sands of lives annually in this country, with property losses exceeding $250 million — 10 times the rate of any country in Europe. Particularly bafHing to many, in the series of disastrous fires that struck American cities around the turn of the century, was the fact that skyscrapers and lesser structures purported to be fireproof often burned out as completely as the older build- ings. It was an investigation long overdue. Upon surveying city building regulations, Bureau engineers found ihem "full of the most absurd data regulating the properties of materials." ^"^ "Hearings * * * 1919 (Jan. 25, 1918), p. 979; letter, SWS to Secretary of Commerce, May 31, 1922 (NBS Box 17, ITH) . •° [Senate] Hearings * * * 1913 (May 22, 1912), p. 236. Stratton also noted that "The greatest [fire] losses are in the cities having fire laws and regulations" (Hear- ings * * * 1913, Feb. 10, 1912, p. 759) . TESTING GOVERNMENT MATERIALS 131 In many of the codes it was assumed that brick, mortar, plaster, cement, and metals were uniformly fire resistant. No distinction was made between the various kinds and compositions of bricks, cements, metals, and other mate- rials. Rules for their use had been set up without any real knowledge of their melting points or their behavior at high temperatures, without any real knowledge of the stress and support limits of common building materials under attack by fire. • In a joint undertaking with the National Fire Protection Association and the Underwriters' Laboratories, the Bureau aimed at a thorough study of the behavior and safety of building materials in various types of construc- tion under all possible fire conditions. The study would furnish architects, builders, State and city building bureaus, and insurance interests with funda- mental engineering data long needed but nowhere available. In nominal charge of the program was Simon H. Ingberg, born in Norway and trained in structural engineering in this country, who was with a midwestern con- struction company when the Bureau brought him to Washington to plan the investigation. Less than a year later a fire-resistance section was established in the heat division, with Ingberg in charge. But so broad became the scope of the investigation that it soon in- volved almost every one of the scientific and engineering laboratories of the Bureau. It included high-temperature measurements, fire tests, and thermal conductivity studies by the heat division; solution of composition and con- struction problems by the chemistry and structural materials divisions; elec- trical wiring and safety code studies by the electrical division; and the be- havior of structural materials under heat as a special study in the weights and measures division.^^ Besides data furnished city and State authorities on the fire-resistant and heat-insulating properties of common building materials and those used in fire-resistive construction, on fire tests of building columns, wood and metal frame partitions and walls, the Bureau evolved a standard time-tem- perature curve which specified the furnace temperatures to which the elements of a structure became subject in any period of time up to 8 hours. Building materials and construction design were classified by their hours of ultimate fire resistance, making it possible to set up regulations that would insure building into any structure a reasonable degree of fire resistance.®* As the program developed, panel-testing furnaces were constructed and partial buildings, steel and concrete columns and numerous other struc- tures were erected and destroyed in endless controlled tests. For years Bureau members in the project made hurried trips out of Washington to probe *=• NBS Annual Report 1914, pp. 29-30. " See BH14, "Recommended minimum requirements for fire resistance in buildings" (J. S. Taylor, 1931), summarizing more than a decade of research. 53 1 6fi •S O a. 'S S -2 2 'i <10 "a "0 ^ s Q j; fe 5 ^ -5 c i ■= *" ^ 1 4) a. >> to 2 !£> ^ -C ■^ ■S c a c k. ;;, c a IS 4) tj c a ^ W5 _o u ■*^ c l^ "S. B 3 .0 3 4) 'S. t^ e -e E c a -0 a c a c S 1) ■a J c .0 4j 4) ^ ■0 "c -1 — . "a a a v g (ij S «r -S? k. k. >> M2, "a 4) ^ -0 -0 W a ^ © ^ ■k* 70 C c "-k-. « «j 60 c to '■2 '^ tijO ^ ^ t3 a D. a S -0 ^ ^ V *o s> Ofi .1 ■a ■S *o 2 to tu tu k. 1^ a Sb cu oa p^ k. ^ 0. ^ 4) STANDARDS FOR THE CONSUMER 133 in the debris of large city fires for additional data for their studies. Re- search and technological papers, handbooks and circulars recorded the results of the long-term investigation, and were reduced to rules and specifications in new and revised building and fire codes issued by city and State author- ities and by fire insurance associations. Fire research continues in the build- ing research division of the Bureau to the present day. Bureau records suggest that in its second decade, despite more than a score of other research projects going on, three investigations were para- mount, certainly in the eyes of the public, and of great interest to their Con- gressman at budget time. These were the weights and measures, public utility standards, and structural and miscellaneous materials programs. And it was the results of these investigations that were levied on for a remarkable series of circulars that came out just before the war, designed not for Fed- eral or State agencies or for industry, but for the ordinary citizen, the ultimate consumer. STANDARDS FOR THE CONSUMER The publication of lamp specifications in Circular 13 in 1907 — ^the first of its kind — raised a problem that long plagued the Bureau. The cir- cular, available to the public for 10 cents, was a technical report, as were later circulars on textiles, inks, soaps, paper, paint, varnish, and other materials. It was filled with complex data and it made no mention of brand names. How then was the ordinary consumer to identify the lamps or other products tested by the Bureau without the laboratory apparatus described in the circular? In England, the National Physical Laboratory, governed by the Royal Society, was largely supported by private funds, with only meager assistance from the British Government. It was therefore relatively independent, and free if it chose to make open recommendations of products it tested. The National Bureau of Standards, on the other hand, was an agency of the Fed- eral Government. It had come into being at a time when business and in- dustrial interests were synonymous with the national interest. Without power to enforce adoption of standards or specifications, the Bureau could only offer its technical findings to Government purchasing agencies and by making them public suggest that their adoption was in the best interests of industry. Dr. Stratton insisted from the start that the Bureau must be free tc make test results public, but in doing so the Bureau must show no bias. All products and materials tested had therefore to remain anonymous. Yet in hearings before Congress, Stratton made much of the fact that the test and 134 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) So great was the success of the first of the NBS "household" circulars with the American public that Secretary of Commerce Redfield wrote to Stratton: "/ think the time is peculiarly fit now jor the immediate publication of the book 'Materials in the House- hold.' I hope nothing will be allowed to delay it longer and that you may be able to tell me that it will appear within a very short time. It seems to me that it is wanted at this time more than ever before and at least as much as it will be wanted in thv future." Letter, Aug. 22, 1917, NARG 40, Box 118, 67009/5. research work of the Bureau for the Government was of equal service and value to the public. Through publication of the specifications of a Bureau standard, he said, "the public can see what should be allowed * * * and what should not." ^^ That the "public" he referred to was industry rather than the ordi- nary householder, and in some cases only the industry for whom the specifi- cations were established, was evident from the nature of the Bureau reports. The circular on incandescent lamps, for example, specifically stated that "only those thoroughly instructed in the art of lamp manufacture and in the science of photometry should undertake to determine upon the acceptability of lamps under the terms of the specification." While of considerable use to organizations with laboratories possessing the apparatus and skills for "^Hearings * * * 1912 (Dec. 2, 1910), p. 261; Hearings * * * 1917 (Feb. 2, 1916), p. 974; Hearings * * * 1917 (Dec.l, 1916) , p 478. STANDARDS FOR THE CONSUMER 135 making the same tests, the data of the circulars were of little use to the general public. •^''' Long concerned with this apparent impasse, the Bureau found a way around through a series of circulars specifically written for the general con- sumer. The first, Circular 55, on "Measurements for the household," appeared in 1915. The 149-page guide, based on data gathered during the weights and measures investigation, during the electric lamp and gas and electric service and appliance studies of the Bureau, was widely publicized in Edward Bok's Ladies' Home Journal and other publications and became the first best-seller among Bureau publications."' Up to that time 200 to 300 copies of a Bureau publication was cus- tomary and few had exceeded 5,000 copies. Within 3 months 10,000 copies of Circular 55, at 45 cents each, were distributed, the Government Printing Office had in press a second, cheap paper edition of 8,000 copies, to sell at 15 cents, and the Bureau requested a third printing of another 10,000. With a further printing of 5,000 copies early in 1917, a total of 33,000 copies of Circular 55 were sold.®* It was the first work of its kind issued by a national laboratory, or indeed by any scientific agency, and it caused an immense stir. One British publication called it "a treatise on domestic science," the first to demonstrate "the place of science in practical affairs." "■' In simple language the circular described the operation of common household measuring appliances: scales and balances, gas, water, and electric meters, the thermometer, barometer, hydrometer, hygrometer, cooking measures, and household clocks."" The *" In testing for the Government, Stratton told Congress on another occasion, "we are compelled to establish standards of quality, methods of testing and proper specifica- tions * * * which are given freely to the public and to industries, and that is worth tenfold what we save the Government in the purchase of materials" (Hearings * * * 1913, Feb. 10, 1912, p. 755). The ambiguity in the words "public" and "industries" are resolved if Stratton meant that as industry improved the products it sold to the Govern- ment, the public also received a better product. " The most common household weights and measures in C55 were also reprinted on a "kitchen card" and issued as M39 in 1919. Requests for the card reached the half million mark within a year, but Bureau funds restricted the supply to a tenth of that number (NBS Annual Report 1920, p. 51). New editions of the card in 1920 and 1926 included a meter-inch conversion rule and a table of heights and weights of children. Memo, Director of Publications, Department of Commerce, for Secretary of Com- merce, Feb. 16, 1916 (NARG 40, Office of the Secretary of Commere, File 67009/48) ; Director of Publications, Annual Reports, 1916-17. " Editorial, "The American state and household science," Nature, Feb. 17, 1916. See also Herbert T. Wade, "Efficiency in the household," Sci. Am. 113, 448 (1915). C55 seems to have assumed that every household had a hydrometer and hygrometer, or ought to have, but it is not likely that even the hydrometer became a kitchen staple until the rise of home brewing during Prohibition. 786-167 O— 66 11 136 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) succeeding chapters explained how to use these in household operations and in planning and buying for the house. Although no firm names, no trademarks or brand names appeared in the circular, in many instances the Bureau left little doubt of the product involved. A notable example appeared in the section on causes of high bills for electricity wherein the Bureau questioned the quality of some of the electrical lamps then on the market. There was reason to raise thf question. It had come as no surprise to the Bureau when in 1911 General Elec- tric and 33 other companies manufacturing and marketing lamps under GE patents were accused in a Federal antitrust suit of price fixing. The Federal courts ordered General Electric's National Electric Lamp Association (NELA) dissolved, but were less successful in restraining General Electric from "bringing pressure to bear in order to market types of lamps lacking any legitimate demand." This referred particularly to the GE-metalized (GEM) lamp which General Electric, supplying both the lamp and, in- directly, its electric power, continued to manufacture profitably by the millions.'* The Bureau circular on lamp specifications had drawn attention to the inferiority of this old-fashioned carbon-filament lamp over tungsten, especially after Coolidge's development of ductile tungsten in 1911 and Langmuir's use of a gas-filled bulb in 1913 resulted in lamps with 14 times the efficiency and 13 times the light per watt of the early carbon lamps. Though the name "GEM" did not appear in "Measurements for the household," what this particular lamp meant to the consumer was clearly spelled out: "The tungsten lamp has been improved in quality and reduced in price to such an extent that no customer can afford to use carbon lamps, even if he were paid a bonus on each lamp for so doing. Many householders cling to the use of carbon lamps because they are usually supplied free." '- It was true. Anyone could get GEM lamps for nothing, and for a good reason: the GEM lamp used almost three times as much electric current as the tungsten Mazda lamp for equal light values. As Rosa explained, when tungsten lamps were first introduced, the electric power companies, fearing loss of revenue, began the practice of giving away or exchanging burned out GEM carbon lamps and even tungsten lamps of 100 watts or more in order to maintain high power consumption. The public gladly accepted them. Neither Federal frowns nor Bureau exposure of these lamps won the public away from them or reduced their high rate of -manufacture. As late as 1917, Secretary of Commerce Redfield told Dr. 'Mohn W. Hammond, Men and Volts: The Story of General Electric (New York: Lippincott, 1941 ), pp. 335-336, 342, 388-389. NBS C55, p. 84. The warning was repeated in NBS C56, "Standards for electric service" (1916), p. 157. STANDARDS FOR THE CONSUMER 137 Stratton that when he moved into his new home he had to replace 74 GEM lamps with Mazdas.'^ The second Bureau publication designed "to make scientific results available for those with little or no technical training" was Circular 70, a heavy 259-page manual on "Materials for the household," of which 15,000 copies were sold in 1917, the year it came out. It was an excellent summary in simple terms of Bureau testing results in engineering, structural, and mis- cellaneous materials, with chapters on structural materials in the home, flexible materials (rubber, leather, etc.), stationery, cleansing agents and preservatives, fuels, illuminants, and lubricants, and a final chapter on "Quantity in purchase and use of materials." In style and contents Circular 70 anticipated by many years the appearance of such publications as Consumer Reports and Consumer Bul- letin, and had as in its declared purposes to stimulate intelligent interest in household materials, to explain the nature of their desirable properties, aid in their selection, and promote their effective use and preservation. The circular admitted that few standards of quality existed in the market as yet, and where possible it offered simple home tests of materials, such as the use of a spring balance to test the strength of thread. If home tests were not possible, the Bureau could only recommend that householders "buy of local reliable dealers, as learned from common repute or experience." Sounding very like the voice of Stratton himself, the circular noted that buying well- known brands "may not be an economy, but it is some safeguard as to stability of quality. There is no certainty, however, that the quality will improve with the art." '^ Neither the circular on "measurements" nor that on "materials" seems to have been revised for a second edition, perhaps because of the size of the printing in the first instance and the transitory nature of the subject matter in the second. More enduring was the third publication. Circular 75, "Safety in the household," which came out in 1918 (10,000 copies), was revised in 1932, and again in 1948.' - If the inspiration of the first two ''Letter, Redfield to SWS, Mar. 16, 1917, and letter, Rosa to Redfield, Mar. 27, 1917 (NBS Box 8, lEL). Edward Bok told Stratton that after reading "Measurements for the household," he found and replaced 140 GEM lamps in his home (letter, SWS to Redfield, Jan. 15, 1916, NBS Box 21, PA) . The lure of the GEM lamp seems comparable to a present-day continuing phenomenon, the futile efforts of the Food and Drug Administration to warn the public against costly and useless food diets, drugs, and nostrums. The warnings in FDA and medical pub- lications apparently reach no greater public than did the NBS circulars. " NBS C70, p. 11. '■ NBS C75 was superseded by C397 ( 1932) and C463 ( 1948) . A consolidated edition of the three circulars appeared as "Measurements, materials, and safety for the house- hold" in 1918. For further note of these circulars, see letter, SWS to Secretary of Com- merce Hoover, Jan. 25, 1922 (NBS Box 21, PP) . 138 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) circulars may be traced in some degree to the muckraking and reform move- ments of the period, the "safety" circular, as the introduction said, was prompted by the increase in hazards "in modern times from the service of gas and electricity and the use of such dangerous articles as matches, volatile oils, poisons, and the like." Drawing on the mass of safety code data gathered by the electrical, chemistry, engineering, and materials divisions of the Bureau, the 127-page handbook on safety in the home covered electrical hazards, lightning hazards, gas, fire, and chemical hazards, and in a final chapter covered falls, cuts, scalds, bums and other miscellaneous accidents in the home. Nothing since the Bureau's weights and measures crusade made so great an impression on the public as did the publication of these circulars, and for years the Bureau was identified in the public mind with testing of household materials and appliances and besieged with correspondence re- questing personal help with home problems. Reported for the most part in specialized publications and periodicals, the work of the Bureau in electricity, in thermometry, photometry, calorimetry, radiometry, polar- imetry, and spectroscopy, in metallurgy and in chemistry, was known only in scientific and technical circles. It came as a shock to Dr. Stratton when late in 1915 the Secretary of Commerce told him that Thomas Edison, un- aware of the fundamental research carried on at the Bureau, had suggested that the Government establish such a laboratory.^^ Four years later, better acquainted with the Bureau, Edison wrote saying that its recent publication. The Principles Underlying Radio Com- munications, was "the greatest book on this subject that I have ever read * * *. Usually, books on radio communication are fairly bristling with mathematics, and I am at a loss in trying to read them." " The early radio work at the Bureau introduced a large public to the scientific research of which it was capable. RADIO, RADIUM, AND X RAYS - In the autumn of 1904 a young man came to the Bureau with a new book and an assignment in a new field of physics, neither of which aroused more than passing interest at the time. He was Dr. Louis W. Austin, an assistant professor of physics at Wisconsin who had spent the past 2 years as a guest worker at the Reichsanstalt in Berlin. Returning home by way of ™ Personal letter. Secretary of Commerce to Secretary of the Navy, Oct. 11, 1915 (NBS Box 3, AG) . "Letter, Edison to SWS, Apr. 25, 1919 (NBS Box 4, AGO. He referred to Radio Pamphlet 40, prepared by the Bureau and issued by the Signal Corps in March 1919. RADIO, RADIUM, AND X RAYS 139 Cambridge, he picked up a book just issued by the university press, Ernest Rutherford's Radioactivity. Rutherford's book was the first summary account of the experimental work of Roentgen, Becquerel, Thompson, Mme. Curie, and Rutherford himself in the decade following the discovery of radium and X rays. A young man in Rosa's division, Llewelyn G. Hoxton, given the book to discuss at one of the weekly meetings of the Bureau staff, recalls that when he sat down. Dr. Rosa came over and said, "Let me see that book!" But little in the book except the chapter on methods of measurement, describing the crude "electrical method" as the best then available for the quantitative de- termination of radiation and emanation, seems to have interested Rosa, for he returned the book the next morning.^* A second edition of Radioactivity, enlarged by the avid research abroad from 382 to 558 pages, appeared a year later, and Rutherford himself, who won the 1908 Nobel prize in chemistry for his work on alpha particles, visited the Bureau to lecture on radium and radioactivity not long after.^'' Such was the Bureau's introduction to the coming age of nuclear physics. Dr. Austin himself was not particularly interested in radioactivity but in another kind of emanation and a still newer phenomenon, that of radio telegraphy or wireless, as it was called. Radio as we know it today was as yet remote, although in 1901, the same year that Marconi received his wireless signals across the Atlantic, Reginald A. Fessenden, recently appointed head of electrical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh but still then with the U.S. Weather Bureau, heard at a distance of a mile the first faint voice by electromagnetic waves over his wireless apparatus.*" Six years later Lee de Forest invented his audion detector or three-element tube and applied it to the long-distance telephone. When used in 1912 to amplify a feeble audio-frequency current, modern radio was born. Although experimentation continued, much of it in secrecy and attended by barbaric litigation, voice radio remained primitive, found no application on the battlefields of World War I, and was not developed commercially until the 1920's. For the first two decades of the century '"Interview with Dr. L. G. Hoxton, Charlottesville, Va., Nov. 27-28, 1961 (NBS His- torical File). Austin's copy of Radioactivity is in the NBS library. ™ Dr. Hoxton recalls Rutherford's visit to the Bureau. No record of the visit has been found, but in his biography of Rutherford (Cambridge University Press, 1939, p. 129), A. S. Eve says: "About 1905 the world caught fire and radium was the vogue. * * * A great number of Universities and Societies poured in appeals to Rutherford to come and lecture to them about radium. He did what he could." '"Helen M. Fessenden, Fesseden: Builder of Tomorrows (New York: Coward-McCann. 1940), p. 81. 140 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) the problems still posed by long distance radiotelegraphy were sufficient to keep scientists and electrical engineers fully engaged looking for useful solutions. Austin came to the Bureau as a guest worker to investigate the practical application of radiotelegraphy for the Navy, and from 1908 to 1932 headed the U.S. Naval Radiotelegraphic Laboratory at the Bureau (in 1923 renamed the Laboratory for Special Radio Transmission Re- search). Shortly after Austin's arrival, the U.S. Army Signal Service also requested space in the Bureau's electrical division, where their engineer, E. C. Cramm, investigated military applications of wireless.®^ Not until 1911 did the Bureau itself enter the wireless field, when an engineer in one of the new commercial "electric signaling" companies sent in a wavemeter (frequency meter) for calibration. To set up a standard for this instrument was a problem in inductance and capacity, and the Vv'avemeter was turned over to J. Howard Bellinger, who had come to the Bureau in 1907 from Western Reserve where he had been a physics instructor. He was then taking courses locally for his doctorate in physics, had become interested in the high frequency phenomena associated with radiotelegraphy and as a result was the acknowledged wireless "expert" at the Bureau. Soon Dellinger headed a new section in the electrical division called radio measurements. Earlier that year a draft of regulations on the use of wireless as a safety aid in navigation, prepared by Prof. A. G. Webster of Clark University for a forthcoming London Wireless Conference, was submitted to the Bu- reau for review. Dellinger studied the paper and among other suggestions proposed that the word "wireless" everywhere in the text be changed to "radio," in keeping with its connotation of radiation. And "radio" rather than "wireless" became the accepted name in this country. Bureau research in radio began in earnest with an investigation by Dellinger of ammeters used to measure the high frequency current in transmitting apparatus. As determined then, ammeter measurements were subject to considerable margin of error, and Dellinger 's study resulted in a much needed heavy-current standard for radio frequencies. The work earned him his Princeton doctoral degree in 1913.**" No conflict of work existed in the several radio laboratories that had been set up at the Bureau, for Austin and Cramm were working on " Letter, Chief Signal Officer to Secretary of War, Oct. 18, 1909, and attached corre- spondence (NBS Box 10, JEW). Although Cramm's tenure at the Bureau is uncertain, Austin headed the Navy laboratory at the Bureau until his death in 1932, publishing much of his research on radio signal intensities, long-wave transmission phenomena, atmospheric disturbances, and long-wave radio receiving measurements in Bureau publications. See Science, 76, 137 (1932). ^"S206, "High-frequency ammeters" (Dellinger, 1913). RADIO, RADIUM, AND X RAYS 141 various means of generating and detecting low frequency (long distance) radio waves, while Dellinger concentrated on higher frequency waves, those used by experimental broadcast stations. Considerably later his investiga- tions moved into still higher frequency wave ranges, where they became the short waves of long-distance transmission, and after that into very high frequencies, where he first confronted the problems whose challenge con- tinues to the present day, those found in communication via outer space. It was also in 1911 that Frederick A. Kolster was brought to the Bureau by Dr. Rosa to investigate some of the difficulties in radio engineering coming into the electrical division from industry. A former assistant in Lee de Forest's laboratory in New York, Kolster proved to be one of the most inventive mechanical geniuses ever to work at the Bureau. As his first as- signment, he went to the Wireless Conference in London as technical adviser to Professor Webster. On the night of April 14, 1912, 2 months before the Conference, the White Star liner Titanic, on its maiden voyage, struck an iceberg 800 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia. The disaster disclosed how much an innova- tion maritime wireless was at that time. The scarcity of trained telegraphers often put ships' wireless in the hands of inexperienced operators who found signals hard to catch, wjre hampered by the necessity of having to relay their messages, and to send frequent repeats before their messages — most of them for passengers beguiled by the novelty — made sense on shore. Four ships were within 60 miles of the Titanic when it sent out its first call for help. All at various times that day had warned the Titanic of the ice fields in the vicinity. One, the Californian, was less than 10 miles away when the CQD went out But its wireless operator, rebuffed earlier by the operator on the Titanic for interfering with private messages going ashore, had shut down for the night. Of the others, only the Cunard liner Carpathia 58 miles away, dared to chance the ice field in which the Titanic lay sinking. When it arrived a bare handful of lifeboats and rafts drifted in the area where the Titanic had foundered more than hour before.®^ Shocked by the disaster but ignorant of the catalog of human errors that had caused it, the Wireless Conference meeting in London gave its at- tention to the technical aspects of radio it had met to resolve. Of the two wavelengths then used by international maritime wireless, the Conference agreed that the 600-meter wavelength be restricted to the use of ships at sea. It also agreed that in order to reduce interference from the spark transmitters on ocean liners, the decrement or rate of decay of the waves emitted by the transmitting antenna should not exceed the log 0.2. "'Walter Lord, A Night to Remember (New York: Henry Holt, 1955), pp. 36-38, 171- 172; Logan Marshall, Sinking of the Titanic . . . (New York: John C. Winston, 1912), p. 299. 142 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) The Conference ruling on interference became the second radio law enacted by the United States. (The first, in 1910, had called for installation of radio apparatus on all steamers, foreign and domestic, operating out of American ports. ) ^^ Congress, aroused to the importance of radio, also called for more efficient radiotelegraphic service, restriction on the free use of wave- lengths, and the licensing of commercial and amateur radio stations. Com- merce's Bureau of Navigation, made responsible for these matters, called on the Bureau of Standards to investigate the bases for establishing the laws asked for by Congress, including better radio equipment, test procedures, and standards.*^ Congress turned over enforcement of the interference ruling to the Bureau of Navigation, and at its request Kolster was assigned to devise a portable measuring instrument for this purpose, to be used by ship radio in- spectors. The decremeter he designed, measuring wavelength as well as decrement, was at once adopted by the Bureau of Navigation and by the War and Navy Departments.*" The Bureau of Navigation also called for a radio beacon system to aid ship navigation in fog and rough weather. Between 1913 and 1915 Kolster developed an improved radio direction finder or radio compass — the forerunner of modern aviation instrument landing systems — that enabled a ship to establish its position by determining with high accuracy the direc- tion of sending station signals.*' But it took more than twice as long to put the new direction finder into operation as to design it. The Bureau of Lighthouses proved reluctant to use scarce funds to install beacon stations along the shore until ships were equipped, and ship captains, traditionally conservative, refused to have all that machinery — and electrical, at that — cluttering up their ships. "Commerce's Bureau of Navigation C211 (1910) announced that after July 1, 1911, by the Radio Act of June 24, 1910, it became unlawful for any ocean-going passenger steam- ers to sail without radio communication apparatus. After the Titanic, the Radio Act was amended to require two operators, instead of one, on constant watch; an auxiliary power source; and extended the act to include cargo ships. See correspondence with NBS and copy of the act in NBS Box 10, lEW; also Paul Schubert, The Electric Word: the Rise of Radio (New York: Macmillan, 1928), pp. 63-65. "'' Earlier, in the summer of 1912, Waidner and Dickinson of the Bureau's heat division, aboard Navy patrol boats, investigated methods of detecting the proximity of icebergs. Most promising seemed temperature variations, but they proved as great far removed from icebergs as near them. NBS Annual Report 1914, p. 28, and S210 (1914). Later a salinity meter was developed for the International Ice Patrol to locate icebergs and reported in RP223 (Wenner, Smith, and Soule, 1930). ^ NBS Annual Report 1914, p. 35 ; S235, "A direct-reading instrument for measur- ing * * * decrement" (Kolster, 1915) ; correspondence in NBS Box 10, lEW. ''NBS Annual Report 1916, p. 56; S428, "The radio direction finder * * *" (Kolster and Dunmore, 1922). The original direction finder was the invention of two Italians, Bellini and Tosi, in 1907. See Schubert, pp. 139, 154. RADIO, RADIUM, AND X RAYS 143 The Kolster decremeter for measuring wavelength and decrement was de- veloped between 1912 and 1914 for the use of the Department of Com- merce's Bureau of Navi- gation and for the armed An early radio receiving set constructed by the Bureau, designed, along with a separate transmit- ter, for use on ships of the Lighthouse Service, Bureau of Navigation, and the Coast and Geo- detic Survey. It was a closed-circuit type of receiver using a vari- able condenser of the decremeter type and with a crystal detector connected across the con- denser. This particular set served as a wavemeter and decremeter as well as radio receiver. It was 1919 before the impasse was resolved and the direction finder was successfully demonstrated and officially approved. Soon after, Kolster left the Bureau to set up a company to manufacture his radio compasses. When success eluded him, he turned to the development of radio receiving sets. The radio boom was on, he was hired away by industry, and his inven- tive genius was exploited, but he got none of the millions made through his 144 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16) work or from the Kolster Radio Corp. set up to trade on his name. He died "a magnificent failure," as he called himself, in 1950.*® Until 1917 the electrical work of the Bureau centered around the power industry. There was almost no research in wire telephony or tele- graphy, radio research was just beginning, and except for Kolster's radio direction finder. Bureau efforts were concentrated on more precise deter- minations of the laws and physical quantities involved in radio apparatus, in trying to maintain and improve measurements and standards, and supply- ing basic information.*'' Nevertheless, some tests and calibrations had been made of available radio apparatus, of circuit components, of various kinds of detectors (electrolytic, Fleming valve, audion), and of the new continuous- wave techniques that were coming in with radiotelephony, putting an end to damped-wave (spark) transmission. For use with Kolster's direction finder, the radio section had devised an automatic device that sent out a characteristic signal once every minute, to guide incoming ships in fog. Un- able as yet to obtain specialized equipment from industry, the laboratories also built and installed a number of radiotelegraphic units on Coast Survey steamers and tenders of the Bureau of Lighthouses, enabling the latter to maintain communication between lighthouses and ships at sea.®" The Bureau received its first special appropriation for radio research from Congress, the sum of $10,000 "for the investigation and standardiza- tion of methods and instruments employed in radio communication," in 1915. A year later Congress appropriated $50,000 for the construction of a radio laboratory building, a two-story structure erected south of the elec- trical laboratory, with two 150-foot antenna towers adjacent to the labora- tory. The ensuing pioneer work in radio at the Bureau was to prove its worth when war came. Radio and radioactivity, as previously noted, arrived at the Bureau on the same day in 1911, but laboratory interest in radium and radiation, phenomena actually far removed from radio, did not begin until late in 1913. It may well have been the use of electrical methods for the measure- ment of radioactive quantities that made it seem logical to establish this work in Rosa's division. Or it may have been, as Dr. N. Ernest Dorsey said, that the disintegration hypothesis promulgated by Rutherford, together with his conjectures on the structure of the atom and the phenomena associated with radioactivity, were all "bound up with our ideas of electricity." ^^ ^ Letter, Lloyd Espenschied, Bell Telephone Laboratories, to A. V. Astin, Feb. 18, 1954, and attached correspondence on early radio at NBS (NBS Historical File). ^"George C. Southworth, Forty Years of Radio Research (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1962), p. 32. °° NBS Annual Report 1916, pp. 55-56. "'Dorsey, Physics of Radioactivity (Baltimore: Williams and Williams, 1921), p. 33. 145 "S s ^1 ■w fc c ^ « ^ w 60 Wi e e 0. w i^ -c- «i 60 * C 60 ^ e to -o e to ^J ^ -e e ■" •" to a 60 "13 60 "^ 2 e ■2 to to "a, c -s s C3 "o, 60 .Si ^ "i s 's to ■g ^ 3 O. « 8 ^ S .« 3 "^ S THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30) CHAPTER V THE POSTWAR WORLD The United States emerged from its brief participation in the war by far the world's richest and most powerful Nation. Disillusioned with the chronic sickness of Europe and rejecting the power a world in chaos offered, America deliberately turned its back and set about building a national structure of self-sufficiency and plenty on the broad industrial base and the techniques of mass production it had acquired during the war. In the mid-1920's a social historian spoke simple truth when he said that "A dynamic history of the period might give a volume or two to the automobile and a foot-note to affairs of state." ^ New industries born of the war were soon to make the Nation inde- pendent in nearly every manufactured necessity. The revolution in the coking industry and the confiscation of German patents upon our entrance into the war made possible the production of many of the dyes, medicines, and industrial solvents formerly obtained from Germany, and led to such important new industries as the making of synthetic plastics and fibers." The new chemistry and advances in metallurgy joined with electric power to revolutionize the extraction and refining of copper and iron ores, the cracking of petroleum, and to make giants of the automobile, motion picture, radio, and telephone industries. With the introduction of the closed car at popular prices in 1922, the automobile by itself almost created a new industrial revolution through its mass consumption of steel, nickel, lead and other metals, plate glass, leather, textiles, rubber, gasoline, and oil, and its demand for roads and highways, gas stations, garages, and roadside accommodations. Surpassing even the growth of the automobile and electrical industries in the decade after the war was the building and construction industry. Government construction of streets, highways, and public buildings alone are ' Robert L. DufEus, "1900-1925," Century, 109, 488 (1925) . 'Preston W. Slosson, The Great Crusade and After: 1914-1928 (New York: Macmillan, 1930), p. 18. The Trading-with-the-Enemy Act of Oct. 6, 1917 permitted the President to license the use of German patents by American firms, under the administration of the Federal Trade Commission. Frederic L. Paxson, American Democracy and the World War, II, 132. 221 222 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30) said to have "used more capital and employed more men than in any single line of private enterprise." '■' At the same time, private construction, con- suming vast quantities of brick, steel, stone, tile, cement, lumber, hardware, and plumbing supplies, changed metropolitan skylines and pushed up row houses and apartments along ever-lengthening radii out of the cities. Technology and the plant facilities to make consumer products were far in advance of demand. "For every hundred people in American cities in 1920 there were only thirteen bathtubs and six telephones. One Amer- ican in every three had an automobile, but not one in ten thousand had a radio. Almost no farmhouses, and but one in every ten city homes, were wired for electricity; only in such homes, therefore, were there potential customers for washing machines, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, floor lamps, incandescent bulbs, fans, and flatirons." * In city and suburb, technology thus stood ready to invade the home as the automobile, radio, telephone, bathroom plumbing, and kitchen appliances became essentials of the good life. Wages rose steadily, but not fast enough to sustain the buying power needed by the pace of mass production, and advertising and installment buy- ing became giant adjuncts of industry to maintain mass consumption.' The promise of the decade appeared in the extraordinary boom that followed the end of wartime controls as industry, enriched by research and mechanization, sought to satisfy pent-up demands.'^ There was to be a severe postwar depression but it was delayed until late in 1920. ^Thomas C. Cochran and William Miller, The Age of Enterprise: A Social History of Industrial America (New York: Macmillan, 1942), p. 298. Highway, road, and street construction expenditures, for example, rose from just over a half hillion dollars in 1920 to a billion in 1921 and close to two billion by 1928. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics, p. 382. * Ibid., p. 309. All these appliances, as well as air conditioners, electric ranges, water heaters, and garbage-disposal units, though some were yet crude and costly, were on the market before the end of the decade. In the 28 million homes in the United States at the end of 1928, it was estimated that 19 millio'n we're wired for electricity, 17 million had an automobile outside the door, 13 million had a telephone, 13 million a phonograph, and 9 million had factory-built radio sets. Dellinger, "Radio," in A. B. Hart and W. M. Schuyler, eds.. The American Year Book, 1929 (New York: Am. Year Book Corp., 1930) , p. 460. ^ Between 1900 and 1920 the volume of manufactured products went up 95 percent while population increased only 40 percent. Duffus, "1900-192.5." ' In its haste to convert to peacetime production, industry often neglected new materials or sources developed during the war. Pointing specifically to the renewed but now unnecessary importation of German clays for glassmaking. Dr. Stratton deplored the "tendency on the part of manufacturers to revert to the old order of things just as soon as they- could * * * [following] the path of least resistance and of the least financial risk." Letter, SWS to A. V. Bleininger, Feb. 3, 1919 (NBS Box 14, IR). THE POSTWAR WORLD 223 At the National Bureau of Standards the boom seemed for a time more like disaster. With the war over, it expected the exodus of the sci- entists detailed from other Government agencies and those on leave from colleges and universities. But it found irreplaceable its loss of regular Bureau members to the siren call from industry for trained investigators. Attracted by salaries which in many instances were twice those available at the Bureau, over 78 percent of the total force of appointed staff members left in the 7 months following the armistice. Some positions had a succession of occupants; in others replacements simply could not be found.^ Subprofessionals (aids, apprentices, and mechanics) entered the Bureau at as little as $720 a year and could hope for no more than $2,740. Most, with any length of experience, were caught in the $1,140-$1,240 bracket. Professionals with degrees and experience came in at $1,440. Some among the key members were getting as little as $2,240, most were at $4,000, and only a few of the division chiefs had attained the maximum possible, $4,800. This was at a time when a bookkeeper in downtown Washington could make $100 a month, "with meals." University salaries were sufficiently higher than those paid by the Government for Dr. E. W. Washburn to turn down the maximum of $4,000 that the Bureau had to offer. (He came 6 years later, in 1926, at the division chief level.) Industry paid close to twice the Bureau salary at every level of training and experience.® The cost of living in 1920 was relatively high and left little for ameni- ties. A Bureau apprentice making $65 a month before taxes could find room and breakfast within a mile of the laboratories for $20 a month. Not far away, a front room rented for $25, and meals were another $30. For a family, a four- or five-room furnished apartment with steam heat and electricity could be found on the way downtown for $110, or 2 miles north of the Bureau, in Chevy Chase, for $100. Men's suits were fairly expensive, running from $25 to $85 for all wool and $15.50 to $25 for Palm Beach or mohair, with tropical worsteds in between. Hats were $4 to $8 and shoes $7 and up. Although probably 15 or 20 on the Bureau staff owned a car by 1920, it was seldom driven except on weekends and almost everyone still rode a bicycle to work or ' NBS Annual Report 1919, p. 279. For a list of the physicists who left the Bureau for industry in the 1920's, see letter, LJB to Secretary, American Institute of Physics, Feb. 24, 1936 (NBS Box 395, ID-Misc.). " Interview with Dr. William Blum, Oct. 15, 1963. By the end of the decade, salaries at the Bureau had gone up by almost one-third. Living costs (a room with two meals a day was $45 to $55 a month) had risen only slightly. See NBS M94, "Scientific and technical positions in the NBS" (1929) . 224 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30) came by streetcar. Some of the prices for new automobiles that year read like Bureau salaries. While the Ford runabout was only $395, the sedan cost $795. The Dort "fourseason" sedan was $1,870, the Auburn sedan $2,775. Nor could used cars have been very popular when a 1919 Chevrolet cost $550 and an Overland $1,000. For the sporty youth on his own, however, there was that Stutz 6-cylinder roadster, vintage not given, going for $375." Few below the scientific grades in the laboratories could afford any of them, just as few could afford to stay at the Bureau. A loyal nucleus that included most of the key members of the staff remained, even though many of those in the lower grades who elected to stay were, Dr. Stratton said, being paid "less than a living wage." In its search for replacements, all that the Bureau had to offer was ''a reasonably good entrance salary to young men just out of college." ^° With industry bidding for them, too, even recent graduates could not be found in any numbers and the Bureau staff fell from 1,150 members in July 1919 to 981 a year later, and 850 by 1921. Few eligibles appeared on the civil service registers and answers to advertising appeals grew meager. The Bureau turned to industry itself in an effort to restaff its laboratories. Dr. Stratton some years earlier had warned that the schools were not turning out even a tenth of the scientific and technical men needed in in- dustry, and as a consequence industry raided the Bureau in its search for trained men. In 1916, as industry expanded to feed the war machines in Europe and Bureau losses of skilled workmen went up, Stratton proposed to Congress that in order to relieve the pressure on his staff the Bureau make its facilities available to industrial specialists, technical experts, and re- searchers, and by setting them to work on problems in which both they and the Bureau were interested, "train them up for the industries." He cited as example a linoleum company which had recently asked to send a chemist to the Bureau who after 6 months' training would return and set up a laboratory in the plant where he worked. Without authorization or funds for this type of employment, the Bureau had to deny the request.^^ Although he brought up the matter at hearings each year thereafter. Congress said no. By the summer of 1919 what Stratton had previously called "more or less a notion of mine" had become stark necessity, and he turned to the trade associations served by the Bureau, proposing that where they needed specific researches on important problems affecting their in- dustry, they send qualified men to the Bureau to do this research. It was " Advertisements in the "Washington Evening Star," April and October 1920. "NBS Annual Report 1920. p. 279: Annual Report 1921, p. 272. "Hearings * * * 1918 (Dec.l, 1916) , p. 483. THE POSTWAR WORLD 225 agreed that these "research associates" would be paid by industry, and since their work was for the industry at large, rather than for any single company, the results would be published by the Bureau and so made available to all.^- Two years later, in 1921, six associates in metallurgy were appointed by the Director. By 1923, 21 associates, representing 18 industries, were at the Bureau, and by 1925 a total of 61 associates, maintained by 36 organiza- tions, were at work, most of them sponsored by trade associations but also among them a number from private research firms, science foundations, and Government agencies.^^ At the heels of the staffing crisis came the brief but severe depression of 1920-21. Overnight at the end of the war. President Wilson's War In- dustries Board and other emergency regulatory agencies had been dissolved, ending nationwide Government control of the economy. For a time unfet- tered business boomed, but as prices soared out of sight, production and em- ployment fell off and thousands of new companies, notably in the automobile industry, collapsed. Soon there was widespread criticism of the high cost of living, which since 1916 had seen the dollar reduced in purchasing value to 45 cents; of the new income tax and surtaxes, seriously felt for the first time since their imposition in 1913; and charges of inefficiency, extravagance, and overdevelopment throughout the Government.^* Reacting to "the avalanche of disapproval" aimed at the Wilson ad- ministration. Congress lashed out at "the army of clerks * * * and cro- cheting stenographers" said to be infesting every department of the Govern- ment, and at appropriations hearings hacked away funds, research and operating alike. The cuts that could not be compromised were annoying but not deep. The Bureau closed several of its branch offices and began saving its cinders to make cinder-concrete paths between the buildings. As Stratton "Hearings * * * 1919 (Jan. 25, 1918), p. 984; letter, SWS to Managing Director, Na- tional Industrial Conference Board, June 26, 1919 (NBS Box 10, IG). Most responsive were industries which had small research laboratories or none at all, and had less to fear from patentable discoveries, as in dental materials, terra cotta, tile, and other building materials, pottery, textiles, and color research. "NBS Annual Report 1921, p. 240; Annual Report 1923, pp. 4-5; NBS C296, "Research associates at the Bureau of Standards" (1925). The plan further solved staffing diffi- culties when a number of the research associates subsequently left industry and came to work for the Bureau, among them Dr. Paul D. Merica, Dr. John R. Cain, R. G. Walten- berg. Dr. I. G. Pr'est, N. S. Osborne, Dr. H. F. Stimson, N. D. Booth, J. A. Dickinson, Dr. Deane B. Judd, Dr. F. G. Brickwedde, T. S. Sligh, Jr., and Dr. A. V. Astin (see list of associates in C296) . " The top rate of tax on personal income, set at 7 percent in 1913, was slightly reduced during the 1920's. By 1932 it was up to 25 percent, and during the depression years it reached a high of 63 percent. 226 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30) later reported to Congress, "In the program of economy adopted, some re- trenchments were made." ^' Stirred by the debates in Congress and the attacks in the press and periodical literature on Federal spending, Dr. Rosa, with Dr. Stratton's approval, cleared his desk and began work on a series of studies in the cost and efficiency of the Federal Government, in answer to the outcry. For their view of the question of science in Government, particularly as it affected the Bureau, some of Rosa's arguments in these papers are worth summarizing. Pointing to the wartime exhaustion of raw and manufactured mate- rials, the rising demand for consumer goods in short supply, inflation of currency and credit, and postwar profiteering as among the causes for con- tinued rising prices, Rosa declared that more Government, not less, was necessary to protect the public. He warned of "economic and political dis- turbance or even disaster," asserting that the Government must again, as it had during the war, induce the Nation "to economize in the use of staple commodities and luxuries, reduce the waste of raw materials, make use of cheaper materials, increase the efficiency of men, of machines, and of proc- esses, on a nationwide scale and at an early date." ^® By "more" Government Rosa made clear he did not mean reimposition of wartime controls but better education of the public in the cost of Government, more efficient operation of Government, and greater assistance to those Government agencies whose recognized function it was to work directly in the public interest. Answering the charge of extravagance in Federal spending, Rosa showed that in the budget for 1920 interest on the national debt as a result of past wars consumed 67.8 percent of Federal income, the military services received 25 percent, the cost of running the Government came to 3.2 percent, public works 3 percent, and research, education, and development 1 percent. ^^ "^ Hearings * * * 1922 (Dec. 20, 1920). p. 1235; Hearings * * * 1923 (Feb. 1, 1922), pp. 424, 425, 452. In a letter in March 1920 to a former Bureau member who had gone into industry, Strat- ton discussed the coming economy wave : "I personally know most of the leaders of the party in control and the chairman of the committees directly interested in our work." They had initiated the economy program and intended to push it, said Stratton, and there were no exceptions. Nevertheless, he was "working with the Senate committee and hoped to persuade it to restore some of the more important funds" (Letter, SWS to F. C. Clarke, Mar. 17, 1920, NBS Box 10, IG). " Rosa, "The economic importance of the scientific work of the Government," J. Wash. Acad. Sci. 10, 342 (1920). "J. Wash. Acad. Sci., pp. 346-349. The percentages were based on total revenues of approximately 15.68 billion. (Between 1914 and 1921, the national debt rose from $1,188 million to $23,976 million.) In his final study, "Expenditures and revenues of the Federal Government," Ann. Am. Acad. Pol. Soc. Sci. 95, 1-113 (1921), Rosa included revenue and expenditure data for THE POSTWAR WORLD 227 He rivetted attention on that 1 percent, representing little more than 50 cents out of the approximately $50 per capita ^^ collected by the Government from all sources, for it was the key to industrial recovery and to reduction in the high cost of living. Out of that 50 cents, agriculture received 62 percent ; education, public health, and labor bureaus received 25.6 percent; the Bureau of Mines and Geological Survey 5 percent; and the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Bureau of Standards, Bureau of Fisheries, and Coast and Geodetic Survey together 10.5 percent or little more than 5 cents per capita. Considering these facts, said Rosa, the distribution of Government income left little room for extravagance. The charge of inefficiency in Government, on the other hand, was more valid, largely because Government pay, based as it was on a statutory salary scale established prior to 1914, failed to attract and hold experienced and competent people. Federal employees from scientists and administra- tors to clerks and laborers shared the same scale proportionately. As the Secretary of Commerce was to point out to Congress, leading physicists in universities and industrial laboratories were getting between $8,000 and $25,000 a year, while top physicists at the Bureau of Standards could make no more than $4,800.^® The consequence was an inordinate turnover of personnel at every level.^" The remedy was revision of the civil service system and its wage scale, to make Government employment more attrac- tive; and establishment of a budget bureau that would plan and coordinate the work of the Government and its agencies, to assure the best use of its employees.^^ Returning to the subject of Federal research, Rosa pointed out that where the expenses of the Department of Agriculture amounted to about $1.50 for every $1,000 of the national value of agricultural and animal products, those of the Bureau of Standards came to $0.15 for every $1,000 worth of manufactured products, and less than half that amount was spent by the Bureau for the development of manufactures. Agriculture might still be "the most important industry in the Nation," but revival of the economy depended on the recovery of manufactures, by more efficient utilization of raw materials and labor and expansion of production. ^^ the years 1910-19. His adjusted figures for 1920 did not materially change the validity of his conclusions and the earlier figures are therefore used here. ^* Based on a 1920 population of approximately 110 million. "Hearings * * * 1923 (Feb. 1, 1922), p. 14 . ^ Address by Rosa before ASME, "The scientific and engineering work of the Govern- ment," Dec. 2, 1920, p. 20 (NBS Historical File). It required at least a year to train a laboratory assistant at the Bureau, yet almost everyone hired in the postwar period left for better positions after 1 to 3 months. NBS Annual Report 1920, p. 30. " Ann. Am. Acad. Pol. Soc. Sci., pp. 73, 88, 90, 94. ^ J. Wash. Acad. Sci., pp. 342, 350-352. 228 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30) Unlike agriculture, industry spent generous sums of money on research, but only for its own commercial advantage. Bureau research, on the other hand, reverted to the advantage of the public, for it led directly to decreased costs of commodities, improved service, better quality and performance, and reduced misrepresentation and exaggeration, all "constructive and wealth- producing contributions to the economy." Rosa declared that raising the per capita share of the Bureau appropriation by a single cent would yield returns a hundredfold, and raising it fivefold "would accomplish wonders." -^ Among the many studies at the time in the causes and cures for the depression, Rosa's analysis was one of the most thorough and was widely studied.^* The Bureau of the Budget which he urged and which had been under discussion for almost a decade was formally established in June 1921. Much-needed civil service reform, including a slight upward adjustment of salaries, came in July 1924. And Rosa's "wonders" in the national economy were to be accomplished, but in ways and to a degree he could not have foreseen. A new and fabulous era in the Nation's history was about to begin. The early years of President Wilson's administration had seen a continuation of Federal efforts, begun under Roosevelt and Taft, to curb corporate mo- nopolies and give a measure of Government back to the people. That reform impulse had ended with the war, and the disillusionment of the postwar period, climaxed by the severe depression, led to a massive rejection of the age of idealism, of political experimentation, that swept the President and all his policies off the scene. The period of Republican ascendancy that followed, it has been said, represented not the high tide of laissez faire but of Hamiltonianism, the deliberate pursuit by Government of policies favorable to large business interests.^^ The trusts of the early century were to rise again in the mergers of the twenties, and the soaring wealth of the Nation reflected kiting of values as often as it did new capital investment. The consolidation of industries and utilities, moreover, exercised measurable control over prices and produc- tion, so that the cost of living, after a slight decline from its awful peak in 1920, was to hold steady to the end of the decade."'' Salaries in the middle- '' J. Wash. Acad. Sci., pp. 373-374; Ann. Am. Acad. Pol. Soc. Sci., p. 107. "See "New York Times," May 30, 1920, sec. VII, p. 4. John F. Sinclair, in the "Washington Evening Star," Mar. 19, 1924, p. 6, called Rosa's reports "the most comprehensive and most intelligent survey from the plain citizen's viewpoint of Govern- ment finances which was ever undertaken." == Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932. p. 103. -''The cost of living index, based on 1913=100, had by 1920 reached 286. By 1926 it had subsided to 241 and remained at that approximate level to the end of the decade. Historical Statistics, p. 127. HERBERT HOOVER AND THE BUREAU OF STANDARDS 229 income bracket went up, and installment buying and liberal credit terms became new measures of personal wealth. But the farmer, the professional man, and the laboring man, unless he was in the automobile or radio industry, had small share in the new wealth. If the aura of prosperity of the golden twenties resulted principally, as management was to claim, from increased mechanization of industry, greater efficiency through scientific management, industrial research, and the rising output of workers, no Federal Government ever before provided more assistance to industry or a happier climate for free enterprise. Economies in Government spending, a balanced budget, lower taxes, a high protective tarifF, and a supremely able and energetic Department of Commerce all acted to accelerate the tide of commerce and industry. HERBERT HOOVER AND THE BUREAU OF STANDARDS The most capable man that came in with the Harding administration was the new Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Clark Hoover. Considered by many for a time the best man for the Presidency itself and tentatively claimed by both parties. Hoover, by his efficient handling of the wartime Food Administration and of Belgian relief had made his name a household word. His enginering background and knowledge of industry were needed as the Nation slid into depression. But by nature autocratic, often dogmatic, and almost wholly apolitical, he was not the man party leaders sought. When he subsequently accepted the Cabinet post it was with reluctance and only on his own terms. His friend Oscar Straus, Commerce and Labor Secretary from 1907 to 1909 under Theodore Roosevelt, once told him that the office required only a couple of hours of work a day and "no other quali- fication than to be able to put the fish to bed at night and turn on the lights around the coast." ^' Hoover thought otherwise. He was quoted in the press as saying that the department, composed of uncorrelated scientific and semiscientific bureaus, had too long "been a Department of Commerce in name only." ^^ With Harding's promise to stand behind him, he intended to expand foreign commerce through organized cooperation with industry, aiming at lower production costs; and to assist domestic commerce in im- " Eugene Lyons, Our Unknown Ex-President (New York: Doubleday, 1948), p. 219. Cf. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: the Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920-1933 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 42. (Hereafter designated as vol. H of the Memoirs.) =* "New York Times," Feb. 25, 1921, p. 1. 230 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30) Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce, it was predicted, would make his department "second only to that of the Secretary of State." He did just that, and by making all interests of commerce and industry the province of the Bureau, further expanded its scope of activities and range of research. proving its industrial processes, abolishing waste, establishing better labor relations, and better business methods. With his knowledge, experience, and driving power, the "New York Times" editorialized. Hoover seemed destined to make his office in the Cabinet "second only to that of the Secre- tary of State." ^^ The "Times" may have overestimated the position but it underestimated the man. The Department of Commerce in 1921 comprised the Bureaus of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Lighthouses, Navigation, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Bureaus of the Census, Standards, and Fisheries, and the Steamboat Inspection Service. In 1922 Congress was to add a Building and Housing Division to Commerce, and in 1925 Hoover secured by Execu- tive order the transfer from Interior of the Bureau of Mines and the Patent ^^ "New York Times," Feb. 25, 1921, pp. 2, 10. The editorial spoke of Hoover's "dicta- torial temper." HERBERT HOOVER AND THE BUREAU OF STANDARDS 231 Office.^" In 1926 a congressional act added an Aeronautics Division and in 1927 a Radio Division to Commerce. On taking over the Department, Hoover seems to have been under the impression that "the Bureau of Standards had hitherto been devoted mostly to formal administration of weights and measures," and that, as he later said in his Memoirs, by greatly enlarging its research not only in "abstract knowledge but * * * [in] its application in industry," the Bureau under his direction became "one of the largest physics laboratories in the world." ^^ In all fairness, the Bureau under Stratton had already achieved that eminence. It is true that in the period 1921-28 it expanded from 9 divisions with a total of 68 sections to 13 divisions with 85 sections, but staff and appropriations actually increased very little in those 7 years, from 850 to 889 members and from $2,209,000 in operating funds to $2,540,000.32 As for any limitation on Bureau research interests, it was quite otherwise. Under Stratton and Rosa, little that was measurable in the home, in the market, in commerce, industry, science, or Government but had at one time or another become a subject of investigation at the Bureau, and as often as not a sustained investigation. ^^ By 1920, in addition to several score investigations and test programs conducted under statutory funds, the Bureau had some 16 other investiga- tions going with special congressional appropriations. That year Stratton secured more special funds to begin another nine studies. Three were short-term investigations, in industrial safety standards. Government ma- terials testing, and platinum and rare metals research. The other six, metallurgical research, high temperature studies, railroad scale testing, sound research, standardization of equipment, and a new huge industrial research "' The transfer of the Bureau of Mines to the Commerce Department concentrated the oil testing and ceramics work of Mines and Standards in the latter bureau, with a heavy clay products section located in Columbus, Ohio. The transfer added 52 employes to the Bureau staff. NBS Annual Report 1926, p. 44; Annual Report 1927, p. 2; NBS Blue Folder Box 3, file AG-138c. ^' Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, H, 73. '^ See apps. F and H. "In retrospect Hoover was proud of the fact that despite its increased activity the department grew little in size or cost under his charge." Dupree, Science in the Federal Government, p. 340. ^ So reported a committee of electrical manufacturers appointed by Hoover in 1922 to advise the Bureau on electrical research. The committee, apparently piqued by some of the current public utility recommendations of the Bureau, called "attention to the fact that the Bureau's activities have been very widely extended into various fields not con- templated by the act creating the Bureau, through the medium of * * * special Con- gressional appropriations, and * * * we [are] not ready to accept this means of enlarging the Bureau's sphere of activities as a safe procedure, and especially since it is apparent that when an activity of this kind is initiated by such appropriation it is apparently con- sidered a function of the Bureau from that time forward." Letter, Chairman, Electrical Manufacturers Council, Committee on the Bureau of Standards, to Secretary Hoover. Oct. 2, 1922 (NBS Box 2, AG) . 786-167 O— 66 17 232 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30) program, were to continue for more than a decade before being merged in the regular work of the Bureau.^* The nine were among the last of the special appropriations made to the Bureau. Coming into office on an economy wave. Hoover in a public an- nouncement declared: "This is no time to ask for appropriations to under- take new work. It is the time to search for economy and reorganization, for effective expenditure on essentials, the reduction of less essentials, and the elimination of duplication." ^^ The same regimen held true for the general economy. Recalling the scene of widespread unrest and unemployment as he took office, Hoover was later to say : "There was no special outstanding industrial revolution in sight. We had to make one." His prescription for the recovery of industry "from [its] war deterioration" was through "elimi- nation of waste and increasing the efficiency of our commercial and indus- trial system all along the line." ^® , To do this. Hoover divided the direction of his bureaus between two special assistants, "except Foreign and Domestic Commerce and Standards, which I took under my own wing." ^^ These two bureaus represented ideal instruments for jogging a lagging economy and putting industry back on its feet. The "wing" actually proved to be Assistant Secretary J. Walter Drake, brought to Washington from the Detroit automobile industry. But Hoover himself was to give Bureau interests his wholehearted support, and in his annual encounters with Congress at the side of Dr. Stratton pled the Bureau's need for better salaries and for its research funds. Where to commence jogging the economy was not difficult to see. Wholly inadequate as a result of the war and beset by excessive costs, home construction offered the most immediate means of reviving the greatest num- ber of industries and providing work for the largest numbers of unemployed. Because its stimulation would depend upon personal organization and mas- sive publicity. Hoover organized the division of building and housing in '* See app. G. A member of Great Britain's National Physical Laboratory, visiting the Bureau in 1921, found it "very considerably larger" in every sense than the Teddington plant, its chemical, spectroscopic, and metallurgical work particularly on "a totally different scale than any- thing at NPL." Impressed by the ceramics, refractories, and optical glass work at the Bureau, the visitor reported that the effort at NPL in these fields, by comparison, "becomes almost insignificant." NPL Annual Report 1922, pp. 197-199. For a comparison of the Bureau v/hh the German PTR in the 1930's, see ch. VL P- 310. Another comparison v^ith NBS research, made by a member of the Bureau's National Hydraulic Laboratory after a year's study of hydraulic programs in the laboratories in Europe, appears in a report attached to letter, LJB to Martin A. Mason, June 28, 1939 (NBS Box 430, ID— Misc.) •^ "New York Times," Mar. n, 1921, p. 3. . ~ . ^^ The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, II, 61. ^" Ibid., n, 42. " ' ' HERBERT HOOVER AND THE BUREAU OF STANDARDS 233 his own oflBce. The necessary scientific, technical, and economical research, simplification and standardization of building materials, and revision of municipal and State building codes required by the program he made the responsibility of the Bureau of Standards, where a division similarly named was activated. At the end of 1921, with the housing program well launched, Hoover established a division of simplified practice at the Bureau, on the model of Baruch's wartime Conservation Division, to work with and encourage the technical committees then operating in most trade and industrial associations to eliminate waste in industry. Like the former Conservation Division, simplified practice aimed at reduction of varieties and sizes in commodities and greater standardization of materials and products. Further extending these aims, two more units, a specifications division and a trade standards division, were set up at the Bureau to reinforce and promote the demand anticipated for standardized and simplified products. The new divisions insured the fullest exploitation of Bureau plans for industrial research, but to Dr. Stratton's dismay, their direction was centered in the Commerce building downtown. Although the whole of the scientific and technical research required by the housing and standardization pro- grams was to be financed out of Bureau appropriations, the administrative staffs of the four divisions were under Secretary Hoover's personal direc- tion.^* It may be guessed that the divided control and responsibility rankled. Outwardly, relations between Dr. Stratton and Secretary Hoover were cordial and even close, as correspondence between them and Stratton's letters to members of Hoover's family make abundantly clear. ^^ Although Hoover is said to have visited the Bureau rarely, he kept in close touch and consulted Stratton frequently on Department matters; and as the senior administrator in the Commerce Department, Stratton often spent afternoons downtown when the Secretary was out of the city, signing Department correspondence as Acting Secretary of Commerce.*" Just when Dr. Stratton first thought of leaving the Bureau is uncertain. It was doubtless an accumulation of events that occurred in that 20th year of the Bureau's founding. On the afternoon of May 17, 1921, Dr. Rosa, not quite 60, died suddenly at his desk in East building. Two months later Stratton's long-time chief of weights and measures, Mr. Fischer, died at his The roles of the divisions at Commerce and their counterparts at the Bureau are distinguished in memo, Secretary of Commerce Hoover for GKB, May 23, 1923 (NBS Box 40, AG) . ^See correspondence in NBS Box 10, IEW-1922; letter, Mrs. Hoover to SWS, Sept. 1. 1922, and other correspondence in Stratton Papers at MIT. See also Dr. Stratton's speech at 25th Anniversary of the NBS, Dec. 4, 1926 (NBS Blue Box 3, APN-301c). " Interview with Dr. Lyman J. Briggs, Nov. 1, 1961 ; communication to the author from the Hon. Herbert C. Hoover, Dec. 14, 1962 (NBS Historical File) . 234 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30) home, and 8 months after, Dr. Waidner, chief of the heat and thermometry division, was gone. The deaths of three of his division chiefs within less than a year affected him profoundly. They had been with the Bureau since its establishment, had been his most intimate associates, and understood his ways. Other division chiefs, coming later and without the bond of the early years, sometimes found Stratton's autocratic ways difficult and his concern with the minutiae of every laboratory and Bureau operation excessive. With the loss of his closest associates and amid a faint undercurrent of unrest, of which he could not be unaware. Dr. Stratton may have felt that the Bureau might never again be the same.*^ There were other considerations, too. In the 20 years that he had been Director, Dr. Stratton's salary had risen from $4,000 to $6,000, the maximum permitted for the position under civil service rules, even though the staff he directed had increased more than sixtyfold. As Secretary Hoover told an appropriations committee, it was a ridiculous sum by comparison with salaries paid outside the Government. The work and responsibilities of the position, said Hoover, were fully equivalent to those of a university president receiving $25,000." Although a bachelor. Dr. Stratton had heavy expenses. In an age more sedulously social than our own, he delighted in entertaining members of the staff and his circle of friends in Washington. His elaborate Christmas and summer parties for the children of the staff became festive traditions.*^ Entertainment of visiting scientists and businessmen and his colleagues from the national laboratories abroad he had long met out of his own pocket, as he had the expenses of membership in the social and scientific clubs required by his position. Besides his lifelong interest in his private workshop at the Bureau, which entailed some personal expense, Stratton as a result of his frequent official trips to Europe developed a collector's interest in tapestries, fine crystal, polished glassware, instruments, and ingenious mechanical devices which he found in the shops abroad. The interest was constrained, for many of these things were far beyond his means and likely to continue so. He was in his 60th year, had no private income or other prospect but his *'A brief rebellion of some of the staff several years earlier against certain Bureau administrative policies is recorded in letters from six Bureau members to Stratton, Mar. 29, 1917, and letters from 19 members to Secretary Redfield, Jan. 25 and Feb. 7, 1918, with attached correspondence (NARG 40, Secretary of Commerce file 76694). The Secretary recommended appointment of an assistant director at the Bureau to lighten the Director's administrative burden, and this was done (letter, Redfield to SWS, Mar. 19, 1918, and attached correspondence, NARG 40, file 67009/66) . "Hearings * * * 1923 (Feb. 1, 1922) , p. 14. ^* A good characterization of Stratton and of life at the Bureau at that time appears in G. K. Burgess, "Dr. Samuel Wesley Stratton," Tech. Eng. News (MIT) 3, 146 (1922). HERBERT HOOVER AND THE BUREAU OF STANDARDS 235 meager retirement pay. Nor, in 1922, did it seem likely that Congress would remedy the salary scale anytime in the foreseeable future. Dr. Stratton may well have voiced these feelings to his friends at the Department of Commerce, and when Secretary Hoover told him that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Cambridge, which had been without a President for more than 2 years, had approached him to recommend a candidate, Dr. Stratton consented to the recommendation.** Stratton had had similar offers before, but he had been building the Bureau then and could not be tempted. In 1913 the Russian Imperial College at St. Petersburg had sought him for an executive post at a large salary and under his own conditions. And in 1916 he was offered an administrative position at Columbia University at $10,000 a year. He had turned both down.*^ This time he accepted the invitation, and on September 19, 1922, the Executive Committee of MIT appointed Dr. Stratton as its ninth president. He took office on January 1, 1923. In his notice to the press of Dr. Stratton's departure, Secretary Hoover sounded a recurring complaint of Government department heads: While the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is to be con- gratulated on securing Dr. Stratton, one cannot overlook the fact that the desperately poor pay which our Government gives to great experts makes it impossible for us to retain men capable of per- forming the great responsibilities which are placed upon them. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an educational insti- tution, finds no difficulty in paying a man of Dr. Stratton's calibre three times the salary the Government is able to pay him. Dr. Stratton has repeatedly refused large offers before, but the inability of the scientific men in the Government to properly sup- port themselves and their families under the living conditions in Washington, and to make any provision for old age makes it impossible for any responsible department head to secure such men for public service at Government salaries. *° The severance was softened by Secretary Hoover's appointment of Dr. Stratton to the Visiting Committee to the Bureau, succeeding Dr. Joseph S. " Communication from the Hon. Herbert C. Hoover, Dec. 14, 1962. On the death of President McLaurin of MIT in 1920, Hoover himself was sought for the position. See "New York Times," Feb. 1, 1920 (letter to editor), sec. Ill, p. 1, and May 27, 1920, p. 2. *®The Imperial College offer is referred to in a pencil notation on letter, Frederic A. Delano, Smithsonian Institution, to SWS, Jan. 10, 1928 (offering Stratton the secretary- ship of the Smithsonian) ; and the Columbia ofiFer is in letter. Treasurer, Columbia Uni- versity, to SWS, May 5, 1916, both leUers in Stratton Papers at MIT. "* "Boston Herald," Oct. 12, 1922, p. 1; "New York Times," Oct. 12, 1922, p. 14. 236 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30) Ames of the Johns Hopkins University. The appointment was to become effective on the date of his termination of service as director.*^ In a very real sense, Dr. Stratton never left the Bureau. As he told a Bureau member who wrote to him soon after his arrival in Cambridge, "* * * I can never cease to be a member of the Bureau which has been practically my life work, and I shall never hesitate to give counsel and sup- port whenever the opportunity may afford itself." '^^ Both as member of the Visiting Committee and as creator of the Bureau, Stratton's counsel and concern were to be frequent and voluminous and continued so throughout his tenure at MIT. Most of his correspondence was with Dr. Burgess, ap- prising him of details of Bureau operations, advising on Bureau procedures in cooperating with industry and Government agencies, and forwarding inquiries sent to him at MIT. Planning to buy a radio set in the fall of 1923, Stratton wrote asking about the latest radio developments at the Bureau. He recommended new members for the Visiting Committee, and was active in securing lecturers for the Bureau, writing Burgess on one occasion that he had invited the Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, to come to the Bureau. In turn. Dr. Burgess discussed problems of Bureau appropria- tions with Stratton, sent him new publications for comment, and frequently mailed slides and other material for lectures and addresses Stratton planned.*^ An able administrator at MIT, Stratton nevertheless seems to have regarded the Institute as another Bureau of Standards, or as an extension of the Bureau. In training scientists and technologists for industry, the Insti- tute offered complementary services to those of the Bureau. Stratton had exchanged one campus for another. Within a year after assuming the presi- dency, he began work on a reorganization and expansion program at Cam- bridge, much of it closely modeled on the Bureau, which undertook to establish at the Institute new departments of aeronautical engineering, auto- motive engineering, building construction, fuel and gas engineering, hydrau- lics, physical metallurgy, municipal and industrial research, public health engineering, and ship operation. Throughout his tenure at Cambridge, Stratton's addresses and talks were filled with his memories of the Bureau. In the several score manu- scripts and reading copies that survive, mention of the Bureau by name sel- dom occurs, but striking to anyone acquainted with its activities is the "Letter, Hoover to SWS, Nov. 1, 1922 (NARG 40, Secretary of Commerce, file 67009/5). ''Letter, SWS to Walter A. Hull, Jan. 5, 1923 (Stratton Papers at MIT). '" Correspondence from 1923 on between Stratton, Burgess, and the assistant director, Fay C. Brown, will be found in NBS Boxes 42, 43, 46, 48, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 61, 62, 64, 70, 75, 81, 82, 174, 184, 185, and 214, and in NBS Blue Folder Boxes 4 and 8. GEORGE KIMBALL BURGESS 237 frequency with which Bureau investigations and undisguised Bureau experi- ences were drawn on for illustrative material. At the banquet he attended in Washington in 1926 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Bureau, he said, "I think of you still as members of my staff." ^° GEORGE KIMBALL BURGESS In his letter in November 1922 appointing Dr. Stratton to the Visiting Committee, Hoover asked that Stratton at once take up with the Committee the question of his successor, "as I'd like to have their advice on the subject." Stratton offered two names to his future colleagues on the Committee, that of Dr. Lyman J. Briggs, recently promoted from the aviation physics section to chief of the engineering physics division, succeeding Stratton himself who had held that position ; and of Dr. George K. Burgess, chief of the metallurgy division. ^^ Although as chief physicist and senior in point of service and experi- ence Dr. Burgess seemed the logical choice, both the Visiting Committee and the Secretary of Commerce, in deliberations that seem less than flattering, delayed decision. ^^ For almost 4 months, until April 21, 1923, Dr. Fay C. Brown, technical assistant to Dr. Stratton, served as acting director of the Bureau. On that date President Harding's appointment of the new Director, Dr. Burgess, became effective.^^ Dr. Burgess (1874—1932), who on the death of Dr. Rosa became the chief physicist at the Bureau, was bom in Newton, Mass., and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He went abroad for gradu- ate training, receiving his D. Sc. in physics with highest honors from the Sorbonne in 1901. His thesis was on a redetermination of the constant of gravitation, but courses he took under Le Chatelier in high-temperature measurements aroused a greater interest and led him to translate his teacher's classic work on the subject. A decade later, as a result of his own investiga- ™ Speech, Dec. 4, 1926 (NBS Blue Folder Box 3, APW 301c). A brief biographical sketch of Dr. Stratton appears as app. M. °' Letter, Hoover to SWS, Nov. 1, 1922, and interview with Dr. Briggs, Nov. 1, 1961. '"Announcement of Dr. Burgess' appointment in Am. Machinist, 58, 680 (1923), said it "followed several months of futile search on the part of Secretary Hoover for an out- standing physicist who had not been connected with the Government service, with suffi- cient means to allow him to make the sacrifice of income * * * [in accepting] a Bureau directorship." "' In his letter of congratulation to Dr. Burgess, Prof. Joseph S. Ames, director of the Physical Laboratory at Johns Hopkins, wrote: "I heard with interest of your silent and theatrical way of announcing your appointment, by quietly sitting down in the Director's chair" (letter, Apr. 25, 1923, NBS Box 43, IDP). 238 Unlike Stratton, Dr. George K. Burgess, second Director of NBS, is said to have adminis- tered the Bureau from his desk and seldom toured the laboratories. The Bureau, "a vertiable city of science," had groivn, he felt, too large for intimate supervision and he liberally delegated his authority over its detailed administration. GEORGE KIMBALL BURGESS 239 tions in the field of high temperatures, he rewrote the book completely, making extensive revisions and additions."* In 1903, following a year as instructor at the University of California, Dr. Burgess came to the Bureau as an assistant physicist in the heat and ther- mometry division. His first assignment was an investigation of the use of optical pyrometers in industry. Not long after, he began the work with Dr. Waidner, chief of the division, that was to lead to the present internation- ally adopted Waidner-Burgess standard of light. In 1913, soon after the Bureau undertook its investigation of railroad track and wheel failures — largely a problem in the physics of metallurgy, concerning the thermal behav- ior of metals in the manufacturing process — Dr. Burgess organized the Bureau's division of metallurgy. It pleased him later to say that he had never had a course in metallurgy in his life, which was quite possible, since it was so new a field that there may not have been half a dozen metallurgists in the United States at that time.'^ Ten years after the establishment of the division. Dr. Burgess, as a result of more than a hundred technical papers on heat measurement and metallurgy, had won international recognition. His staff comprised some 50 experts, largely trained by him, inquiring into almost every aspect of modern metallurgical technology, from the melting and casting of metals and alloys to their physical and chemical testing. Few men ever came to know Burgess intimately, either as division chief or Director of the Bureau. A sociable man in working hours, he was nevertheless reserved, and as impeccable in manner as he was in dress. He has been described by those who worked under him as "quiet," "warm- hearted," "very pleasant," "a nice person," yet a man "you couldn't get to know." ^'^ Recreation is said to have meant to him a good book — preferably a good detective or mystery story — and a plentiful supply of tobacco, or a long drive in an open car. '" Of his private life little more was known. In 1901 he had married, in Paris, the daughter of a French Protestant family, but neither he nor his wife was gregarious and seldom entertained. They had no children. " Lyman J. Briggs and Wallace R. Erode, "George Kimball Burgess, 1874-1932," Natl. Acad. Sci., Biographical Memoirs, 30, 57 (1957). See Henri L. Le Chatelier, High Temperature Measurements, tr. G. K. Burgess (New York: J. Wiley, 1901); rev. and enl. 2d ed., 1904; rewritten as G. K. Burgess and H. Le Chatelier, The Measurement of High Temperatures (Wiley, 1912). °° Letter, Burgess to president, Carnegie Institute of Technology, Mar. 21, 1924 (NBS Box 77, IDP). ^Natl. Acad. Sci., Biographical Memoirs, above; interviews with Dr. Briggs (Nov. 1, 1961), Mrs. William Meggers (May 8, 1962), and Dr. Kasson S. Gibson (June 1, 1962). "L.J. Briggs, "George Kimball Burgess," Science, 76, 46 ( 1932 ) . 240 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30) If Dr. Burgess was perhaps less impressive in figure or manner than Stratton, he was considered a better scientist. Yet as he saw the need for better technology in the field of metallurgy, he turned increasingly to the practical application of his earlier research.'^" As Director he was to be as concerned as Stratton in promoting Bureau cooperation with industry in solving its scientific and technical difficulties. To the surprise of many, Dr. Burgess in the Director's chair displayed a marked talent for enlightened management. Unlike Stratton, who found it difficult to believe that the growth of the Bureau had put it beyond a per- sonally directed operation, Dr. Burgess delegated authority widely. He worked from his office and his desk, but his door was always open. Dr. Hobart C. Dickinson, who succeeded Dr. Waidner as chief of the heat divi- sion, was to say that the Bureau under Dr. Burgess "became a democracy * * *. Meetings of the Division Chiefs for the free exchange of ideas under [his] skillful chairmanship * * * became the order of the day. Appoint- ments, promotions, and salaries became matters of common knowledge. The needs and welfare „of the individual employees became more and more important as compared with those of the institution as a whole." ^® At the same time, the Bureau seems to have become a somewhat more rigid institution under Burgess. Stratton's encouragement of individual initiative and of new projects had permitted the wide latitude of research that characterized the work of Rosa's division. Similarly, when Dr. Paul Foote and Dr. Fred Mohler, members of the heat division, became interested in spectral phenomena in atomic physics, Stratton let them forget about pyrometry and pursue their research in a section set up in his own optics division. And Raymond Davis, who came to the Bureau in 1911 to estab- lish a photographic service, after devising on his own time a number of ingenious photographic instruments, was rewarded with a new section, photo- graphic technology. It was generally understood that if you had a good idea you could go ahead with it, even if it wasn't your particular job.®" Burgess on the other hand was inclined to be a stickler for academic orthodoxy, venerated the graduate degree and its symbol of competence, and had a strong sense of propriety. Despite the success of his own enter- prise that had led to the metallurgy division, as Director he tended to dis- ■"^ References to important research results of Burgess and his group appear in H. M. Boyl- ston, An Introduction to the Metallurgy of Iron and Steel (New York: John Wiley, 2d ed., 1936) , pp. 416, 492n, 517, 543n, 544. ™Natl. Acad. Sci., Biographical Memoirs, above; MS, memorial address, H. C. Dickin- son, "Dr. George Kimball Burgess" (Feb. 8, 1936), p. 18 (NBS Historical File). "" Interview with Dr. Mohler, Oct. 9, 1962; interview with Raymond Davis, Dec. 1, 1961. As Dr. Coblentz (From the Life of a Researcher, p. 132) said. Dr. Stratton gave promising men of his staff "an opportunity to pursue research unhampered, and with a freedom beyond all expectations." GEORGE KIMBALL BURGESS 241 courage ventures of staff members outside the field in which they had been trained. Though never spelled out, it was a policy that Burgess seems to have felt made for greater stability in the organization, greater efficiency and concentration of effort, and better research results. To some extent, of course, both the looser rein and the check on adventuring stemmed from Dr. Burgess' initial unfamiliarity with the ad- ministration of the Bureau in general and with the work and scope of its divisions. Sedentary by nature and singleminded, as division chief he had seldom strayed far from his laboratory. And since there was no procedure — not even anything like a briefing handbook — for turning over the Director's office to a successor, Burgess for many months after moving into office had to grope his way through the complexity of Bureau operations left by Strat- ton. The Bureau correspondence of that period, heavily penciled with Dr. Burgess' "Who?" and "What?", seems to corroborate the degree of unfamiliarity.®^ Besides the fact that the Bureau had outgrown the need for the highly personal and centralized leadership so effective in its formative years, cer- tain recent events were to have a marked influence on Burgess' adminis- tration. , The time-honored custom of a Chief of [a] Bureau going to the committees of Congress directly with his problems and need for funds had been replaced by a Budget Bureau * * ♦. No longer could an urgent need, or even a fancied urgent need, be presented by the Director in person and, sponsored by good friends, lead to an appropriation for some important new line of work for the Bureau.®^ The Director continued to justify his budget to the House Appropriations Subcommittee each year, but it was no longer a budget subject to negotia- tion. Furthermore, under a succession of Republican administrations in- tent on economy in Government spending, the Director came to depend increasingly on funds transferred from other Government a'rpnnip^■S oe; W3 ^ 1^ a. -« oo 05 fe; .^ . '^^ to J, o 1^ *- a o".s 0': ioM ie pfcjjct, jut sp«c fie ayt!icri; a faport dealing' :■.,.' ^ ', ^i ,, i '■ '. ,t..-jViar, lh„ in- '■'■■■ -■-'-■■ ■'.. (''.f;ons -.,- i,„//looMo,y, THE LOS ALAf.OS PRIliER THIS DOCUMENT doilfXlWS. 'wrs,rs^oopy..aitei The following notes are based on a set of five lectures given by R. Serber during the first two weeks of April 1943, as an "indoctrination course" in connection with the starting of the Loa Alamos Project. The notes were written up by E. U. Condon. The energy re Hen-c 1. Ob.lect The object of the project is to produce a practical military weapon in the form of a bomb in which the energy is re- leased by a fast neutron chain reaction in one or more of the materials known to show nuclear fission. 2. Energy of Fission Process The direct energy release in the fission process is ofythe order of 170 IdEV per atom. This is considerably more than 10 times the heat of reaction per atpm in ordinary combustion pro- This is 170'lo6>4.8-10-l°/300=2.7-10-4 erg/nucleus. Since the weight of 1 nucleus of 25 is 3.88'10"22 gram/nucleus the energy release is 7'10-'-' erg/gram lease in TNT is 4'10-'-'-' erg/gram or 3.6'10^^ erg/ton, 1 kg of 25 ■^i 20000 tons of TNT 3. Fast Neutron Chain Reaction Release of this energy in a largo scale way is a possibility because of the fact that in each fission process, which requires a neutron to produce it, tv(o neutrons are released. Con- sider a very great moss of active msterial, so great that no neutrons are lost through the surface and assume the material so pure that no neutrons are lost in other ways than by fission. One neutron released in the ipass would become 2 after the first fission, each of tfiesc would produce 2 after they each had produced fission so in the nth generation of neutrons there would be 2" neutrons avall- eble. Since in 1 kg. of 25 there are 5"10^^ nuclei It would require about n 80 generations ( 23° »rf 5-lo25 ) to fish the whole kilogram. Vvhilo this is going on the energy release is making the material v^ry hot, developing great pressure and hence tend- ing to cause an exposlon. In an actual finite setup, some neutrons are lost by diffusion out through the surface. There will be therefore a certain ^'slzel pf _ say. 4 sphere for which the surface losses of neutrons are The first page of "The Los Alamos Primer," reproduced in just 36 copies for key scientists and technicians on the mesa in New Mexico. An air of uncertainty, of speculation concerning the calculations, is found on almost every page of the "Primer." THE BUREAU AND THE ATOMIC BOMB 387 over, Snow, and Gordon, brought out in January 1944 to take charge of purification of U"^^ scrap so it could be used again, and to prepare especially purified reagents for use in analyses of the uranium and plutonium.^'^ The newcomers were briefed in a series of five lectures given by Robert Serber, Oppenheimer's colleague at the Radiation Laboratory at California. The lectures were set down shortly after their delivery by Dr. Edward U. Condon (to succeed Dr. Briggs as Director of the Bureau 2 years later) in a 26-page pamphlet entitled "The Los Alamos Primer." '^^ "The object of the [Los Alamos] project," the primer began, "is to produce a practical military weapon in the form of a bomb in which the energy is released by a fast neutron chain reaction in one or more of the materials known to show nuclear fission." The materials were designated as 25 [W^^], 28 [U^^*], and 49 [plutonium 239]. "Material 49," the primer went on, "is prepared from neutron capture reaction in 28. Only microgram quantities have so far been produced. There is another project going on presently to produce 49 for us in kilogram quantities." On the basis of current calculations, the primer continued, "the simplest estimate of the minimum size of the bomb is a critical mass of 200 kilograms, in a sphere twice that size." Upon that assumption, "the immediate experimental problem is largely concerned with measuring the neutron properties of various materials and with the ordnance problem * * * to determine the critical size and time scale, working with large but sub- critical amounts of active material." The hazard of radiation that preoccupied every laboratory experi- ment and industrial process involving live material and that called on so much engineering effort in the construction of the plants also haunted Los Alamos. But the consuming concern at Los Alamos as the bomb approached realization was predetonation. The primer attempted to estimate the possibility of a premature or incomplete explosion, particularly one that might give the enemy a chance to inspect or recover the materials of the bomb. Three sources of neutrons were recognized that might provide back- ground giving rise to the danger of predetonation: (1) cosmic rays, (2) spontaneous fission, or (3) nuclear reactions which produce neutrons. Thus, while "there will always be some chance of predetonation," every *" Twelve other members of the Bureau, including physicists, chemists, glassblowers, instrumentmakers, and metallurgists, were at other installations of the Manhattan Dis- trict. Letter, LJB to War Manpower Commission, May 10, 1945 (NHS Box 502, AP). '^ Thirty-six copies of the primer, classified "Secret — Limited Circulation," were mimeo- graphed for the use of key members of the project. Quotations here are from Dr. Condon's personal copy. The primer was declassified on Feb. 25, 1963. Certain of its information is alluded to in the Smyth Report, pp. 213 ff. 388 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941^5) calculation so far made indicated that "in any event the bomb will generate enough energy to completely destroy itself." The thought of predetonation may have seemed somewhat remote when the lectures were first given, for in a final section of the primer that discussed the mechanics of shooting that would bring the pieces of the bomb together with the right velocity, forming a critical or spontaneously exploding mass, it was admitted that "this is the part of the job about which we know the least at present." Two years after its organization, Los Alamos had the answer. By early 1944 fear of German success began to recede as the magni- tude of the required research and industrial effort in this country became evident. Germany no longer had such resources."* By the spring of 1945 Oak Ridge began producing U"^' in significant amounts and Hanford was shipping increasing quantities of plutonium to Los Alamos. The bomb was a near certainty, though no one yet knew how powerful it would be. Only the emergency of war could have justified the cost, in excess of $2 billion, of the manmade atomic explosion that occurred on the morning of July 16, 1945. The detonation took place in a remote section of the Alamogordo Air Base, far to the south of Los Alamos. It was 10 weeks after the suicide of Hitler and the war in Europe had ended. THE RADIO PROXIMITY FUZE (NONROTATING TYPE) In the shadow of the atomic bomb were two other spectacular devel- opments of World War II, the airburst proximity fuze and radar. Neither idea was new. A fuze that would explode a shell or bomb when directly over its target, rather than on impact, had been sought since World War I. The experimentation leading to radar began in Great Britain in 1919 and in this country, at the Naval Research Laboratory, in 1923."'' The Bureau was to have little to do with radar, much to do with the proximity fuze. An artillery or antiaircraft shell, or bomb, rocket, or mortar round with a VT (variable time) proximity fuze has from 5 to 20 times the eifective- " As the defeat of Germany neared, a scientific mission somewhat ineptly named ALSOS (the Greek word for "groves") , closely followed the advancing Allied columns and sped through the laboratories and industrial plants of the occupied countries and across the Rhine, to assess the progress the Germans had made in their development of the bomb. Incredible was the discovery that nothing like a real effort had been made anywhere, owing as much perhaps to the death or flight of Germany's first-rank scientists as to Nazi ideology. " In this country Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor, first superintendent of the radio division of the Naval Research Laboratory established after World War I, is credited with discover- ing the principle of radar by bouncing back a radio beam directed at a ship on the Potomac. Baxter, p. 139. THE RADIO PROXIMITY FVZE 389 ness of a round fitted with a contact or pre-set time fuze. In the case of very large bombs whose damage is almost entirely due to blast and airburst al- most doubles the area of destruction created by bombs with conventional fuzes. '^'' Bombing runs and antiaircraft fire with ordinary fuzes rarely achieve hits with more than 5 percent of the expenditure. Where foxholes or shallow depressions in the ground offer good protection against anything but a direct hit, even a deep foxhole gives scant protection against a projectile exploding 20 or 30 feet overhead. To get that overhead-burst effect in World War I, artillery counted on tree bursts or attempted to bounce shells off rock walls or hillsides to reach troops below. The potential increase in effectiveness and the estimate that manpower, supply, and other logistical factors were enhanced by five through possession of a proximity fuze, thus warranted almost any degree of expenditure and effort to perfect it. The radio proximity fuze is essentially a tiny radio sending and receiv- ing station about the size of a 100-watt light bulb. It operates by continuously sending out radio waves. When the waves approach a sizable object — a ship, plane, building or other structure, or open ground — they are reflected back to the receiver in the fuze. As the waves reach a sufficient intensity indicating their effective proximity, they operate an electronic switch that detonates the fuze and the projectile. The British began intensive efforts to perfect and produce their prox- imity fuze in 1937. Remembering the zeppelin raids of the First War, they intended to use the fuze primarily as a defense against enemy bombers. Their work became known to scientists in this country in the spring of 1940, and that June NDRC assigned research for a similar fuze to the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, where Dr. Alexander EUett of the University of Iowa was working on miscellaneous ordnance components.^^ Under a working arrangement with NDRC, Ellett brought the problem to the Bureau, where the team of Diamond, Hinman, and Astin, which had constructed the radiosonde and radiotelemeter, was most familiar with principles that might be adapted to the fuze. By November 1940 NDRC had determined that two types of radio proximity fuze were needed, one for rotating projectiles, sought by the Navy '" Statistical data based on Army and Air Force field tests with radio and conventional fuzes, and agreeing with British findings, indicated these ranges of comparative effective- ness. [Wilbur S. Hinman, Jr.! The Radio Proximity Fuzes for Bombs Rockets, and Mortars (pamphlet of the Ordnance Development Division, NBS, 1945), pp. 5, 31-34 Hereafter cited as Hinman. See also Harry Diamond, "The radio proximity fuze," Natl. Radio News, 11, 16 (1945). " Liaison with the British fuze development groups began in August 1940 and continued to the end of the war. See John S. Rinehart, MS, "Administrative history of Division 4, NDRC" (November 1945), p. 224 (author's copy). Hereafter cited as Rinehart MS. 390 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941^5) for the antiaircraft guns protecting their ships; another, nonrotating, for Army and Air Force weapons, specifically for bombs and rockets and. later, for mortars. The radio fuze for rotating projectiles was assigned to a group headed by Merle A. Tuve and Lawrence A. Hafstad in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. Its final development was carried out at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. That for nonrotating projectiles was transferred to the Bureau under Ellett, where Diamond and Hinman's group worked on the nonrotating radio fuze, a group under Dryden investi- gated an accoustic fuze, and Mohler began studying components of a photoelectric fuze.^- By early 1941, through the application of radiotelemetering tech- niques, Lauriston S. Taylor and Astin had demonstrated that acoustic fuzes were not practicable. They then joined the photoelectric fuze group under Dr. Joseph E. Henderson at the Carnegie Institution, and upon transfer of that group to the Bureau, Astin took over as director. The transfer was ef- fected with the creation of OSRD in June 1911, when Diamond became chief of the radio and photoelectric fuze groups at the Bureau and Ellett the NDRC contracting officer."^ The basic principles of the rotating and nonrotating fuze were similar except that the antiaircraft shell fuze had to withstand being fired from a gun. Its stability in flight resulted from its rotation, whereas the bomb and rocket fuze produced at the Bureau had to depend upon fins. And unlike the shell fuze, the bomb fuze had to operate at wide ranges of temperature, including the extreme cold (down to —40'^ F) encountered at high altitudes. The group of eight that began work on the fuze on December 28, .1940, was to draw on staff members from many of the other Bureau laboratories and on scientists and technicians from university and industrial laboratories all over the country. In the last 2 years of the war, with the assignment of Army and Navy groups for testing and production, over 400 persons were engaged in the Bureau project alone.'* The original assignment of the Bureau was to develop a fuze that would set off a rocket attached to a bomb when the bomb had fallen within several hundred feet of a battleship. By this means, the bomb was expected to attain impact velocities high enough to penetrate and sink the ship. Much too complex and specific for the state of knowledge at the time, this require- ment gave way to design of a general purpose proximity fuze.''^ '' Rinehart MS, pp. 200-204: Baxter, pp. 226-227. " Rinehart MS, p. 15. " Hinman, pp. 41-47, has a roster of all who worked on the NBS fuzes. ■ ' Hinman. p. 9. Essentially the same account of NBS fuze research as in Hinman ap- pears in Joseph C. Boyce, ed.. New Weapons for Air Warfare (OSRD, Science in World War II, Boston : Little, Brown, 1947 ) , pp. 176-224. THE RADIO PROXIMITY FUZE 391 A variety of principles were available for obtaining proximity detona- tion against a target, including photoelectric and reaction oscillator types under British investigation, a beating oscillator arrangement proposed by the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, a pressure type based on the radio altimeter, and one on acoustic principles. The most promising for the non- rotating fuze, however, proved to be that utilizing the Doppler effect of reflected radio waves. Hinman and Diamond devised a diode detector ar- rangement that acted when the amplitude of the reflected signals exceeded a predetermined value, and with that the section began its experiments.'''^ Tests of the first series of crude box models using the radio principle were made between January and April 1941. Despite the fact that only a third of the cumbersome models functioned properly, they proved that a radio proximity fuze was practicable. Turning it into an operational service item was to take almost 2 more years. Much effort was expended in the early months on the electronic cir- cuits activating the fuze and then on its mechanical switches and safety mechanisms, since a serviceable fuze had to be so safe that anyone could handle and even abuse it without danger." While the circuits and mecha- nisms proved out on the early models tested at low altitudes, dropping the box fuzes from 10,000 feet and higher produced dismaying results. The higher velocities in the drop set up vibrations that the radio tubes and other com- ponents could not withstand. In the next series of models, instead of the original shock mounting, all components were made so stiff and rugged and mounted so rigidly that they were capable of resisting the severest mechanical vibrations. Circuit ele- ments were either immersed in wax or fixed to a frame and given a heavy protective wax coating. As for the electronic tubes, small hearing aid tubes offered the best solution to difficulties with the large and structurafly weak commercial tubes that had been used. Raytheon, Hygrade Sylvania, Gen- eral Electric and others, already at work on this problem for the shell fuze project, subsequently produced small, high quality, exceedingly rugged tubes for both the sheU and bomb fuzes. A new method of arming the fuze, to improve its exploding time, was introduced in February 1942. It consisted of a special type of circuit that provided a delay in the charging time for producing the current that set off the detonator. Another improvement eliminated use of the bomb body as the antenna of the radio fuze, by building two bars into the fuze itself, providing an antenna separate from the projectile.''* In May 1942, at '"Hinman, p. 9; RP1723, "Radio proximity fuze design" (Hinman and Brunetti, 1946). " W. B. McLean and J. Rabinow were the chief designers of the switches and safety mechanisms (NBS War Research, p. 20). " Hinman, pp. 11-13. 786-167 O — 66 27 392 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941^5) (\ The miniaturization of the elec- tron tube for use in the radio proximity fuze. I : 1 VM this stage in the basic design of the fuze, the Army set up a specific require- ment. They wanted a VT fuze for their new 4.5-inch airborne rocket, then on the drawing boards, for use against the German Luftwaffe. With fuze dimensions agreed upon, its design was completed in 2 days and construction of test models began. Complicated mechanical and plastic parts were fabricated by hand. Temporary switch and safety mechanisms had to be used. The batteries available were still too large for a service fuze but National Carbon and Burgess Battery were working on smaller ones.^® The final design of the fuze head consisted essentially of a radio transmitter and receiver, a selective amplifier, an electronic switch, a detonator, an elec- tric power supply, and arming and safety devices.*"" Since the 4.5-inch rocket was not ready, the fuze was set in a 31/4-inch substitute rocket. Test opera- tions off the coast near Wilmington, N.C., started a month after receiving the requirement. '' George W. Vinal's electrochemistry section in July 1941 produced a satisfactory low- temperature wet (perchloric acid) battery for use in the fuze, measuring 2% x 2^/2 inches, later replaced by a commercial dry battery (New Weapons for Air Warfare, p. 184). '" C. H. Page and A. V. Astin, "Survey of proximity fuze development," Am. J. Phys. 15, 95, 98 (1947). THE RADIO PROXIMITY FUZE 393 Actually, tests of two fuzes were made at that time, the radio fuze developed by Diamond and Hinman's group and the photoelectric fuze by Taylor and Astin. Functionally, the photoelectric fuze was excellent. Equipped with a photoelectric cell and lens and triggered by its sensitivity to changes in light intensity, the fuze detonated its projectile when an object passed between a portion of the lens and the sky. Drawbacks of the fu2e were its dependence upon light, making it useless at night, and its tendency to anticipate its target as sunlight moved into and out of the lens. With the help of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, methods for solving both difi&culties were found, but the success of the radio fuze finally led to suspension of the photoelectric project in October 1943.^^ For the tests in June 1942, construction of both radio and photo- electric fuzes for the Army rocket began on small-scale production lines at the Bureau and at Westinghouse. More than a thousand of the two fuzes were made in the Bureau's model shops, "bugs" were ironed out at the prov- ing ground, and late that year, as complete specifications for the fuzes went to industry, full production began. Under procurement for the Signal Corps by agreement with Army Ordnance, almost 400,000 of each type were turned out in 1943 and an additional 400,000 of the radio fuzes before the end of the war.^^ While the radio fuze for the rocket was primarily designed for use against aircraft in its limited use overseas it functioned equally well from air- planes and from ground rocket launchers against troops and gun emplace- ments. Its most spectacular use was in multibarreled projects mounted on the General Sherman tank, the 60 VT-fuzed rockets, released in 6 seconds, completely smothering the target area with their concentration of projectile fragments.*^ Well before the end of 1942 the fuze program had completely out- grown the laboratory in which it began overflowing into a number of tempo- rary structures put up in the open area across Van Ness Street. Upon the assignment of additional fuze types and other ordnance projects to the group that December, the Bureau organized the sprawling units into the ordnance development division, under the direction of Harry Diamond, for better administration of the work. A month later Army Ordnance renewed its original request for a radio fuze for bombs. The bomb fuze was not, as originally planned, to be used against enemy battleships — the Bismarck, Scharnhorst, Prinz Eugen, °^Rinehart MS, pp. 111-112; A. V. Astin, ed., "Photoelectric Fuzes and Miscellaneous Projects," vol. 3, Summary Technical Report of Division 4, NDRC (Washington, D.C., 1946), p. 20. " Hinman, pp. 15-17, 31; NBS War Research, p. 21; Baxter, pp. 239-240. " Hinman, p. 17. 394 B S CO e THE RADIO PROXIMITY FUZE 395 and other raiders of the German Fleet had either been sunk or immobilized — but for air-to-air use against enemy bomber formations. Attack planes with these proximity fuze bombs were to climb above enemy air armadas and release their sticks over the formation. Work on the bomb fuze was well under way before it was realized that such targets had grown scarce, that the Allies, not the enemy, were now sending out bombers in flood formations. The requirement was changed to an air-to-ground bomb fuze, to effect airbursts over troops and other targets of opportunity. When this fuze later arrived overseas it was also fitted into fragmentation bombs. In napalm (gel gas) bombs, the fuze eliminated ground penetration, to which the standard napalm bomb was subject, doubling the area covered by the gel. In these various forms it was usf'd with deadly effect by the 12th Air Force in Italy against both troops and materiel.** Since a bomb is not subject to setback at release, that is, the shock of acceleration upon which the arming of the rocket fuze depends, a different arming mechanism became necessary. The difference in fuze space in the bomb also required some physical redesign. The greatest concern in the bomb fuze, however, was with the dry battery used as a power source. As had been learned with the rocket fuze, it deteriorated rapidly in storage, lasting about a year ordinarily and not more than a month or 2 under tropical conditions. At the subzero temperatures encountered in high-altitude runs, the dry battery wouldn't work at all. Another means for powering the fuze had to be found.*^ The solution was found by eliminating the batteries and using the arming system of the conventional bomb fuze. In that fuze a small wind- driven vane spinning as the bomb falls actuates the arming mechanism only after a certain number of turns of the vane. By attaching a miniature generator to the vane, sufficient electric power could be obtained for the proximity fuze. The generator assured almost indefinite storage life, per- formed well over extreme temperature ranges, and increased the safety factor since the fuze could in no way detonate the bomb unless the vane was running at high speed. The generator designed by Zenith Radio, measuring 3^ by 2% inches and built to run at 50,000 r.p.m., went into mass production. With it went a rectifier assembly made by General Electric about half the size of a cigarette, to convert the alternating voltage of the generator to direct current for the fuze. Tests of the new bomb fuze began in May 1943, and by *■' British tests further disclosed that air-burst chemical bombs filled with a persistent agent such as mustard gas contaminated seven times the area covered by a surface burst. Hin- man, pp. 33-34; Baxter, p. 241. '^ Hinman, p. 18. 396 s •2? c o ^ s ^1 -0 a £ Q •S -0 h s LO e C .0 !::: ij c Qi tu 1 ^ CJ fe: ~c >-- "« ''}>'' -0 HJ ^ ~e c c c c ■S" .0 3 a ^ ^ a> s Ci, -tt .^ C) Cl a MS CM O 5 1^ (5. O a. e ^ S « S 4) Q ^ £ . c g E a 2 e (n -JS s s 3 ^ - a i- S "S o c u tw so g g ?• a. o S E S CO -ts O -C lg e «i Wi O ^ S o S THE RADIO PROXIMITY FUZE 397 November specifications for quantity production were ready. Army Ord- nance called for the fuze on all its bombs between the 100- and 4,000-pound sizes. Approximately 1 million were made by Zenith, Emerson, Philco, and other radio manufacturing companies.^® Subsequent modifications made in the bomb fuze included a device designed at the Bureau by Jacob Rabinow to provide delay in arming and permit the fuzed bombs to drop safely through deep formations of bombers, and replacement of the vane mechanism with a miniature turbine, making the whole rotating system in the fuze more compact. Design of special components was initiated by Astin's group to insure optimum heights of burst, and finally a new generator appeared, measuring a mere \y^ by 1% inches,® '^ As the sophisticated generator-powered bomb fuze went into pro- duction, the Navy through OSRD asked that it be adapted to their 5-inch aircraft rocket. The major modification consisted in changing the arming system from its vane gear back to the use of the acceleration provided by the firing of the rocket. Production of both air-to-ground and air-to-air versions began in December 1944, and both the Army and Navy used them in con- siderable numbers in the last months of the war.** A late adjunct to employment of the proximity fuze bomb was a special bomb director mechanism, which together with toss bombing, in- sured bringing the missile close enough to its target for maximum effect. The toss-bombing principle and basic design of the mechanism, the acceler- ation integrater bomb release, was first suggested by Col. Harold S. Morton of Army Ordnance in January 1943 and developed under Alexander Ellett at the Bureau.*® The object of toss bombing is to compensate for the gravity drop of the missile in flight. Instead of depending on an educated guess about the point of bomb release, as fighter pilots did in attacking bomber formations or in dive bombing, the bomb director automatically computed the release point as the pilot commenced pulling out of his dive. The resulting trajec- tory of the bomb tossed it toward its target, allowing the pilot more time to take evasive action against ground or ship fire. Some 500 bomb director sets were produced for the Army and Navy toward the end of the war, although only a few more than a hundred, fitted " Hinman, pp. 20, 31 ; Baxter, pp. 239, 241. '' Hinman, pp. 21-23 ; NBS War Research, p. 23. ^ Hinman, p. 24. "* Letter, Acting Assistant Chief of Air Sta5-4 to Col. H. S. Morton, Office of Chief of Ordnance, Nov. 8, 1945, and attached correspondence (copy in NBS Historical File) ; Rinehart MS, p. 158. 398 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941-45) in the P-47 fighter plane in the European theater, saw service.®" They also directed the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The progressive reduction in size of the nonrotating radio fuze was eagerly observed by Army Ordnance, since they wanted it for their trench mortars. The fuzes in production, for all their miniaturization, still weren't small enough when the request came to the Bureau in the late spring of 1944. Besides the necessity of designing a fuze only one-third the size of those in the bomb and rocket, while retaining all their functions, the fuze for the Army's 81-mm mortar shell had to be capable of withstanding a firing shock of 10,000 times the force of gravity or 10 times that of the rocket fuze. The extreme requirements in size and ruggedness were largely met by what was called a "radical innovation in electric construction" when the subcontractor, Globe-Union, Inc., found a way to produce a considerable part of the electric circuit of the fuze by painting conducting material onto ceramic plates and blocks.®"'' Production of three models of mortar fuzes with these new "so-called printed circuits" started a month after the surrender of Ger- many. They were initially turned out at the rate of 100,000 a month. In the expectation that the war in the Pacific would last until mid-1946 or early 1947, the rate had just been tripled when the war ended."^ The pressure to complete development and hasten production of fuzes both at the Bureau and in industry increased as preparations for the Nor- mandy invasion began. Large quantities of bombs and rockets with the proximity fuze were assembled for use in the preinvasion air assault to soften up the beachhead. Teams headed by OSRD and Bureau members went to England to indoctrinate the U.S. Air Force in the maintenance and use of the fuzes. Then, shortly before D-day, the Air Force announced its deci- sion not to use the fuze. In view of Allied air superiority, it was felt that enemy recovery of one of the fuzes would make the weapon more advan- tageous to them than to us. The proximity fuze for shells had been used by fighter planes in the Pacific since early 1943, but their use had occurred only over water where they were not recoverable. In Normandy, the fuze "" Astin, ed., "Bomb, Rocket, and Torpedo Tossing," vol. 2, Summary Technical Report of Division 4, NDRC (Washington, D.C., 1946) ; Astin, ed., "Photoelectric Fuzes and Miscellaneous Projects," pp. 8-10. ""'' Although the metalizing art was believed well known, Globe-Union rightly considered its printed circuit technique a trade secret, with great potentialities for the future, mak- ing possible economic mass production, saving space and weight, and increasing the reliability of electrical equipment. See Astin, ed., "Radio Proximity Fuzes for Fin- stabilized Missiles," vol. 1, Summary Technical Report of Division 4, NDRC (Washington, D.C., 1946), pp. 241-242, 248, 253-256; C. Brunetti and A. S. Khouri, "Printed electronic circuits," Electronics, April 1946, p. 104. " Hinman, pp. 26-27 ; Baxter, p. 241 ; Rinehart MS, p. 182. A GUIDED MISSILE CALLED THE BAT 399 might be retrieved from the beach or beachhead. The same negative deci- sion withheld use of the director mechanism for toss bombing. So great were precautions to keep the proximity fuze out of enemy hands that it was not officially released for general use in the theaters until December 1944, 6 months after D-day. Even then its use was forbidden where enemy observers might identify the nature of the fuze. Among added precautions, the fuzes in rockets for use against aircraft were designed to destroy themselves before striking the ground in case of a miss, and bombs and rockets for air-to-ground strikes had an auxiliary contact fuze that func- tioned on impact in case of failure of the VT fuze. The single exception to the early restriction was use of the shell fuze in the British defense against the German V-1 robot bomb in the summer of 1944. Following instruction courses given at the Bureau and at Aberdeen Proving Ground to Navy and Air Force teams, the first major combat use of the bomb fuze, by the 7th Air Force, occurred during the preinvasion bombardment of Iwo Jima in February 1945. In Europe both bomb and rocket fuzes, the latter in the new 4.5-inch rocket carried by fighter planes, were first used against German flak batteries and other ground targets in April.s^ In 1944, as large-scale production was reached, over 8 million radio proximity fuzes were made, almost a quarter of them bomb, rocket, and mortar fuzes. ^^ By then fuze plants were monopolizing 25 percent of the total facilities of the electronic industry and 75 percent of all molding plastics firms. And even more sophisticated fuzes were on the way. As produc- tion slackened with the end of the war, research was resumed in a search for better components and more versatile fuzes.®** A GUIDED MISSILE CALLED THE BAT The Bureau borrowed on the wartime radar research carried out else- where for its construction of the "Bat," the first fully automatic guided missile ever used successfully in combat. The guided missile program began late in 1940 when NDRC initiated research on a new weapon it believed might be useful to the services, a ^ Hinman, pp. 36-40; Baxter, pp. 240-241, 234-235. *" Of the 8.3 million fuzes produced, 61 percent went to the U.S. Army, 26.7 percent to the U.S. Navy, and the remaining 12.3 percent to the British armed forces (Baxter, p. 236 n.). It has been estimated that of the fewer than 2 million NBS fuzes made, prob- ably no more than 20,000, primarily bomb fuzes, were used in the European and Pacific theaters (Astin, ed., "Bomb, Rocket, and Torpedo Tossing," p. 8). ** Baxter, p. 242; Rinehart MS, p. 260. 400 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941-45) winged bomb which would automatically seek out its target and guide itself to hit the target. NDRC was proved right, but its missile was still a year away when in August 1943 German planes, out of range of antiaircraft fire, began to sink Allied shipping in the Bay of Biscay by means of radio-con- trolled bombs fitted with glider wings.''"^ The aerodynamic characteristics of the prototype weapon that was designed and constructed under RCA contract in 1940-41 presented a num- ber of stubborn difficulties. Early in 1942 NDRC asked the Bureau for help by taking over the aerodynamic and servomechanism (control) development of the weapon. Hugh L. Dryden, chief of the mechanics and sound divi- sion of the Bureau and NDRC consultant, whose fundamental work on "Aerodynamics of aircraft bombs" was still basic in that field, was put in charge.®° Under the code name "Robin," several full-scale missiles of new de- sign, intended to carry a standard 2,000-pound bomb, were constructed for the Bureau at the Vidal Research Corporation. Tests began in April 1942. The nose of the flying bomb vehicle contained a special RCA television trans- mitter with pickup tube for viewing the course of the bomb in its flight. A ground operator directed the bomb by manual remote radio control, watching a television receiver in front of him. The test results were not encourag- ing. Electrical interference and the noise and vibration of the glider serious- ly affected the television equipment and the servomechanism repeatedly failed under the varying conditions of flight."^ Among the observers of the flight tests were Navy Ordnance officers concerned at the time with a radar homing missile under development by the Naval Research Laboratory and the Radiation Laboratory at MIT. While one group at the Bureau continued work on the television-guided "Robin," another, convinced by the Navy of the possible superiority of radar in the Bureau's glider system, began modifying "Robin" to incorporate radar homing principles. Two basic types of a radar missile were available. One envisioned a glider bomb with a radar receiver tuned to an enemy transmitter that en- abled the bomb to home in on the transmitter. The other type contained both transmitter and receiver, in which the transmitter emitted short pulses of high intensity, guiding the missile by the returning echoes from the enemy object. As both types came under study in a new special projects section set up in Dryden's division at the Bureau, the section expanded to more than ■Baxter, p. 194. ' The 210-page MS report of Feb. 28, 1927, is in NASA Library, File N-7569. ' NBS War Research, p. 30. A GUIDED MISSILE CALLED THE BAT 401 a hundred members, occupying the whole of the temporarily vacated hydrau- lics laboratory.^* The first radio-operated guided missile ready for testing was the "Pelican," a passive type using a radio receiver only, mounted in the nose of a 450-pound glider bomb. The plane carrying the Pelican illuminated the target with its radio transmitter and the bomb picked up the reflected waves and homed in on them. Foreseeing early use for the weapon, the Navy put the Pelican under highest priority and augmented the staff with a Navy Ord- nance Experimental Unit at the Bureau and a Pelican Test Group at Lake- hurst, N. J., where the flight tests were to be made."" With receivers provided by Zenith and gliders by Vidal, final assem- bly was made at the Bureau. The first flight demonstrating homing control took place in December 1942. In the haste to construct test models and get them into production as their design proved satisfactory, minor difficulties with instrumentation were accepted which seriously flawed the production tests. As it turned out, only slight changes in the target selector circuits of the Pelican were necessary to overcome the repeated failures of the missile, l)ut by then the greater promise shown in a concurrent project, the "Bat" missile, a 1,000-pound flying bomb, claimed the major Bureau effort.^"" As bats emit short pulses of sound and guide themselves by the echo, so the Bat missile, sending out shortwave radiation, was directed by the radar echoes from the target. Unlike the Pelican, the sending and receiving radar set in the Bat made the weapon self-sufficient, since it illuminated its own target. Bell Telephone Laboratories and MIT scientists designed the radar robot pilot of the Bat, while groups under Hunter Boyd and Harold K. Skram- stad at the Bureau worked out its aerodynamic and stabilization characteristics.^"^ Flight tests of the Bat, its 10-foot glider wing supporting a dummy bomb, started in May 1944. That autumn, in comparative tests between the Pelican and Bat against a ship hulk anchored 60. miles off shore, both per- formed well and were accepted. In one respect, as it turned out, the Pelican was somewhat the superior of the two, since its range of 20 miles exceeded '^ NBS War Research, p. 31. ■^ Baxter (p. 195) describes the Pelican as originally an antisubmarine weapon, using a standard depth bomb and a scaled-down air frame steered by its radar receiver from a transmitter in the attacking plane. When the submarine threat receded, "the idea of a glide bomb which would follow a radar beam directly to the target was * * * too good to abandon," and research on the glide missile continued as a weapon against shipping. "» NBS War Research, p. 33. '" Ibid. A notable report on fundamentals was Dryden's "Some aspects of the design of homing aero-missiles," NBS Report to Division 5, NDRC, October 1945, and attached correspondence (NARG 227, OSRD, Division 5, Box 655) . 402 The "Bat'' borne by a Navy torpedo bomber, rides with folded tail fins until, upon release, they open into proper flight position. The first fully automatic guided missile to be successfully used in combat, the Bat was designed for use against enemy shipping, and particularly against surfaced sub- marines. The Bat's outstanding features were its self-guidance after release, its long range, high accuracy, low angle of flight, and high pay load. The "Pelican," developed with the cooperation of the Navy Bureau of Ordnance and the MIT Radiation Laboratory. Here it is rigged with instrumentation for flight tests, the 16 mm gunsight aiming point camera directly beneath the wing pointing at a panel of signal lamps indicating radar controls being applied, and the 16 mm camera, slightly lower and forward, pointing at the ground ahead of the glider. RADIO AND RADIO-WEATHER PREDICTING 403 that of the Bat. But the decision had been made and only the Bat went overseas. In the final months, land-based Navy patrol squadrons in the Pacific made effective use of it against Japanese naval and merchant ship- ing and against land targets in the forward areas.^"^ Complex and formidable as the Pelican and Bat seemed at the time, they were but pale prototypes of the missiles to come in the postwar years. RADIO AND RADIO-WEATHER PREDICTING An important weapon in subduing the German submarine menance was the high-frequency direction finder, called "Huff-Duff," a play on its initials, h-f-d-f. Its progenitor was the radio compass or direction finder designed by Frederick A. Kolster of the Bureau in 1915."^ When early in the war the Allies established the convoy system for the Atlantic crossing, the U-boats began stalking the convoys in wolf packs, using their wireless to direct the group operations. The wireless gave away their positions to British and American Huff-Duff stations and allowed radar- equipped planes from land bases or carriers to find them. Errors in accuracy in existing Navy, Signal Corps, and commercial direction finders sometimes caused the search planes to miss the enemy packs. In April 1941, NDRC requested the Bureau to study the errors in high- frequency finders and determine techniques for measuring these errors. Out of the research came new techniques for assessing a variety of errors possi- ble in the direction finders themselves, and correlation of these errors with the influence of atmospheric disturbances on the finders. The results were set out in two important papers prepared for NDRC, one by Diamond, Lyons, and Post on "High-frequency direction finder apparatus research by the NBS," the other by Kenneth Norton on "The polarization of downcoming ionospheric radio waves." The latter paper NDRC acclaimed as "a thorough development of the physics of ionosphere reflections [that] has become a classic on the subject," and much of the subsequent research on direction finders, both in NDRC and in Allied research centers, was based on the fundamental theories set down in these two reports.^"* By June 1943 Huff-Duff, together with Asdic, radar, Loran, sonar, and voice and radio communication, had driven the wolf packs from the North '""NBS War Research, p. 34; Boyce, New Weapons for Air Warfare, pp. 225-235. '"^ See ch. Ill, p. 142. ^"See C. G. Suits, G. R. Harrison, and L. Jordan, eds.. Applied Physics, Electronics, Optics, Metallury (OSRD, Science in World War II, Boston: Little, Brown, 1948), pp. 135-136, 140. 404 WORLD WAR 11 RESEARCH (1941-45) Atlantic.^"' The Huff-Duff investigation, however, was only a single aspect of a much more extensive project at the Bureau involving the ionosphere and its wide range of effects on radio communications of all kinds. Studies of these effects, as manifestations of radio-weather, had already led to techniques of predicting, with growing accuracy, their influence on communications. For good reason, then, a month after Pearl Harbor a Bureau letter circular on radio-weather predictions was withdrawn from circulation and all further open publication on the subject ceased. Its data on radio dis- tance ranges had become military secrets and remained so throughout the war."^ The influence of the ionized layers of the earth's upper atmosphere, the ionosphere, on radio wave propagation had been recognized ever since the independent experiments of Breit and Tuve and of Appleton in 1925 proved its existence.^"^ Through the next decade Norton, Kirby, Gilliland, and Newbern Smith at the Bureau devised a number of techniques for ex- tending the range of ionospheric measurements.'"^ Because of the scarcity of ionospheric data and because few realized its importance, use of such data in radio communications before the war was relatively small. The military value of precise knowledge of the usability of various radio frequen- cies at specific times over specific transmission paths thus gave an enormous impetus to the compilation of sky data during the war. From the point of view of the services, the extreme crowding of the radio-frequency spectrum made propagation data necessary for the best selection and allocation of available frequencies. Security considerations also dictated that the frequencies used be those least likely to be intercepted by the enemy. Design of new equipment, especially antennas, depended upon knowledge of radio propagation conditions. Finally, not only all radio aids for air navigation over the North Atlantic, but radio direction finding, radio- telephone, radar, telegraphy, and radioteletype required better knowledge of propagation ranges, accuracy, and receivable intensities. "^ Baxter, pp. 38, 45; NBS War Research, pp. 43^14. The Mathematical Tables Project of the Bureau, located in New York, did important work for the Navy on its Loran tables and other computations. Interview, Dr. Franz L. Alt, June 30, 1964. '"^ LC658 (1941). Excepted from classification were the standard frequencies and other broadcasting services provided by the Bureau (see LC591, 1940). ''" For the work of Breit, Tuve, and Appleton, see RP632, "Studies of the ionosphere and their application to radio transmission" (Kirby, Berkner, and Stuart, 1934). ^°' RP597, "A continuous recorder of radio field intensities" (Norton and Reymer, 1933) ; RP752, "An analysis of continuous records of field intensities * * *" (Nor- ton, Kirby, and Lester, 1934) ; RPlOOl, "Characteristics of the ionosphere * * *" (Gilliland, Kirby, Smith, et al., 1937) ; RP1167, "Application of graphs of maximimi usable frequency * * *" (Smith, Kirby, and Gilliland, 1939) . RADIO AND RADIO-WEATHER PREDICTING ■ 405 An aircraft disaster in the European theater, attributed to failure of communications resulting from a magnetic storm, led the British and, soon after, the Australians to establish their propagation services in 1941, in order to furnish radio weather predictions to their Armed Forces.^"® A similar program had its inception in this country when NDRC asked the Bureau to prepare a textbook for the services on basic principles of radio skywave propagation. Assembled by a group under Newbern Smith in Bellinger's radio section, the Radio Transmission Handbook — Frequencies 1000 to 30,000 kc, appeared a year later, in January 1942. In addition to the prin- ciples, it gave such computational procedures as were then available, offered preliminary versions of prediction charts, and provided radio predictions for that winter. A supplement in June gave the summer predictions. So valuable was the information in these handbooks to service radio communication systems that NDRC asked the Bureau to continue the work, and in the summer of 1942, by order of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Interservice Radio Propagation Laboratory (IRPL) was established at the Bureau. It was directed to centralize radio propagation data and furnish the resulting information to the services. ^^^ The data were compounded of a number of variables of which little was known. First of all, long-range radio communication depends upon the ionosphere, which acts as an infinite series of tiny radio mirrors to reflect signals back to earth. Communication is imperiled, no matter how good the transmitting or receiving equipment, unless radio waves are propagated with sufficient strength to be receivable. That strength depends upon knowledge of the ever-changing characteristics of the ionosphere, which vary with lati- tude and longitude, geomagnetic latitude, layer height, ionization density, energy absorption, and radio noise. The latter, radio noise, is both geo- physical, caused principally by thunderstorms, and extraterrestrial (stellar and solar), resulting from meteor activity and solar storms.^^^ To predict useful frequencies over skywave paths anywhere in the world, the Bureau had first to obtain adequate ionospheric data on a world- wide basis. With the data, it had to establish methods for calculating maxi- mum usable frequencies over long paths, methods for calculating skywave ^"^ Unavoidable because it results from the event, yet similar as a phenomenon, is the total blackout of radio communications experienced by the astronauts in their space flights while reentering the atmosphere. The heat of the falling capsule during reentry ionizes the air around it, sealing off both incoming and outgoing radio signals and stopping regis- tration of the instruments tracking the capsules. "° Suits, Harrison, and Jordan, Applied Physics, Electronics, Optics, Metallurgy, pp. 148-9. For the wartime financing of IRPL, first by the Bureau, NDRC, Army, and Navy, and after 1943 wholly by the Army and Navy, see memo. Deputy Secretary, Joint Com- munications Board, JCS, for Director, NBS, May 24, 1945 (NBS Blue Folder Box 24) . "" Dellinger, "The ionosphere," Sci. Mo. 65, 115 (1947) . 406 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941-45) field intensity, determine minimum required field intensities, and methods for forecasting ionospheric storms. At the time, ionospheric observations were available to IRPL only from the Bureau laboratory in Maryland, two observatories in Australia, and one in New Zealand."- Before the end of the war, through the cooperation of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the U.S. Army and Navy, the Canadian Navy and Air Force, the new British and Australian propagation services, the British Admiralty, the National Physical Laboratory, the British Broadcasting Corp., and the U.S.S.R., 44 stations were regularly reporting ionospheric observations by cable and radio, in cipher, to IRPL. As a first step, the Bureau evolved a technique for predicting iono- sphere characteristics on a worldwide basis, using standard statistical methods and recording the data on comprehensive charts published for the services each month. Next, a simple rapid method was devised for obtaining the maximum usable frequency (m.u.f.) over sky paths in any part of the world for distances up to 2,500 miles. The method made possible preparation of world charts giving predictions of m.u.f. 3 months in advance. The prepa- ration and distribution of these charts, which began in April 1942, was the most important achievement of the Bureau in the field of skywave propagation."' The urgent need to know distance ranges and lowest useful high fre- quency (l.u.h.f. ) necessitated many more calculations of skywave field inten- sities than were currently available. The Bureau's intensity-recording pro- gram, begun early in the previous decade, was expanded by installing re- corders at new ionospheric stations set up in the services and elsewhere on the North American continent. Commercial radio companies supplemented these records with their observed worldwide radio traffic log sheets. With the data on skywave field intensity, knowledge of the minimum field den- sities necessary to overcome atmospheric radio noise was also required. A study began of thunderstorms, the common source of this noise, whose prin- cipal generating centers are in the East Indies, Central and South America, and Africa, with secondary centers in the tropical oceans. A final major problem of IRPL was forecasting ionospheric storms, the great magnetic storms, invisible but of vast energy, triggered by solar flares and eruptions that often blanket the earth and for periods of "^ The Bureau's ionosphere recording equipment and field intensity recorders were located at its field station at Meadows, Md., until 1942 when the Air Force took over the site for Andrews Air Base. The Bureau found another meadowland, an area of 450 acres, at Sterling, Va., near Chantilly, 23 miles northwest of the Bureau. That too was lost when in 1954 it became the site of the Dulles International Airport. By then other field sta- tions of the Bureau, including those at Boulder, Colo., were providing adequate coverage. '" NBS War Research, p. 36. RADIO AND RADIO-WEATHER PREDICTING 407 a few hours to several days disrupt all sorts of electrical and electronic equipment."* In a magnetic storm, the ionosphere tends to absorb signals instead of reflecting them, often temporarily knocking out long-distance tele- phone lines and scrambling telegraph transmission and the transatlantic radio circuits upon which overseas flights depend. The military importance of the North Atlantic flight path, which reaches into the auroral zone or zone of maximum disturbance, thus made it imperative to know when communica- tions were likely to be interrupted. Studies of the behavior of radio direction finder bearings and other ionospheric and cosmic data over the North Atlantic path gathered by moni- toring stations in Europe showed that it was possible to predict the advent of a radio disturbance to shortwave communications and issue warnings a few hours to half a day or more in advance. Using these data the Bureau's short- time warning service was inaugurated in 1943.^^^ By the autumn of 1943 adequate solutions to the major difficulties in radio weather predicting had been found and the result was the IRPL Radio Propagation Handbook that appeared in November as an IRPL issue, an Army training manual, and a Navy publication. It described the behavior of the ionosphere and the theory behind maximum and lowest useful fre- quencies. It discussed the preparation of prediction charts and the tech- niques for determination of useful frequencies over any path at any time, to the extent that they had become known."'' The new world of radio explored by the handbook bore only remote resemblance to that described in the hand- books on elementary electricity, radio circuits, and radio measurements that supplied the needs of World War I. From 1925 to the end of World War II, the radio section of the Bureau was almost wholly engaged in studies of the ionosphere and in radio engi- neering projects, including its blind landing system, the radiosonde, the proximity fuze, and guided missiles. With a single important exception, radio standards work went into somewhat of an eclipse in that period. The exception was in new precision frequency measurements. "'' For an interesting account of magnetic storms, particularly the great storms of March 1940 and February 1958, see John Brooks, "The subtle storm," The New Yorker, Feb. 7, 1959. ° Bellinger and N. Smith, "Developments in radio sky-wave propagation research and applications during the war," Proc. IRE, 36, 258 (1948) . ""Two months after the IRPL handbook came out, the Bureau began a 2-week training course in the principles of radio weather predicting and methods of problem solution for Army Air Force, Signal Corps, and Navy officers and enlisted men. Some after training went to oversea communications groups and took charge of assignment of radio operating frequencies in the field. Others were sent to training units to organize additional radio weather predicting courses. 786-167 O— 60 28 408 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941^5) As a requirement of the radio wave propagation studies, a group under Harold Lyons undertook in 1944 to establish national primary stand- ards of microwave radio frequencies. Assisted by the military, OSRD, and industrial laboratories, the Bureau set up frequency standards with an ac- curacy of 1 part in 10 million covering the microwave range continuously up to 30,000 megacycles. All frequencies in the study were derived from a special group of quartz crystal oscillators which constituted the national primary standard of frequency.^^^ At this point some note is appropriate about the multimillion dollar stockpile program in quartz crystals that occupied over a hundred members of the Bureau during the war. It was known that tremendous numbers of quartz crystal oscillator plates would be required by the armed services in their tank, plane, and field radio equipment, in naval communication appa- ratus, in radar and other detection equipment, and in many electronic pre- cision instruments. In radio the plates not only serve to tune both trans- mitters and receivers to a desired frequency and to hold the frequency of trans- mitters within very narrow limits, but also to permit quick changes from one frequency to another merely by changing the crystal in the circuit. The quartz crystal from which the plates are cut is almost worldwide in distribution but except in Brazil is of inferior quality and available only in insignificant amounts. Just prior to the war. Great Britain, Germany, and Japan, in a scramble to stockpile the crystals, were taking 94 percent of Brazilian output. A mere 4 percent satisfied U.S. requirements. When in early 1940 quartz crystal was declared critical, it was established that the United States must stockpile at least 100,000 pounds of usable quartz. In March the Procurement Division of the Treasury asked the Bureau to help formulate specifications for crystals of radio grade and to test those to be purchased for the stockpile. Through the first half of 1941 the total amount of raw crystals received came to less than 50,000 pounds. With our entrance into the war, quartz crystal, still critical, became a strategic material as well, that had to be denied to the enemy at any cost.^^* The Metals Reserve Company of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, taking over from the Procurement Division, at once contracted for the entire "'CRPL report, "Radio standards," n.d., p. 8 (NBS Historical File); NBS War Re- search, p. 39. Other materials also subject to preemptive or preclusive buying, regardless of cost, by the U.S. Commercial Co. set up under the RFC in March 1942, included wolfram (the source of tungsten used to harden steel), rabbit furs, wool and blankets from Spain, Turkish sausage casings, and all of Portugal's sardines. See Jesse H. Jones, Fifty Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC, 1932-1945 (New York: Macmillan, 1951), pp. 387 ff. RADIO AND RADIO-WEATHER PREDICTING 409 Quartz crystal inspection and testing laboratory, through which more than 6 million pounds of the crystals passed. These are 1-pound raw pieces, from which the small oscillator plates needed in radio and other electronic equipment will be cut. output of Brazil. So important was it considered to sequester the crystal that almost all that was brought out of Brazil came by air freight, to avoid the possibility of interception by enemy shipping.^^'' As Brazil expanded her mining of quartz to satisfy the insatiable de- mand for the strategic material, the quality fell off.^^" To handle the volume coming in and salvage and test usable crystal from the raw material, the inspection group under Frederick J. Bates of the polarimetry section at the Bureau rose from the original 3 members assigned to the project to 63 trained inspectors and 13 laborers working in two shifts. By July 1942, with close to 100,000 pounds coming in each month (a year later, five times that amount), three shifts were necessary. The staff finally totaled 166, housed in three temporary structures along Connecticut Avenue, simply to grade and test the incoming quartz. ^^ Jones, pp. 448, 575-576. Worldwide exploration in search of the crystal during the war brought the Bureau 73 shipments from 16 foreign countries, but mainly from Mexico, Guatamala, and Colombia. Exploration at home resulted in over 300 shipments from 25 States and Alaska. None of these sources produced significant amounts. NBS War Research, p. 50. "° The size of the mined crystal ranged between less than a pound up to 290 pounds and the value between $1 and $30 per pound, depending upon quality. 410 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941^5) In 1943 a quartz research laboratory was added to the complex, where technicians under Francis P. Phelps undertook X-ray measurement studies of the crystals, standardization of quartz plates, and fabrication of experimental plates from mother crystal. ^^^ Before the war, optical per- fection of the crystal had been used as the criterion of electrical performance. The quartz laboratory showed that this was not necessary, and as a result new specifications established for the agencies using the crystal made possible regrading of more than 2 million pounds previously rejected by the Bureau. At the peak of production, 111 firms in this country were drawing on the stockpile at the Bureau to manufacture almost 2 million oscillators each month for the radio equipment of our Armed Forces, for commercial use, and for shipment to our Allies. Shortly before the project closed at the end of April 1946, the Bureau reported it had classified and graded over 6 million pounds of crystalline quartz, or 60 times the original stockpile requirement.^^^ RESEARCH IN CRITICAL MATERIALS Quartz crystal found a place on every list of critical and strategic ma- terials drawn up on the eve of war. As in 1917, the course of the war in Europe had made our entrance certain before this country began to take stock of its raw material resources and requirements. When it did, it found dis- quieting lacks not only in quartz crystal but in antimony, chromium, cocoanut char, ferro-grade manganese, magnesium, manila fiber, mercury, mica, qui- nine, silk, tin, and tungsten. Badly needed too were aluminum, asbestos, cork, graphite, hides, iodine, kapok, optical glass, toluol, vanadium, and wool. It was also evident that enormous quantities of steel and petroleum must be produced, and almost unlimited amounts of copper. But leading all the lists, and most frightening, was the rubber shortage, upon which the wheels of war rolled. ^-^ As once before, the Bureau was to make important contributions to research in many of these materials, to the search for substitutes, and to better utilization of available supplies. At the outset, in the emergency, it had an active part in many phases of the establishment of the new synthetic '-^ NBS War Research, pp. 45-46. '~NBS War Research, pp. 49-50; letter, EUC to Executive Director, Office of Metals Re- serve, Jan. 18, 1946 (NBS Blue Folder Box 71). Note. — A memorandum of Apr. 1, 1942, in the building data files of the NBS plant di- vision discloses that at that early stage of the program the value of the quartz stored at the Bureau was S5 million. Assuming a medial value of $10 per pound, the total value of all tested and stockpiled quartz must have come close to $60 million. ^'' Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy, pp. 9-10, 38. RESEARCH IN CRITICAL MATERIALS 411 rubber industry — generally acknowledged the outstanding national accom- plishment of World War II. Until the war, synthetic rubber in this country remained a laboratory curiosity.^-* No one, not even Dupont with its experimental Neoprene, be- lieved large-scale production feasible. New technical research and stark necessity were to make it so. Following a visit by Lawrence A. Wood and Norman P. Bekkedahl of the rubber section to the major German synthetic rubber research laboratory at Leverkusen in 1938, the Bureau prepared a circular based on their obser- vations and on the published literature available.^^' Widely called for after the defeat of France, the circular went through further reprintings as the rubber-producing areas of the British, Dutch, and French in the South Pa- cific fell before the Japanese advance. In February 1942 leaders in the petroleum and chemical industries were brought together. They agreed to pool their patents and trade secrets and undertake operation of the synthetic rubber plants that the Government proposed to finance. The initial goal of the plants was set at 400,000 tons a year, a deliberately optimistic figure although it was far below the 900,000 tons of natural rubber consumed in 1941, most of it to make the automobile tires on which the American public had come to depend for locomotion.^^'' Until the war, the raw materials of experimental synthetic rubbers came largely from organic chemicals, manufactured gas, and byproducts of the coking industry. Militating against these rubbers was the production of their components. Neoprene, for example, though it had excellent resistance to oil, required huge quantities of chlorine, and chlorine was in chronic short supply. What made the new industry possible were the synthetics derived from petroleum and, to a lesser degree, the distilling industry's grain alco- hols.^-" These synthetics were butyl rubber, well adapted for gas masks, bar- rage balloons, and inner tubes, and Buna N and Buna S. tougher rubbers suitable for tire casings. After considerable experimenting and testing, ma- ^* For early Bureau interest in the possibilities of synthetic rubber, see letter, GKB to J. M. Morris, MIT, Feb. 4, 1926 (NBS Box 173, ISR) . '-"€427, "Synthetic rubbers: a review of their composition, properties, and uses" (Wood, 1940) . Although synthetic rubber cost three to four times as much as natural rubber, by 1940 Germany and Russia, seeking self-sufficiency, had gone over wholly to the synthetic. Experimental in this country but in most cases in production abroad (under other names) were Dupont's Neoprene, a chloroprene polymer; the German Buna rubbers, from butadiene derived from the cracking of petroleum; Thiokol, an organic polysulphide made by the Thiokol Corp. in this country; Vistanex, Standard Oil's isobutane polymer, from petroleum; and Koroseal, Goodrich's vinyl chloride polymer. '"' Jones, Fifty Billion Dollars, pp. 399, 406. "' Butadiene from alcohol cost 40 cents per pound in 1945, from petroleum 10-14 cents. Hearings * * * 1949 (Jan 20, 1948), p. 546. 412 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH {1941-45) jor production finally centered on Buna S, the butadiene-styrene composition known as GR-S (Government Rubber — Styrene).'"* Apart from its studies in 1942 of the polysulphide Thiokol as an interim synthetic for retreading tires, the Bureau rubber section was initially kept busy testing new processes for making rubber that were submitted by public spirited citizens. Rubbers were brought in that had been distilled from the oil of vegetable refuse, from gelatins, glycerine, and tannic acid, and even concocted from rubber itself. None could be wholly ignored. There was always a chance that a new composition or process might be found. But none was, and Donald Nelson, director of the War Production Board, paid a mixed tribute when he said of the hopeful that each with his product was sent "to the Bureau of Standards, on whose hard-working scientists we inflicted all these 'inventors.' " ^^^ Bureau participation in the fledgling industry expanded early in 1943 when it was directed to assist the Rubber Research Co. in standardizing the quality of the synthetic rubbers coming into production. More than 50 reports described the test and analytic procedures developed by the Bureau, including methods for determining the styrene content of the GR-S copoly- mer and the purity of its styrene, butadiene, and other hydrocarbon com- ponents, and procedures for determining density, specific heats, and thermo- dynamic values of GR-S and of the polymerization of styrene. The studies led to the preparation of a series of standard control polymers making uniform production possible. The controls, specifications, and rapid routine methods of analysis established for the first of the synthetic rubber plants were proved out as each of the other plants came into produc- tion. By late 1944, 19 Government-owned plants across the Nation were making synthetic rubber meeting identical specifications, resulting in a prod- uct more nearly uniform in quality than natural rubber.^'^" The new biUion- dollar industry turned out over 700,000 tons of rubber that year, and as the war ended was operating at a rate in excess of a million tons annually. By then 87 percent of the rubber consumed in the United States was synthetic and the industry was producing one-third again as much rubber as the country had actually used before the war."^ ''^ Buna S was essentially a compound of butadiene, from grain alcohol or from petroleum products, and styrene, from ethyl benzene derived from petroleum and coal tar. ^ Nelson, p. 300; NBS War Research, pp. 117-118. '■'° Frank Freidel, America in the 20th Century (New York: Knopf, 1960), p. 399; Hearings * * * 1946 (Feb. 2, 1945), pp. 261, 270-273; NBS War Research, pp. 115- 116. Feeding the 19 rubber-making plants were 15 others producing butadiene, 5 making styrene, and 9 producing other necessary chemicals (Jones, p. 415). "' Jones, pp. 401, 414. Only the Federal Government could afford the construction of whole industries such as aircraft manufacture, nonferrous metals (magnesium and RESEARCH IN CRITICAL MATERIALS 413 Dr. Briggs was given a bad moment or two over an incident during the rubber crisis. Early in 1945, the very active Senate Special Conmiittee Investigating the National Defense Program (the Truman Committee) called on him to explain how a study he had made in the bouncing characteristics of golf balls and baseballs could possibly contribute to the war effort. The Committee pointed to a paper he had just published, wonderfully entitled: "Methods for measuring the coefficient of restitution and the spin of a ball." "- Dr. Briggs explained and the committee subsided. Prodded to con- serve rubber, even in miniscule amounts, the Services of Supply had asked the Bureau about a substitute material being used in the baseballs it was supplying recreation centers at training camps. Extending an investigation he had made of golf balls in an idle hour before the war. Dr. Briggs took on the SOS request himself. The work, he reported to the committee, had been done by a high school boy. He had merely made the analyses, with assistance from Dr. Dryden and Dr. Buckingham on the theoretical con- siderations. In baseballs with balata cork centers (made official in the major leagues in 1943), the coefficient of restitution or liveliness of the ball. Dr. Briggs found, was measurably reduced over that of the prewar rubber- cushioned cork center (official in 1938). The coefficient was still lower in baseballs with reclaimed rubber centers. "A hard-hit fly ball with a 1943 center," Dr. Briggs reported, "might be expected to fall about 30 feet shorter than the prewar ball hit under the same conditions." ^^^ It was an important finding, contributing to the peace of mind not only of the professionals but of the sluggers in the training camps. The rubber shortage was not solved without considerable emguish to the American motorist, who was first persuaded to turn in any extra tires of natural rubber he might have above the five for his car, and was then severely rationed on gas, to save the rubber he had left. It was a long wait before he got his first synthetic tire. As the first of the synthetics came out of the molds, the Department of Commerce requested the Bureau to road test them, along with tires made wholly of reclaimed rubber, for possible military service as well as civilian use. The early synthetic tires of Buna S proved satisfactory in all respects but resiliance and adhesiveness, and they ran hot, especially with heavy aluminum), machine tools, synthetic rubber, and shipping required by the war. The RFC financed some 920 new defense plants for the War and Navy Departments at a cost of 16 billion (Jones, pp. 316, 328, 342, 345) . ''"RP1624 (1945). "'Letter, James M. Meade, chairman. Special Committee, to LBJ, Mar. 30, 1945 (NBS Box 504, IN). 414 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941^5) loads or increasing speeds.""' Nevetheless, the public had to get along with them since no natural rubber could be spared. Although later synthetic tires were far more satisfactory, tire production was restricted, for much of the new rubber was going into other products. Among materials made of the new rubber and tested by the Bureau for military or domestic use v/ere rubber parts for landmines, cords for barrage balloons, pontoon fabrics, crash pads for tanks, gaskets, soles and heels on shoes, jar rings for home canning, flexible hose, and wire and cable insulation.^ ■' While the Bureau, to be sure, could do nothing about the sharp re- strictions placed on the use of motor vehicles or the national speed limit, set at 35 miles per hour, it did hurry out a letter circular on how to prepare one's car for dead storage. ^■^'' And it saved many civilian motorists, as well as the military, a devastating headache that threatened when the standard antifreeze compounds, ethylene glycol and ethyl alcohol, were declared criti- cal. The market was soon flooded with substitute compounds with salt or petroleum bases. The War Production Board at once stopped their manu- facture or sale when the Bureau demonstrated the dangerously corrosive action of salt compounds, even with inhibitors, and the rapid disintegration of radiator hose caused by even the most highly purified petroleum corn- pound.^^" Second only to the shortage of rubber was that of steel and steel plate, for the building of ships, war plants, and expansion of steel plants them- selves. To feed the blast furnaces, branch rail lines and spurs and abandoned trolley lines all over the country were torn up and buildings and bridges that had fallen into disuse were demolished for their metal. Equally critical were some of the alloying agents used in steel pro- duction, particularly in the making of armorplate and projectiles. The ex- tensive review that was made of specifications of Government buying agen- cies was not only important but imperative, and the work of the metallurgical experts at the Bureau and in industry to produce "lean-alloy" steels, using less tungsten, less molybdenum, less vanadium, while retaining the essential '^^RP1574, "Measuring the rate of wear of tire treads" (Roth and Holt, 1944). '■^'Hearings * * * 1944 (Feb. 26, 1943), p. 82; M185, '-Rubber research and tech- nology at the NBS" (Wood, 1947) ; RP1554, "Buna-S-Gilsonite for insulation of com- munication cables" (Selker. Scott, McPherson, 1943) ; NBS War Research, p. 117. '*LC694 (March 1942). "'NBS War Research, p. 180; Hearings * * * 1944, p. 81. A number of gasoline additives also came on the market with the usual claims of greatly increased mileage and improved power. Not one except an additive containing iron pentacarbonyl was found useful in the slightest, and while the pentacarbonyl acted like tetraethyl lead to suppress knock, it greatly increased engine wear (Hearings * * * 1944, p. 80). RESEARCH IN CRITICAL MATERIALS 415 properties of the steel, became one of the most important jobs done in 1942 and 1943.^^^ A significant contribution was the finding made by a Bureau group headed by Thomas G. Digges under NDRC contract, that boron, avail- able in unlimited quantity, might be substituted for a part of the chrome ores commonly used in making hard steel.^^* The anticipated shortage of chromium-nickel stainless steel launched an investigation under W. H. Mutchler for a substitute for the firewalls between the engine and cockpit of planes. Low-carbon sheet steel with either a thin stainless-steel coating or aluminum coating was found most satisfactory, withstanding high-temperature flames for periods up to 15 min- utes without failing. Another acceptable substitute was steel coated with a special heat-resistant vitreous enamel, in place of stainless steel, in the exhaust manifolds on airplane engines and landing craft.^*° Bureau specialists in metallic erosion and corrosion, in protective coatings, and electroplating were on constant call by industry and the services. Over 5,000 industrial or service items were submitted for solution of coating problems or determination of the effectiveness of metallic or organic (i.e., emulsion or wax) coatings applied against high humidity or salt water. They included food cans, almost all munitions, helmet parts, lifeboat, aircraft navi- gation, and field equipment, electrical instruments, proximity fuzes, and var- ious firing mechanisms. Even so small an item as the match came to the Bureau for a coating. With the protection devised for their use in the tropics, the matches withstood 5 days' exposure to 95 percent relative humidity or, equally well, immersion in water for 5 hours. ^*^ Under William Blum, the electrodeposition section saved tons of precious copper and nickel in the manufacture of printing plates for the Gov- ernment Printing Office when it showed that these metals could be replaced by iron deposited from suitable plating baths. The section also made im- provements in the properties of chromium plating of gun barrels that in the case of machine guns increased the life of the barrel by 30 times over steel barrels. Substitution of steel for brass in cartridge cases, it was found, re- quired coating the cases with electroplated zinc. A baked phenolic varnish also worked well. Other items made serviceable by electroplating with «* Nelson, p. 351. '^Report, NBS to Secretary of Commerce, Mar. 10, 1943 (NBS Box 482, PRM) ; RP1705, "Spectrographic determination of boron in steel" (Corliss and Scribner, 1946) ; Suits, Harrison and Jordan, eds.. Applied Physics, Electronics, Optics, Metallurgy, pp. 359-360; NBS War Research, pp. 142-144. "' MS Annual Report 1943 ; NBS War Research, p. 149. '" Division V report, January 1943 (NBS Box 488, PRM) . 416 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941^5) substitute metals included tableware, signal mirrors, and lifesaving equip- ment.^*^ If in the fall of 1941 the Nation's production capacity in steel was tight, the real pinch was in copper and aluminum. Nation-wide scrap drives brought in millions of domestic pots and pans and cleared cellar collections of nickel, tin, aluminum, copper, brass and other metals, but it was still not enough. To get more copper — the metal of communications systems — the Army in the summer of 1942 furloughed 4,000 soldiers who had previously worked in copper mines.^*^ One substitute for copper, when required as an electrical conductor, is silver, which apart from its high cost is as good and in some cases an even better conductor. As an early expedient, half a billion dollars' worth of silver coins and bullion were borrowed from the Treasury and converted into bus bars, transformer windings and the like.^*' Another copper substitution resulted in the "white" pennies that became common from 1943 on. To satisfy the military demand for copper in its cartridge brass, the U.S. Mint was urged to find something else for the 5,000 tons of copper that went into the 1-cent piece annually. Bureau tests of pennies stamped from zinc-plated steel sheets indicated that they would give at least a few years' service, and over a billion went into circulation. When the bronze coin came back again in 1944, the copper content had been reduced from 95 to 90 percent. Wear and tear, it had been determined, would not be affected, and the public was not likely to notice the difference. The Bureau also presided over some tampering with the 5-cent piece, changing its composition from 75-percent copper and 25-percent nickel to 50-percent copper and 50-percent silver. It made for a more valuable coin, but at the time copper was precious and silver was noncritical. The addition of a trace of manganese and aluminum made it tarnish-resistant and as ac- ceptable as the original in coin-operated devices."' Unlike copper, in the case of aluminum there were few or no mines to be worked. The industry was small to begin with, and limited domestic '"John E. Burchard, ed.. Rockets, Guns and Targets (OSRD; Science in World War II, Boston: Little, Brown, 1948), pp. 357, 396-397; Nelson, pp. 251-252; NBS War Re- search, pp. 152-156, 170, 179. Under preliminary development at the Bureau at the end of the war was a unique method of plating by chemical reduction, called "electroless plating," that was to eliminate elec- trical equipment, deposit coatings of more uniform thickness, and make possible thicker coatings. See Abner Brenner, "Electroless plating comes of age," J. Metal Finishing, 52,3 (1954). '" Nelson, pp. 173-174; Jones, pp. 442-443. -" Nelson, p. 355. '*= Jones, pp. 336-337; NBS War Research, p. 178; interview with Dr. William Blum, Oct. 15, 1963. RESEARCH IN CRITICAL MATERIALS 417 supplies of low-silica bauxite, the source of aluminum, meant that 70 per- cent of all bauxite had to be imported. Urgent investigations were begun under contract at a number of laboratories to develop processes for using some of the less pure bauxite and clays in this country. At a high-level conference attended by Dr. Briggs and James I. Hoff- man in the spring of 1942, it was decided to construct and operate a pilot plant at the Bureau for the extraction of alumina (aluminum oxide) from clays. By autumn both an alkaline and an acid recovery process had been successfully investigated. Pilot plant production started in the alkaline plant under a Bureau team directed by Lansing S. Wells and in the acid plant under Hoffman and Robert T. Leslie. As the submarine menace waned, increasing supplies of high-grade bauxite ore from the Guianas reduced the need for the new processes. Both, nevertheless, were fully verified in the pilot plant, the alkaline process re- covering about 95 percent of the alumina in clay, the acid process resulting in alumina with an average purity of 99.6 percent — almost the equal of that from high-grade bauxite. From May 1943 on, the acid-process plant was in almost continuous operation, finally producing alumina at the rate of 50 pounds a day. In a continuing emergency, large-scale production would have been entirely practicable, but otherwise clay could not compete with the imported ore.^*'' Along with quartz crystal, optical glass appeared on all lists of critical materials. Between the two wars, the Bureau had been the only research or- ganization in the country engaged in both research and production of optical glass, with funds supplied chiefly by the Navy Bureau of Ordnance.^^' Prior to 1940, fewer than 20 people working in the glass plant turned out about 9,000 pounds annually, the entire output going to the Naval Gun Factory for its optical requirements. With war orders from the Navy, Army Ordnance, Army Engineers, the Treasury's Procurement Division, and OSRD, the optical glass plant ex- panded. An addition to the kiln building and construction of a second plant with Navy funds more than doubled facilities. The refractories section in- creased its manufacture of pots from 70 to 2,300 annually, and by working in three shifts production went up from 15,000 pounds of optical glass in 1940 to more than 240,000 pounds in 1942 and in 1943. Even so, the Bureau could not supply more than half the requirements, and Bausch & Lomb, Haywood Optical, and Libbey-Owens Ford furnished the remainder. ^**' RP1756, "Development of a hydrochloric process for the production of alumina from clay" (Hoffman, Leslie, et al., 1946) ; NBS War Research, pp. 166-168. "' Bausch & Lomb began making optical glass in World War I. It maintained its facili- ties in the interim years, but admittedly "had no appetite for military business in peace- time." See Fortune, 22, 76, 98 (1940) ; memo, GKB for Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Feb. 4, 1926 (NBS Box 152, AG) . 418 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941-45) An assortment of optical glass specimens made at the Bureau. Center bottom is a co- incidence prism used in range finders. One of the most intricate and costly of optical devices, it was made at the Bureau by cementing together a number of small prisms. Of the services, the Navy was the great consumer. A single big rangefinder for one of its guns contained as many as 160 optical elements. Altogether, the Bureau furnished close to a million pounds of high- quality optical glass to the Armed Forces. Where the Bureau previously made no more than six types of optical glass, military and research require- ments called for 28 types before the war ended. At peak production 400 workers under Alfred N. Finn and Clarence H. Hahner were employed around the clock, not only to produce the glass but to mold it into prisms and lenses for readier use in gunsights, heightfinders, periscopes, rangefinders, and binoculars.^*** In the optics division (optical glass was a product of the ceramics division), investigations were carried out on improved rangefinders, in meth- ods and instruments for testing airplane cameras and lenses, and in optical measurements and materials for camouflaging ships and shore installations. Assistance was also furnished the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics in the design of special aircraft searchlights for use in night attacks on submarines, and in photoelectric equipment for night photography. A simple yet new and vitally important device that came out of the optics division was the heliographic signaling mirror or "solar searchlight," ''* Hearings * * * 1943 (Jan 12, 1942), p. 208; Hearings * * * 1945 (Jan 11, 1944), p. 189; C469, "Optical glass at the NBS" (Glaze and Hahner, 1948); NBS War Re- search, pp. 99-101. RESEARCH IN CRITICAL MATERIALS 419 as some called it. Early in the war the Joint Chiefs of Staff called for a practical means of aiming reflected flashes at potential rescue craft, both planes and ships, as part of the equipment in liferafts and boats. A member of the Bureau staff at the time, L. L. Young, hit on the rearsight method of aiming mirror flashes, employing reflections from both its front and rear surfaces immediately around a sighting hole in the center of the mirror. Incorporating suggestions made by General Electric, which undertook their manufacture, more than a million of the mirrors, of tempered glass with a surface of vaporized aluminum film, were produced for the air and trans- port services.^*' The optics division took part in or carried out alone more than 30 separate investigations, most of them under NDRC auspices. Dr. Briggs's comprehensive report of war research indicates that quite apart from the special groups working for the Manhattan District, on the proximity fuze, on guided missiles, and in radio propagation, each of the other divisions was engaged in as many or more projects as optics. Enumeration of the projects, let alone a description, is beyond the scope of this history. Only a few representative studies can be mentioned. A laboratory tool of limited interest until the war was a magnetic balance for inspecting certain kinds of steel. Devised by a member of the electrical division in 1932, it was modified by a Bureau chemist 5 years later for gaging the thickness of metal, paint, or enamel coatings on nickel, steel and other metals, making possible nondestructive testing of the coatings. Only a few had been made by the American Instrument Co., under the name Magnegage, until the wartime rash of substitute materials and the necessity of plating made the gages important in many industries, in order to expedite acceptance of military supplies and conserve scarce metals by avoiding the use of unnecessarily thick coatings. Arsenals found the Magnegage invalu- able for measuring the thickness of the chromium in the lands and grooves of large caliber guns.^^'' Expansion of Bureau investigations in aviation fuels, lubricants, and motor fuels resulted in greater knowledge of their composition and better control in their production. Many of the war plants making aviation fuels had no previous experience in quality control procedures, and for them the Bureau provided the necessary calibration of primary and reference standard fuels, based on specifications prepared for the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM), and of "referee" fuels to ensure even quality in production. ""John A. Miller, Men and Volts at War (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1947), p. 104; NBS War Research, pp. 110-111. '■'"RP532, "A magnetic balance * * *" (Sanford, 1932); RP994, "Magnetic methods for measuring * * * coatings on nonmagnetic base metals" (Brenner, 1937) ; RP1081, "* * * coatings on iron and steel" (Brenner, 1938) ; NBS War Research, p. 60. 420 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941-45) Of fundamental importance was the wartime work of the petroleum laboratory, originally set up in the summer of 1937 with the support of the Army Air Corps, Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, and NACA to synthesize, if possible, an improved aviation fuel. With the war the investigation turned to study of the paraffin hydrocarbons, found as impurities in primary standard reference aviation fuels, and investigation of those of superior value as components of military aviation gasoline. Working with data and samples provided by the American Petroleum Institute, the Bureau laboratory isolated and synthesized some 78 hydrocarbons and prepared 66 of them in a higher purity than ever before. ^''^ In the case of 21 of the hydrocarbons, no evidence could be found in the literature to indicate they had ever been made before. An added result of the project was the discovery of a possible method for augmenting the supply of aviation gasoline, using re-formed cracked naphtha. Of considerable interest to NACA and the American Pe- troleum Institute, it became the subject of continued postwar research.^'^^ When the early losses of oil tankers by enemy action imperiled the supply of vehicle fuels to our Allies, the Bureau was asked to find out whether substitute fuels from vegetable matter, which the Allies might produce locally, were possible. Attempts to run cars and trucks on gas substitutes was an old story, but the Bureau looked into it again. The studies of engine perform- ance with alcohol, charcoal, shale oil, naphtha, vegetable products and other known substitutes all pointed to alcohol as most promising. Engine tests using gas produced from charcoal showed that approximately 11 pounds of charcoal produced energy equal to a gallon of gas. But the fact that it took 2 minutes to start up the engine and that the little gas generator required '^'^€461, "Selected values of properties of hydrocarbons" (1947) ; NBS Annual Report 1948, p. 217. Bureau studies in the chemistry of petroleum oils went back to World War I (see ch. V, pp. 276-277), and cooperative research with the API in the separation of petroleum into its constituent hydrocarbons began in 1928. The practical problem in the twenties was engine knocking, as compression ratios in- creased. An octane number scale for expressing the knock rating of motor gasolines was adopted in 1930, with n-heptane for the low and isooctane for the high, and in 1934 the Bureau was asked to set up specifications for these primary standard reference motor fuels. Since that time the Bureau has maintained these national reference stand- ards, on which all octane number measurements throughout the country are based. In 1946 the octane scale was also applied to aviation gasolines. In the course of its preparation of pure samples, the Bureau found among the aliphatic hydrocarbons several with higher octane numbers than any previously known — the components of later aviation fuels. See RP1027, "Paraffin hydrocarbons isolated from crude synthetic isooctane * * *" (Brooks, Cleaton, and Carter, 1937) ; RP1160, "Prop- erties of purified normal heptane and isooctane * * *" ( Brooks, 1938 ) . '==NBS Report 2746, "Hydrocarbon synthesis at the NBS, 1937-1953" (Howard, ed., 1953) ; NBS War Research, pp. 75-78; interview with Thomas W. Mears, Apr. 14, 1964. RESEARCH IN CRITICAL MATERIALS 421 constant servicing were deemed serious drawbacks. Only alcohol seemed a feasible substitute, and it had to be high proof. Made at the request of the Army, studies of low-proof alcohols showed that a vehicle that got 200 miles on a tankful of standard gasoline and 130 miles with absolute alcohol went only 25 miles on a tank of 70-proof alcohol. The waning of the sub- marine menace ended the unnerving prospect and the project.^^^ A high-precision wear gage, made by Samuel A. McKee of the Bureau in the course of the substitute fuel study, led to an interesting discovery. The gage itself was capable of detecting as little as one hundred-thousandth of an inch of wear in a motor. While making tests with it, the gage demonstrated, surprisingly enough, that most of the substitute fuels, if not as efficient as gasoline, produced significantly less wear and tear on the engine. It was not the sort of measurement many motorists then or later would be con- cerned about, but the gage fortunately had other uses.^^* Another kind of detector, devised at the request of the Air Force and NACA, was the Bureau's carbon monoxide indicator. In place of earlier cumbersome apparatus, Martin Shepherd of the chemistry division produced a sensitive calorimetric indicating gel, put up in a small tube, that quickly signaled the presence of small amounts of carbon monoxide fumes. To produce the tubes, for attachment in the cockpits of fighter planes and crew quarters of bombers, a group of 30 took over a section of the gas chemistry laboratory and set up an assembly line. Over half a million units were turned out and distributed before the highly classified project ended. ^^^ In an unceasing search, substitutes for metals were found in wood, concrete, and plastics, and involved a host of products from shower stalls and sinks to fuel oil and gasoline storage tanks. No attempt was made as in World War I to build concrete cargo ships, barges, and tankers, but at the time of the steel shortage the Maritime Commission sought new Bureau studies of reenforced steel, with concrete ships in mind. Instead, the research led to the construction of a number of concrete oil storage tanks before steel plate became available again. Lined with liquid-proofing materials recommended by the Bureau, they were used to store a variety of motor fuels, including high-octane gasoline. Contrary to expectations, losses of gasoline by vapor- ization through the concrete proved of minor significance.^^® A challenge to the Bureau was the request made by Military Intelli- gence to find means of sabotaging enemy construction of concrete fortifica- tions and similar military structures. Was there. Intelligence asked, a readily '"^ NBS War Research, pp. 79-80. "^ Ibid. ^■^ Shepherd, "Rapid determination of small amounts of carbon monoxide," Anal. Chem. 19, 77 (1947) ; RP1777 (Shepherd, 1947) ; NBS Annual Report 1947, p. 206; interview with Mrs. M. Kilday, May 12, 1964. ^" NBS War Research, p. 95 422 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941^5) available material which, when added in small amounts to concrete while it was being mixed, would inhibit its gain in strength? It could not be too efFective or act too fast, lest the sabotage become evident to the builders. The known inhibitors of concrete strength such as inorganic salts, alkalis, and acids, and even organic materials like dextrose and syrups, failed to meet the specifications. After considerable experimenting the answer was found in common sugar. It was highly effective in a matter of weeks when introduced in fractions of as little as 1 percent.^^" As it happend, most of the coastal fortifications of the enemy were completed when the answer came, and if the military had other uses for the knowledge, the Bureau wasn't informed of them. The growing importance of plastics that led to formation of the Bureau's organic plastics section in 1935 made that section with its experience the ultimate authority when war came. The War Production Board strongly promoted new plastic products and industry turned them out for the armed services, the Maritime Commission, and the Office of Civilian Defense. Among new plastic products sent for testing were helmet liners, resinous coatings used for protection of steel hardware, bayonet handles. Bureau- designed binocular housings, bugles, canteens, clock housings, compass dials, raincoats, food packaging, goggles, insect screening, shaving brushes, and aircraft housings. The original helmet liner, made of paper pulp covered with fabric, was far from durable, lost its shape after wetting, and had low resistance to impact. A new liner, on which the Bureau worked with the Office of the Quartermaster General, was constructed of cotton-fabric laminated phenolic plastic, its production one of the first large-scale applications of the low- pressure molding technique. The Bureau also made exhaustive tests of Doron, a glass-fabric laminated plastic, as possible body armor. Some of this personal armor was introduced in the Pacific theater late in the war, after it had been shown superior to an equal weight of steel or metal armor in its ability to stop flak and the small arms fire of most Japanese infantry weapons.^'^ Only the extreme range of qualities sought in textiles and fabrics during the war attempted to compete with the proved versatility of plastics. The armed services, so it seemed to one harassed investigator, wanted textiles that were "infinitely strong and infinitely light, that gave perfect protection against heat and cold and finally were digestible in case of emergency." ^^^ They wanted fabrics that would keep out a driving rain and yet let perspira- '': NBS War Research, p. 96. '■•* NBS War Research, pp. 119-120. "" Ibid., pp. 122-123. RESEARCH IN CRITICAL MATERIALS 423 tion through, and they wanted them fireproof, windproof, lightproof, rnildew- proof, gasproof, and even bulletproof. Not only the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, but the War Production Board, National Research Council, Board of Economic Warfare, and Office of Price Administration, sought the aid of the Bureau's textile section under William Appel in creating these fabrics.^'" Since few military fabrics had to possess more than two or three special characteristics simultaneously, the Bureau was able to help, providing much of the technical data that aided in their production. Too difficult even for modern science were the bullet- proof and edible fabrics allegedly sought, and a solution to their construction was still not in sight as the war ended. Among the many problems posed Scribner's paper section was a new paper for war maps, requested by the Corps of Engineers. In some of the swift-moving operations in the later stages of the war in Europe, deteriora- tion of much-used maps became as troublesome as running off the edges of the maps at hand. Not long before that, however, the problem had been licked by production of a unique fiber-binding resin paper of great strength, capable of withstanding treatment that quickly disintegrated ordinary map papers. Maps printed on it remained serviceable even when soaked with water or oil and after being trampled in mud and subsequently washed with soap and water or gasoline. All agencies making war maps in this country adopted the new paper as standard and quantities of it were sent to Great Britain under Lend-Lease.^*^^ Few were the crises of supply faced in World War I that did not have to be met again in 1940. A conspicuous exception was that of high precision gage blocks, making possible mass production of interchangeable parts. At least 10 manufacturers undertook to turn them out in quantity for industry, and as a result of queries, the Bureau prepared a letter cir- cular for manufacturers and gage users providing criteria for the acceptance or rejection of gage blocks.^''^ As early production difficulties were solved, the Bureau thereafter had only the responsibility for calibrating the blocks. Altogether, more than 76,000 gage blocks and accessories, both English and metric, passed through the Bureau's hands for the gage manufacturers, the armed services, war plants, and the Procurement Division. Of more than 24,000 certified in 1944 alone, 50 percent went to the U.S.S.R. by way of Treasury's Lend-Lease.^"^ "'" OSRD interest in this Bureau research, particularly in tropic-proofing and light-proof- ing of textiles, is briefly reported in W. A. Noyes, Jr., ed.. Chemistry (OSRD: Science in World War II, 1948) , pp. 470-471. ^" NBS War Research, pp. 126-127; RP1751, "Experimental manufacture of paper for war maps" (Weber and Shaw, 1946) . '"'LC725 (1943). "' MS Annual Report 1944, n.p. 786-167 0—66 29 424 WORLD WAR 11 RESEARCH (1941-45) Tens of thousands of other types of gages and measuring instruments were calibrated in the Bureau's expanded gage section. A handbook on screw thread standards, originally issued in 1939, was revised in 1942 and again in 1944, to keep up with the improvements in thread standards that evolved during the war.^*^^* In other sections of the metrology division the certification of standard weights, volumetric glassware, thermometers and other instru- ments soared as laboratories were set up or expanded in industry and as war plants came into production. Almost 100,000 standard samples of steels, irons, alloys, ores, ceramics, chemicals and hydrocarbons, oils, paint pig- ments, and other substances were distributed during the period, representing a fourfold increase over the prewar rate. Little publicized, yet significant in the conservation of critical mate- rials, was the wartime effort of the simplification and commercial standards groups at the Bureau. At the beginning of the defense program in 1940 a number of industry advisory committees were set up as liaison between industry and Government on simplification. Simplified practice recommen- dations made by these committees were incorporated in regulations issued by the Ofiice of Price Administration and later in the orders of the War Pro- duction Board, resulting in important savings in labor, machines, and both critical and noncritical materials.^''^ WPB orders limiting the sizes and weights of tubular radiators, for example, were estimated by that agency to have saved 23,000 tons of cast iron. Builders' hardware was reduced from approximately 27,000 to 3,500 items. Sixty-five percent of all types and sizes of brass and bronze pipe fittings were eliminated and the variety of brass and bronze valves was re- duced from 4,079 to 2,504 types, saving thousands of tons of carbon steel, copper, and alloy steel. Forged axes, hammers, and hatchets were reduced from 636 to 303 types, conserving vital alloy steels, and all use of these steels as well as high-polished finishes were eliminated from rakes, hoes, and forks, while their variety and sizes dropped from 915 to 129 types. Wrenches and pliers were reduced to one style and one grade per manufacturer. In order to concentrate manufacture on fewer essential types, dental excavating burs were mercifully reduced from 75 to 24 sizes, though all of them, from the point of view of the patient, may still have seemed too large. Other products similarly affected included concrete-reenforcement steel. "*H25, "Screw-thread standards * * *" (1939, superseded by H28, 1942, and revised in 1944) ; NBS War Research, pp. 163-164. MS Annual Report 1944 reported that 53,000 copies of H28 were sold. "" For industry's reaction to "defrilling" ( it approved, but warned its members ajiainst voluntary standardization without clearing with a defense agency), see Business Week, Nov. 22, 1941, p. 17, and May 1, 1943, p. 30. RESEARCH IN CRITICAL MATERIALS 425 forged hand tools, wood saws, plumbing and heating tanks, refrigerator valves and fittings, shovels and spades, and welded chain. ^''" Among new commercial standards dictated by the war, porcelain- enameled steel utensils replaced the aluminum, stainless steel, and copper pots and pans that were donated to the scrap drives. Extensive use was made for the first time of plywood and fiberboard in the construction of barracks, concrete forms, boats, pontoons and other normally all-wood prod- ucts. Mineral wool and fiberboard also proved satisfactory and in some cases superior replacements for cork as insulation materials.^'" What with victory gardens, meatless Mondays, and ration books, the war was only months old when it became evident that life on the homefront was to be a matter of substitutes, do-it-yourself, or do without. Of the hundreds of consumer products merely simplified out of ex- istence by the war, most conspicuous was the automobile. A War Production Board order of January 20, 1942. stopped all production of cars and light trucks. The last passenger car rolled off the assembly line 3 weeks later. Domestic refrigerators came under severe curtailment next, and in a sweep- ing order in May, the manufacture of more than 400 other civilian products using iron and steel ceased.^"* The great conversion to war production had begun. An index to the vast potential of production in this country on the eve of war, though it was concealed by the doldrums in which industry con- tinued to languish and by the great pool of the unemployed, appeared in the incredible rapidity with which the Nation became fully armed and sup- plied for global warfare. By September 1943, hundreds of huge new rubber, steel, petroleum, aluminum, and magnesium plants had arisen and began reaching full-scale operations where fields or forests had ruled before. Tanks, guns, shells, tires, aircraft, and great catalogs of miscellaneous supplies and parts were pouring along assembly lines to waiting freight trains headed for the ports of embarkation. Supplies and equipment that did not cross with troopships filled convoys for the arming of the British, French, and Rus- sians, or for the stockpiles that were being crammed into the English countryside. November 1943 marked the high point in war production. Thereafter it began to slope downward. The successive targets for production of raw materials and finished products set during the preceding 3 years had been *''" Nelson, p. 240; NBS War Research, pp. 172-173. In some instances sales to industry of the simplified practice recommendations for these products ranged as high as 25- 30,000 copies. Many had to be reprinted later to meet the continuing postwar demand. See NBS Annual Report 1946, p. 207. "" NBS War Research, pp. 173-174. "^ Nelson, pp. 224, 283. 426 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941^5) met.^''^ With the consolidation of the Normandy peninsula, the word "re- conversion" was heard for the first time. The supply lines were full and could be maintained with some slacking in production, even though the strategic planning staff foresaw the war against Japan lasting into 1947. When V-J Day came on August 14, 1945, 3 months and 6 days after victory in Europe, American industry had produced 86,000 tanks, 296,000 planes, 4,800 merchant ships, and 71,000 ships for the Navy. In August and September of 1945 the Army sent out 30,000 telegrams canceling defense contracts and reconversion began. ^'^ Two months later, in November 1945, the Bureau began its own reconversion — in organization, staff, and pro- gram — to research in the postwar world. ' "' Nelson, p. 395. Besides new magnesium and synthetic rubber industries, between 1939 and 1945 aluminum production was tripled, machine tool capacity increased seven- fold, electrical output rose one and a half times its prewar rate, and more iron and steel were produced than in the entire prewar world. The total plant production in the Nation almost doubled. Freidel, America in the 20th Century, p. 400. '™ Kenney, The Crucial Years, 1940-1945, p. 100. The standard avoirdupois pound of Queen Elizabeth I, which is believed to have originally weighed about 7,002 troy grains. It was used as a British standard from 1588 to 1825. THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) CHAPTER VIII "THE PECULIAR PEACE" The war ended with a monstrous bang. In "the peculiar peace" that fol- lowed, the word "fallout" equally described a metaphorical truth and a new phenomenon loosed on the world. In a decade compounded of inflation, strikes, shortages, Russian intransigence and aggression, and the new pres- ence of the atomic bomb, the Nation was to be ruled by uneasy fears.^ By the end of 1946, as price controls went off, living costs were an estimated 39 percent above those of December 1941, and strike after strike hobbled production and pushed prices still higher. Trolley and subway fares went up 2 cents and then a nickel. The 10-cent Sunday paper became 15 cents, then 20. A public with massive war savings fretted over shortages of food, furniture, nylons, electric irons, and clothing. Even razor blades and alarm clocks were hard to find, a new car meant signing up on a multiple of long waiting lists, and housing was either not to be had or the new ones promptly started falling apart. In the summer of 1946 came the meat "famine" as producers refused to send their cattle to market. The black market, a way of life in Europe, came to America. "Had enough?" the Republicans asked the country, and in 1946 it elected the first Republican Congress since the days of Herbert Hoover. But the worst of the adjustment was already past. Raw materials were again becoming plentiful, the reconversion of industry neared completion, and production began approaching prewar levels. New sources of tension arose in the United Nations, born in the last year of the war, where Russia, using the veto to shield her expansion in Europe, goaded the assembly, staged stormy walkouts, and sabotaged issue after issue raised, including the most critical of all, international con- trol of atomic energy. Communism's growing threat in Eastern as well as Western Europe slowly impelled America to assume responsibility for re- storing their war-wrecked economies. ' The material of the introductory pages of this section is largely drawn from Eric F. Goldman, The Crucial Decade: America, 1945-1955 (New York: Knopf, 1956). 427 428 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) The Truman Doctrine, announced on March 12, 1947, promised sup- port to free nations resisting pressures from Communism, and a month later the phrase "cold war" was born. The aftermath of World War II was not to be depression but cold war. Out on Connecticut Avenue, Bureau reports echoed the national tension as it prefaced its plans for research with such phrases as "if war comes again," "in the event of any future emergency," "in time of emergency," and described some of its continuing programs as "the difference between obliteration and survival." ^ A reluctant Nation delayed action on the Truman Doctrine until the fall of Czechoslovakia under Communist domination in February 1948, Russia's menace of Finland, the impasse marked by the Berlin airlift, and the threat of Communist Party takeovers in France and Italy. Russian aggression, aided by hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos around the globe, could be contained only by long-range economic aid. Under mount- ing pressure, Congress adopted the Marshall Plan on April 2, 1948, to bolster the economies of Turkey and all the European countries outside the Iron Curtain. It called for an initial expenditure of $17 billion over approximately 4 years. As the economies of the Western European nations swung upward under the Marshall Plan, containment became policy. The cold war was joined upon the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in March 1949, as 10 nations of northwestern Europe, Canada, and the United States agreed to joint action should any one of them be attacked by Russia. In August of that same year the Marshall Plan received a serious setback when, despite $2 billion in aid, Chiang Kai-shek's nation fell to the Chinese Communist armies. The cold war took still another turn for the worse. Some American scientists had predicted that Russia would not have an atomic bomb before 1952 or 1953. Others hazarded dates as late as 1956 or even 1960. But Stalin had expressed no surprise when at Potsdam he was first told of the event that had occurred at Alamogordo; Russian scientists may well have begun their study of the bomb as early as 1941, and certainly were at work by 1943, assisted by the knowledge that England and the United States were seriously engaged and, later, by acquisition of engineering designs of the structures raised in Britain and at Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Los Alamos. On September 23, 1949, 6 weeks after the actual event, the President an- nounced the explosion of an atomic device in the U.S.S.R. The cold war thus became a question of coexistence — a nebulous, uneasy way of life, shaped by the spectre of annihilation and made even more frightening by Truman's decision on January 31, 1950, to resume development of the hydrogen or fusion bomb. The Russians had dupli- " NBS Annual Report 1947, pp. xiv, xv; Annual Report 1949, p. 49. THE PECULIAR PEACE 429 cated the fission bomb in 4 years; they were almost certainly at work on a fusion bomb, and might not require that much time again. Stalinism abroad had its fright-counterpart in McCarthyism at home. And the cold war became hot when on June 25, 1950, the American Ambas- sador to the 2-year-old Republic of Korea cabled that the Chinese-supported armies of North Korea had crossed the 38th parallel. Six days later Amer- ican planes, ships, and infantrymen put the United States irrevocably into the war. The initial United Nations forces under General MacArthur's com- mand, consisting largely of South Koreans and American troops rushed from Japan, met Soviet-made tanks and fell back. At home the Nation went back on a war footing, back to wage and price controls. Two months after the start of the war a new boom was on as employment passed the 62 million mark. It was August before the Americans and ROK's ended their retreat and another month before they took the offensive. They had advanced to the Yalu River in late November when 33 Chinese divisions crossed and hit the U.N. line. It fell back slowly to the 38th parallel and there stalemate set in. In June 1951 the Soviet Ambassador to the U.N. hinted that Rus- sia was ready for a cease fire in Korea. The killing continued through 2 years and 17 days of conferences before an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. Eight months earlier, on November 1, 1952, this country detonated the first hydrogen bomb. Less than a month after the Korean armistice, on August 12, 1953, the Atomic Energy Commission announced its detec- tion of a similar thermonuclear explosion in the Soviet Union. And both nations were already engaged in the development of intercontinental missiles that would replace planes for the delivery of either the fusion or fission bomb. There appeared to be no alternative to continued research in weap- onry; more truly, mankind had no alternative but peace. If World War II made science for the first time a political, economic, and social force in the Nation, the postwar years, under the pressure of "obliteration," magnified that fact manifold. Yet science could not remain mobilized in the Office of Scientific Research and Development, an emergency agency for military research, and with the end of the war the weapons re- search projects of OSRD were transferred to the War and Navy Departments for peacetime administration. In 1946 Congress divested the Army Engineer Corps of its Manhattan District and the atomic bomb project was returned to civilian control by creating the Atomic Energy Commission. Both the military and the AEC were to call on the Bureau for con- tinued technological research on their behalf. In the fall of 1944, Dr. Briggs and Maj. Gen. Levin H. Campbell, Jr., Chief of Army Ordnance, signed an agreement under which the Bureau would continue its research and design 430 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) of proximity fuze devices. In May 1945 ground was broken for the con- struction of a half-million-dollar ordnance electronics laboratory on the Bureau grounds. Concurrently, the Navy asked for continuation of the guided missile work, and upon the establishment of the AEC, support was offered for enhanced programs on its behalf. The Bureau was thus committed to a large amount of developmental research in the postwar period.' At the same time, the store of basic research had been seriously de- pleted by the war and there was growing concern in the Federal Govern- ment for its replenishment. It was unlikely that this country could ever again rely on Europe for its basic science, or afford to depend on foreign research for its military strength.^ This prospect became a major concern of OSRD during the demobilization period ; vide Vannevar Bush's Science — The End- less Frontier (1945). The question was raised by the science committee of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion and was one of the first orders of business of the AEC. The naval establishment found its answer in the organization of the Office of Naval Research in 1946, to coordinate all research for the Navy and support basic as well as applied research. With its system of grants and contracts for research in the universities and in public institutions, the Office of Naval Research played a key role in the formation of the National Science Foundation. The establishment of the Foundation in 1950, "to evaluate science research programs undertaken by agencies of the Federal Government," settled the 100-year-old question of a permanent central scientific agency in the Government offering support to b asic science Even before the establishment of its central agency, the Federal Government had sought to assure itself of a continuing fund of both basic and applied research through the creation of laboratories wholly supported with Federal funds but operated by non-Federal agencies, as were the Los Alamos Laboratory and Radiation Laboratory of the University of Cali- fornia, the Argonne Laboratory at the University of Chicago, the Lincoln Laboratory at MIT, and the Applied Physics Laboratory at the Johns Hop- kins University. ' Memo of agreement, LJB for Chief of Ordnance, Oct. 31, 1944, and attached corre- spondence (copies in NBS Historical File). In addition to the Navy and AEC research, memo. Joint Chiefs of Staff for Director, NBS, May 24, 1945, requested NBS to assume all obligations of the Interservice Radio Propagation Laboratory (IRPL) as a postwar Bureau function (NBS Blue Folder Box 24, FPE-674c). The magnitude of the defense research commitment by 1950 is described in 20-page memo, Director, NBS for Secretary of Commerce, Nov. 28, 1950 (NBS Historical File). 'Don K. Price, Government and Science: Their Dynamic Relation in American De- mocracy (New York University Press, 1954) , pp. 32, 46. " Ibid., p. 60. THE PECULIAR PEACE 431 Further augmenting its fund of research was the Federal policy of utilizing its own institutions through transferred funds and of entering into contracts with universities and industrial firms to carry out investigations required by its agencies. In the process of formation for many years, the policy was increasingly resorted to during the war and continued at an accelerated rate in the postwar years." The history of transferred funds at the National Bureau of Standards, for the conduct of research and development on behalf of other Federal agencies, provides an interesting note on the progress of science in the Fed- eral Government. The first such funds formally authorized were transferred to the Bureau in 1921 by the Army, Navy, the National Advisory Com- mittee for Aeronautics, the Coast Guard, the Bureau of Engraving and Print- ing, and the Department of Agriculture. They totaled slightly more than $60,000.^ At the height of World War II they approached $9 million, or almost 70 percent of the Bureau's total operating funds. During the Korean war, transferred funds, almost wholly from the Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission, were to exceed $40 million, or 85 percent of operating funds. A decade later they leveled off at approximately $14 million annually, or 40 percent of the Bureau budget. How this imbalance came about merits some discussion. As early as 1942 the Visiting Committee to the Bureau began urging an end after the war to the Bureau's deep engagement with industry, almost wholly supported by transferred funds. The development of new weapons, new materials, and substitute materials during the emergency made the re- search for industry necessary, but in peacetime, the Visiting Committee felt, such research belonged in the universities and in the laboratories of industry and not at the Bureau. While research and development programs will, in the future, [said the Committee] be even more extensively adopted by Ameri- can industry, the importance of the Bureau of Standards * * * will undoubtedly increase in respect to its most important function, namely, serving as a court of last resort on those matters of stand- ards which depend upon scientific [determinations] * * *. Di- rect aid to industry, while very important, should not be allowed to " Dupree, Science in the Federal Government, pp. 371-375. ■ Exceptions to transferred fund research was the work of the U.S. Naval Radiotelegraphic Laboratory and the Signal Corps Radio Laboratory at the Bureau which from 1908 to 1932 were directly supported by those services (see ch. Ill, p. 140). The military research and defense funds of 1918-19 were emergency transfers of the President, outside legisla- tive authority. 432 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) overshadow the Bureau's position of final arbiter on scientific and technical standards.® Secretary of Commerce Jesse H. Jones was inclined to agree with his Visiting Committee. The Bureau involvement in both commercial and in- dustrial interests seemed excessive. A survey made at his request in 1943 recommended that such purely commercial activities of the Bureau as its simplified practices and trade standards divisions should probably be trans- ferred to Commerce. Industrial standards, not development, was its role, and the survey urged "stronger legislative authorization for contributing [the Bureau's] measurement skills to the anticipated new [industrial] develop- ments." " As Under Secretary Wayne C. Taylor wrote: The Department of Commerce proposes to ask for funds to enlarge the basic research work of the National Bureau of Standards dur- ing the transition period. If our country is to maintain its eco- nomic po.ition, research in physics, chemistry, and metallurgy must be sturdily supported to provide the foundation for new in- dustries and greater industrial development.^" That burning issue of the thirties, consumer standards, also flared again, and briefly involved the Bureau, in the efforts of Jones and Taylor (and endorsed by Henry A. Wallace when he became Secretary) to expand the Department's interest in the field of standards for commerce, "particularly [in] the development of performance standards for goods sold to the ulti- mate consumer." ^^ " Report of the Visiting Committee to Secretary Jesse H. Jones, July 11, 1942, p. 9 (NARG 40, Secretary of Commerce, Box 114, file 67009/5) . " Report, Carroll L. Wilson, consultant to Secretary of Commerce, "Standards in Com- merce—A Basis for Action," Dec. 8, 1943, revised Sept. 15, 1944, p. 7 (NBS Box 490, IDS-ASA). The report agreed with the view of the Visiting Committee "that the true function of the NBS lay in that domain of standarization that rested upon exact physical measurement, and not on such standardization as involved negotiations, opinion, judgment, and compromise." '" Letter, Taylor to Executive Secretary, Committee on Economic Demobilization, OPA, Mar. 10, 1944 (NBS Box 489, AG). The same intention appears in two studies made for Senator Kilgore's Subcommittee on War Mobilization to the Senate Committee on Military Affairs: the 326-page report, "The Government's Wartime Research and De- velopment, 1940-44" (Senate Subcommittee Report No. 5, GPO, 1945), and the 418-page report, "Wartime Technological Developments" (Senate Subcommittee Monograph No. 2, GPO, 1945), the latter prepared as a working basis for the postwar development of new industries and cheaper and improved products. The two studies were represented as sequels to the report, "Research — A National Resource," issued in 1940. "Letter, Acting Secretary of Commerce Taylor to Gano Dunn, Jan. 6, 1944 (NARG 40, Box 114, file 67009/5). For plans proposed by Jones and, later, Wallace to reorganize the Department to make "Washington the home of business," see Bus. Week, Mar. 30, 1945, p. 82, and Feb. 8, 1947, p. 52; also Hearings * * * H.R., 79th Cong., 1st Sess., on first deficiency appropriation bill for 1946, pt. I, Oct. 29, 1945, p. 319. THE PECULIAR PEACE 433 Dr. Briggs agreed that the Bureau might undertake certain basic re- search in consumer goods and materials but reserved his enthusiasm for resumption of industrial research. "We need a steady flow of new industries to take up the slack in employment," he wrote in April 1945, with strength- ened research facilities at the Bureau to handle its responsibilities for "pro- viding new opportunities for industry." ^- Frail and tired, he had little in- terest in the new fields of science created by the war. He was content to re- turn to the familiar, to supplying industry and small business with technical information, assisting industry with standardization, continuing basic re- search in standards. Meanwhile, the Bureau must complete the military projects on hand, and continue to serve other Government agencies and the State governments. Legislation to strengthen basic research at the Bureau, recommended in the survey for Jesse Jones, also won Wallace's aproval. Explicitly, Wallace proposed amending the organic act of 1901 to include areas of research previously covered by special legislation and, somewhat vaguely, "a limited enlargement of the Bureau's powers in a specified direction with re- spect to increased freedom in securing high types of personnel." ^^ Vannevar Bush, on the committee, demurred at the apparent impli- cation of the "enlargement." He wanted no fundamental research for science or industry carried out at the Bureau except in the field of metrology. Never- theless, he made unanimous the Visiting Committee's approval of the pro- posed legislation: I am entirely in sympathy with the Bureau's conducting basic re- search in the sciences, especially those which involve standards. However, the Bureau of Standards is the only body which has both the responsibility and authority to perform the exceedingly im- portant function of establishing standards of all kinds, and in the future the Bureau is going to be subjected to a heavy and increasing burden in this regard as a result of the rapid progress of science, particularly in the field of atomic energy. The problem of formu- lating standards in their field alone will be a major challenge to the Bureau. Hence, while I believe that it [the legislation] is important to the effective organization of the Bureau and to its ability to conduct basic research in science, nevertheless I think it should be unmis- ^ Memo, LJB for Secretary of Commerce, Apr. 5, 1945 (NBS Box 502, AG). " Discussed in letter, Gano Dunn to Secretary of Commerce Wallace, Nov. 23, 1945 (NARG 40, Box 114, file 67009/5), and Wallace correspondence in Box 112, files 67009/1 and 67009/12. 434 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) takably clear that the major emphasis should remain on its unique assignment in the field of standards.^* The amendment of the organic act of the Bureau was to be ac- complished in 1950. With the cold war growing hot, the question of in- dustrial research and of consumer standards had become academic. Fur- thermore, the postwar bent of the Bureau had already been determined by its new Director, Dr. Edward U. Condon. EDWARD UHLER CONDON On May 7, 1945, 4 months before the end of the war in the Pacific, Dr. Briggs quietly celebrated his 71st birthday. A year beyond the com- pulsory retirement age, he had served as Director since 1932 under five Secretaries of Commerce, Roy D. Chapin, Daniel C. Roper, Harry L. Hopkins, Jesse H. Jones, and, since the first of the year, under Roosevelt's new Secre- tary, Henry A. Wallace. Anxious to return to the comfort and quiet of his old laboratory in West building. Dr. Briggs submitted his resignation to Secretary Wallace.'"' Two members of the Bureau, Dr. Eugene C. Crittenden and Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, came under consideration by the Secretary's Visiting Committee to the Bureau as Dr. Briggs' successor. Dr. Crittenden, at 65, was the senior, with 36 years of service in the Bureau. But he felt his health was not up to the task, and Dr. Briggs urged the candidacy of Dr. Dryden. Secretary Wallace, however, did not have the advice of his Visiting Com- mittee in selecting a successor.^" Moreover, he was strongly inclined to find someone outside the Bureau for the post. He first met his new Director of the Bureau at a conference of scientists in Chicago. The successful test of the atomic bomb at Alamogordo in July 1945 had almost at once aroused concern among scientists over the control of the "Letter, V. Bush to Gano Dunn, Nov. 21, 1945, attached to letter, Dunn, Nov. 23. '° Dr. Briggs' first years of retirement were spent, at Secretary Wallace's request, com- piling the report on NBS War Research (1949). Letter, Wallace to LJB, Oct. 11, 1945 (NARG 40, Box 112, file 67009, pt. 1, 7-12). See also E. U. Condon, "Lyman James Briggs (1874-1963)," Year Book, Am. Phil. Soc, 1963, pp. 117-121. '" Interview with Dr. Briggs, Nov. 1, 1961 Dr. Briggs put his request for retirement on the agenda for the meeting of the Visiting Committee on June 22, 1945, just prior to his notification to Secretary Wallace. The chairman of the Visiting Committee subsequently accepted responsibility for the failure of the Visiting Committee to submit promptly its nominations, in response to his re- quest, for the Secretary's consideration. In turn. Secretary Wallace acknowledged that he sent in his own nomination earlier than he had originally contemplated. Reports of the Visiting Committee to the Secretary of Commerce, July 5, 1945, and Oct. 31, 1945 ( "Gen Corresp Files of the Director, 1945-1955," Box 6 ) . EDWARD UHLER CONDON 435 weapon and the peacetime development of atomic energy." Ranged against continued military control were most of those who had worked on the bomb at Los Alamos and in the universities. One of the first of the many con- ferences that were called to discuss the future of atomic energy was that convened by Robert M. Hutchins, Chancellor of the University of Chicago. It met in September 1945 at the opening of the university's new Institute of Nuclear Studies. Lending his support to the conference. Secretary of Com- merce Wallace attended and brought with him as special advisor, Dr. Philip M. Hauser, a sociologist on leave from the University of Chicago, then with the Bureau of Census. Meeting Dr. Condon, associate director of research of the Westing- house Electric Corp., for the first time at the conference. Dr. Hauser found him "a most amiable and knowledgeable fellow * * * [with] broad inter- ests in the physical sciences." Aware that the Secretary was searching for a replacement for Dr. Briggs, Hauser suggested to Wallace that "this was a man he should meet and consider for the post of Director of the National Bureau of Standards." As Wallace remembers it, he discussed the director- ship with several others at the conference, but "Dr. Condon was the only one who was available and really interested." ^* Dr. Condon's name was submitted by President Truman to the Senate and confirmed without a dissenting vote. On November 7, 1945, he was formally appointed Director. As Dr. Condon told an Appropriations Subcommittee not long after, he was "born * * * actually in the town where the bomb was tested, but there [was] no connection between those two events." " Then in his 43d year, he had indeed been born in Alamogordo, N. Mex., on March 2, 1902, but had spent his early school years largely in California. Taking his doc- torate in physics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1926, he went to Germany for a year's study, where the new quantum physics of Heisenberg, Born, Schrodinger, and Dirac was being taught. He returned to lecture in physics at Columbia University and in 1928 went to Princeton as assistant and then associate professor. "One result of that concern was the publication of One World Or None (eds. Dexter Masters and Katharine Way, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1946), a report to the public on the meaning of the atomic bomb. Contributors to the report included Einstein, Bohr, Compton, Bathe, Langmuir, Oppenheimer, Szilard, Shapley, Seitz, Urey, Wigner, and Condon. " Communications to the author from Henry A. Wallace, Jan. 7, 1964, and from Dr. Hauser, Jan. 29, 1%4 (NBS Historical File). See also Wallace letter in New Republic, 118, 10 (1948). For Wallace's possible prior interest in Dr. Condon, see letter, LJB to H. A. Wallace, Aug. 2, 1945, sub: Standing of certain scientists (NBS Box 504, IG). '" Hearings * * * 1947 (Jan. 29, 1946), p. 175. 436 Dr. Edward U. Condon, fourth Director of the Bureau and the first theoretical physicist to head its operations. Reorganizing the Bureau in the postwar period, he cleared its attics of 50 years of accumulated lumber and began the modernization and systematizing of present Bureau operations. EDWARD UHLER CONDON 437 While at Princeton, he coauthored the Frank-Condon principle in molecular physics; developed the theory of radioactivity decay, with Ronald W. Gurney; a theory of optical rotary power; the theory of proton-proton scattering, with Gregory Breit; and the theory of charge-independence of nuclear forces, with B. Cassen. His definitive treatise on the theory of atomic spectra, with George H. Shortley, established his reputation as an outstanding theoretical physicist. -° In 1937, Dr. Condon went to the Westinghouse Electric Corp. at Pitts- burgh as associate director of research and there developed a program of nuclear research.'^ Appointed a consultant to the National Defense Research Committee in 1940, he helped organize the Radiation Laboratory at MIT, where America's microwave radar program was started, and wrote a basic textbook on the subject of microwaves for the laboratory. During the war he introduced and directed the microwave radar research program at Westinghouse. While setting up the radar program, he served on Dr. Briggs's S-1 Committee, meeting monthly at the Bureau. In April 1943 he went to Los Alamos at the request of General Groves as associate director under Dr. Oppenheimer. Later that year he was called to the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California to head the theoretical physics group working on the electromagnetic (mass spectrograph) separation of uranium isotopes. Toward the end of the war he started the nuclear reactor program at Westing- house which later produced the power plant for the Navy's atomic submarine. Dr. Condon was no stranger to the Bureau laboratories when he became their Director. Actually, his acquaintanceship dated back to the late 1920's, when as a Princeton professor he attended the annual meetings of the American Physical Society, regularly held for many years at the Bureau. But Dr. Condon had no sooner seated himself in the Director's chair in South building, to learn something of the dimensions of his office, when he was called to Capitol Hill as scientific adviser to the Special Senate Committee on Atomic Energy. The hearings of Senator Brien McMahon's committee on the question of civilian control of atomic energy began on November 27, 1945, and lasted until April 8, 1946.=- ^ Biographical note, "About Edward U. Condon," What Is Science? ed. James R. New- man (New York: Washington Square Press, 1961), pp. 105-108; interview with Dr. Condon, Oct. 27, 1963. With P. M. Morse, Condon write Quantum Mechanics (1929) and with G. H. Shortley, The Theory of Atomic Spectra (1935), both standard works in their fields. -^Time, 35, 44 (Feb. 12, 1940), called him "king of the atomic world at Westinghouse," where its new Van de GraafF generator, the only one in industry, was being used to make artificially radioactive substances for studies of nuclear structure. "■ As a result of the hearings. Congress established the Atomic Energy Commission on Aug. 1, 1946, with complete civilian control over all atomic affairs of the United States, 438 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) In the interim, Dr. Crittenden served as Acting Director and Dr. Condon contented himself with brief visits to the Bureau to acquaint him- self with its operations and activities. With only his Sundays free, he came with his master key and toured the unpeopled laboratories looking at work in progress, read the reports of current research left on his desk, and studied reports on operational procedures at the Bureau.-'^ Late in January 1946, Dr. Condon appeared for the first time before the House Appropriations Subcommittee for the annual hearing on the budget. Unaware of the deep affection of the committee members for Dr. Briggs and their long-standing interest in the Bureau under his direction. Dr. Condon brought up the subject of Bureau administration. The immedi- ate order of business. Dr. Condon told the committee, was "to modernize and systematize the entire administrative activity of the Bureau, which has just grown up over the years without any special organization unit to co- ordinate and supervise the work.-* Dr. Briggs and two division chiefs acting as Assistant Directors had borne the responsibility not only for all research at the Bureau but for the work of the 141 members of the adminis- trative staff. ^^ It seemed to Dr. Condon an impossible task. Dr. Condon asked for funds for three full-time Assistant Directors to administer the professional and scientific functions of the Bureau, and an Executive Director to supervise business management functions. These four, he said, would "do what Dr. Briggs was doing before." As for the Director of the Bureau, he should not have 13 division chiefs and 4 or 5 administrative heads reporting directly to him for decisions and policy de- terminations. The greater part of his time should be devoted to "main- peaceful and military. All Manhattan District facilities, including the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, the isotope separation plants at Oak Ridge, and the plutonium piles at Hanford, were turned over to the AEC. It became responsible for procuring ores of the fissionable heavy metals, uranium and thorium, for converting them into concen- trated pure metal, for manufacturing weapons as well as radioactive isotopes, electric power reactors for ship propulsion, and generators for electricity. The AEC was also charged with conducting all research necessary to keep the United States ahead of the world in atomic development. Finally, the act authorized free international exchange of basic scientific information when an international arrangement and techniques of inspection made that possible. See James R. Newman and Byron S. Miller, The Control of Atomic Energy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948) . _ . ■' Interview with Dr. Condon, Oct. 27, 1%3. =' Hearings * * * 1947 (Jan. 29, 1946) , p. 183. "" The assistants were Dr. Crittenden, chief of the electricity division, and Dr. Mc- Allister, chief of codes and specifications. The latter retired in the spring of 1945 and had not been replaced when Dr. Condon took over. EDWARD VHLER CONDON 439 taining appropriate relations with the Secretary's Office, other activities of the Department and other Federal agencies, and commercial concerns and educational £md scientific societies and institutions with which the Bureau is associated in cooperative or allied work." ~^ Asked by Congressman Louis C. Rabaut, chairman of the subcom- mittee, if the increased staff would promote greater efficiency at the Bureau, Dr. Condon replied : "That is my hope, and if it does not we will have to do something about that. It is my own feeling * * * that we have a great many overlapping operations and practices there that have just grown up over the years * * *." It was not a diplomatic note and Mr. Rabaut, and many at the Bureau hearing it later, reacted to it.^^ Steeped in an academic rather than industrial or even bureaucratic tradition, the Bureau, with almost a hundred on the staff who had been there since Stratton's time, braced itself for the shock. ="= Hearings * * * 1947, pp. 183-184. "' Ibid., p. 184. For Chairman Rabaut's great aflFection for and delight in Dr. Briggs, see Hearings * * * 1945 (Jan. 11, 1944) and Hearings * * * 1946 (Feb. 2, 1945), passim. For his reactions to Dr. Condon's criticism, see Hearings * * * 1947, passim. The House subcommittee seems to have resented Dr. Condon's remarks on the state of Bureau facilities and equipment, his observations that there was serious duplication and overlapping in laboratory equipment and in shops, but that "with a complete reorganiza- tion of the administrative functions * * * we can introduce many simplified practices"; that the laboratories had become storehouses of obsolete records and equipment, "hous- ing * * * useless items which should b( disposed of"; and that despite its famed safety code experts, "the Bureau itself is probably one of the worst violators of its own safety codes" (Hearings * * * 1947, pp. 190-191). The Congressmen queried Dr. Condon on his choice of speech and efforts at explanation. Despite his acknowledged unfamiliarity with Bureau statistics, they sought from him breakdowns in appropriations, work loads, expenditures and other data that neither Crittenden, Parsons, Thompson, Dellinger, nor other administrative officers at the hearing with Condon could answer offhand. Three years later the House subcommittee sent up a group of investigators, including inspectors from the Public Buildings Administration, who over a 6-months' period sur- veyed Bureau grounds and buildings maintenance, the shops and laboratories, efficiency of operations and activities, use of personnel, and administration of research and testing. The questioning of Dr. Condon on the line-by-line details of the resulting House survey report, which everywhere found "the administration of the Bureau * * * weak and timid," occupied almost 75 pages of the hearings for 1951 (Feb. 23, 1950, pp. 2179-2230, 2242-2246, 2249-2260, 2288-2293). Midway in the quizzing, Congressman Daniel J. Flood of Pennsylvania interrupted to ask: "What is the most exciting thing that has happened in the Bureau of Standards in the year outside of this investigation by the 786-167 O— 66 30 440 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) Dr. Condon was not to project a father image as had Stratton, soften- ing the severity of his strictures. He was not to capture cooperation by his appeal for help, as had Burgess, or to inspire devotion by his presence, as had Briggs. Genial, gracious, and the world's best company away from his desk. Dr. Condon brought to an organization largely staffed with experimental physicists the new-broom outlook of the theoretical physicist. Perhaps more than most at the Bureau, he was aware that the war years had revolutionized science and scientific thought and, always a prolific writer, he had for some Appropriations Committee?" Dr. Condon could only deny it had been exciting; it had been rather depressing (p. 2237). Prior to that questioning. Dr. Condon had talked steadily for over 2 hours (pp. 2158-2181) on the scope of activities of the Bureau, in answer to the repeated queries of the sub- committee: "What does a 'Bureau of Standards' mean?" "Does the Bureau's work embrace all of science and technology?" At the next year's hearing, in March 1947, Congressman Karl Stefan of Nebraska replaced Rabaut as chairman. Stefan requested that Dr. Condon use layman's language before the committee, and raised again the joke about the scientist and the plumber, alleging that in reply to a New York plumber who had asked the Bureau about the use of hydrochloric acid for clearing drainage stoppages, a Bureau physicist had an- swered : "The efficacy of hydrochloric acid is indisputable, but the corrosive residue is incompatible with metallic permanence." Assuming that meant it was all right, the plumber wrote thanking the Bureau. The Bureau supposedly replied "We can- not assume responsibility for the production of toxic and noxious residue with hydro- chloric acid and suggest you use an alternative procedure." The plumber wrote that he agreed with the Bureau: hydrochloric acid worked fine. Frightened at what might happen to the drainage of New York skycrapers, the Bureau was alleged to have resorted finally to simple speech: "Don't use hydrochloric acid. It eats hell out of the pipes." (Hearings * * * 1948, p. 289). The joke was brought to Dr. Condon's atten- tion in each of the next 2 years. (Hearings * * * 1949, p. 538; Hearings * * * 1950, p. 493). Representative Walt Horan of the State of Washington quizzed Dr. Condon about the purpose of the Bureau: "The title 'Bureau of Standards' should have some meaning. Otherwise we are going to get lost in a maelstrom of scientific research. What does 'Bureau of Standards' mean?" Continuing the questioning at the next hearing. Congress- man Stefan advised Dr. Condon: "Give it to us as Dr. Briggs used to do * * * so that we can understand." At that and subsequent hearings. Dr. Condon was told, "Remember, we are laymen" (Hearings * * * 1948, p. 299; Hearings * * * 1949, p. 526; Hear- ings * * * 1950, p. 485). Few men have written more clearly and simply about the complexities of modern physics or are more lucid in general exposition on any subject than Dr. Condon. His sole public rejoinder to his "problem of relations with Congress" occurred in a speech on Sept. 25, 1951, wherein he urged at some length the establishment of a committee of Congress concerned exclusively with science and scientific research in the Government (Physics Today, 5, 6, 1952). EDWARD UHLER CONDON 441 time expounded the new physics in a steady stream of articles in the periodicals.^* The Bureau as presently established, Dr. Condon told the Appropria- tions Subcommittee, is "one of the finest scientific laboratories in the country, and it would be wise to maintain and extend its functions at this time, when there seems to be a disposition to recognize the importance of pure science in the Government's activities more than ever before." ~^ As one who had made important contributions to pure science and at Westinghouse brought it to bear on industrial work, he was determined to advance pure science at the Bureau and to move the Bureau rapidly into the postwar world. "Think big!" he repeatedly told the Bureau staff. There was no alternative, and he challenged the staff with his cry, "Are you going to think in terms of peanuts or watermelons?" ^° Dr. Condon himself thought big. His outstanding characteristic, it proved unnerving to some of the older members of the Bureau, and frighten- ing to congressional appropriation committees. At his second appearance on the Hill, in March 1947, he was to stagger the committee members with a proposed $25 million budget, up from $5 million the previous year.^^ He talked of acquiring not one but three mass spectrometers for the Bureau, not one but two giant betatrons. He requested a fourfold increase in publication "See "Making new atoms in the laboratory," Sci. Am. 158, 302 (1938) ; "Sharpshoot- ing at the atom," Pop. Mech. 74, 1 (1940); "Physics in industry," Science, 96, 172 (1942); "Tracer bullets of science," Pop. Mech. 77, 170 (1942); "Physics gives us nuclear engineering," Westinghouse Eng. S, 167 (1945); "Science and our future," Science, 103, 415 (1946); "Is war research science?" Sat. Rev. Lit. 29, 6 (1946); "Science and the national welfare," Science, 107, 2 (194B); "60 years of quantum physics," Physics Today, 15, 37 (1962). See also file of his speeches and addresses on electronics, nuclear physics and other fields of Bureau research in NBS Historical File. -'« Hearings * * * 1947, p. 178. In the Steelman report to the President in 1947 on the role of the scientific agencies of the Government in the Nation's total scientific effort, the National Bureau of Standards was described as "* * * the principal Federal agency for research in physics, chemistry, and engineering; it acts as custodian of the Nation's standards of measurement, carries on research leading to improved measurement methods, determines physical constants and properties of materials, develops and prescribes specifications for Federal supplies and generally serves the Government and industry as adviser in scientific and technical matters and in testing, research, and development in the physical sciences." (The Presi- dent's Scientific Research Board, Science and Public Policy, II, The Federal Research Program, Washington, D.C., 1947, p. 151.) The statement reflected the view of Dr. Condon, who served as an alternate on the President's Scientific Research Board that prepared the report. '° Interview with Dr. John D. Hoffman, Apr. 28, 1964. ^^ Only 15 years later the Bureau's operating budget, exclusive of construction appropria- tions and transferred funds, would rise to S28.5 million. 442 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) funds, to expand the regular series of Bureau reports and prepare and publish multivolume tables of atomic energy levels, tables of the thermodynamic properties of chemical compounds, and a new and comprehensive handbook of physics. The Bureau had lately become the central agency in the Federal establishment for radio propagation research and service. Dr. Condon proposed that it also assume direction of all Federal research in synthetic rubber and in mathematical analysis and machine computers. Was all this, the committee asked, contemplated in the act that created the Bureau? What about the present program? "Are all of your tremen- dous, gigantic activities out there carried on under a two-page law?" Con- gressman Stefan asked. Did the Bureau actually intend to "spend about nine or ten million dollars during the next fiscal year on the basis of a two- page law?" ^- The committee began vigorously debating with Dr. Condon on what he thought the phrase "bureau of standards" meant and what such a bureau was really supposed to do. He explained point by point how the new science, enormously stimulated by the war, had changed the Bureau and the Nation. In many ways Dr. Condon was the very man for the Bureau in the years after the war, sparking new ideas and impulses among his associates and energetically recruiting a new scientific staff.^' He acknowledged that recent technological developments demanded continuance of the Bureau work on rubber, plastics, textiles, liquid fuels and lubricants, on structural mate- rials, ceramic and electroplated coatings, metallic alloys, electronic devices, and new ranges of radio wave frequencies. But "it would be a serious mistake * * * to let these projects in the fields of applied science interfere with the Bureau's work on fundamental problems of physics and chemistry and on methods of measurement and the standards and instruments which provide the basis for measurements of every kind," as primary responsibilities of the Bureau. ''^ New industries and wholly new technologies were to make unprece- dented demands upon the laboratories. Perhaps no one at the Bureau com- "= Hearings * * * 1949 (Jan. 20, 1948) , p. 526. *' As he told the committee, in addition to the prewar cuts in staflf, budget, and services, during the war much of the Bureau's basic research had been reduced and its best men put into war work, from which they had not yet been released. The Bureau was therefore very shorthanded in the field of fundamental research, and it was that area he sought to rebuild and expand. He hoped "to be allowed to do for peacetime fundamental research [in the Bureau] something of the sort that [had] recently been announced as part of the Navy's research plans, involving a high degree of collaboration, and intimate cooperation at the working scientists' level with universities throughout the country" (Hearings * * * 1947, pp. 178-179). Dr. Condon referred to the Office of Naval Research, organized later that year. ■■' Hearings * * * 1947, p. 176. EDWARD UHLER CONDON . . 443 prehended better than the new Director the implications of nuclear technology, just emerging from its pioneer state, or the need for new instruments, ma- terials, and processes spawned by that technology. More than administration and organization, the thought at the Bureau needed redirection, and as the cold war and then the Korean war came and research for defense intensified, Condon's redirection paid off in the years that followed. New direction required new men, and Dr. Condon's arrival happened to coincide with an almost complete turnover of the top echelon. Age had begun to make its claims and many, like Dr. Briggs, past the retirement age, had waited only for the war to end. The five division chiefs who retired in 1945 had been with the Bureau since World War I or earlier." Submitting requests for retirement with them were two section chiefs and a number of nonadministrative scientists and technicians with long years of service.^'' Still other division chiefs and 14 additional section chiefs reached retirement age over the next 4 years.^'^ By 1950 the top echelons of the working force was essentially new, and the average age level at the Bureau had plummeted by some 20 years.^® In most instances division chief replacements were found among senior heads of sections. Continuity was further maintained by appointing Bureau-bred members to top administrative positions. The redirection of the Bureau was carried out principally through changes in organization, through new men that came in to head new fields of research, and the special assistants that Dr. Condon brought in from outside.^® Appointed Associate Directors early in 1946 were Dr. Crittenden and Dr. Dryden, the latter, upon going to NACA as director of research in 1947, replaced by Dr. Wallace R. Brode, organic chemist and spectroscopist from Ohio State. From the Navy Bureau of Ships that spring came Dr. John H. Curtiss as assistant to the Director, to take charge of mathematical and statistical research and analysis. From Westinghouse came two other assist- ants, Dmitri I. Vinogradoil, as liaison between the Bureau and foreign scientific and engineering laboratories, and Hugh Odishaw, to oversee sci- ^ They were Bearce of weights and measures, Dickinson of heat and power, Rawdon of metallurgy, P. H. Bates of silicate products, and Fairchild of trade standards. "■" The section chiefs were Acree in chemistry and Stutz in mechanics. '' Retiring section chiefs were Curtis and Bellinger in electricity. Miss Bussey, Wensel, Van Dusen, and Ingberg in heat and power, Bridgeman, Brooks, and Peters in optics, Smither in chemistry, Tuckerman and Whittemore in mechanics, Wormeley in organic materials, and McAdam in metallurgy. ** Dr. McPherson of organic materials was to say that in 1943 he was the youngest division chief in point of service; by 1950 he was the oldest. Interview, Dec. 5, 1961. In a few instances, senior section chiefs were made assistant division chiefs as areas of the Bureau research were phased out or several sections were combined. 444 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) entific and technical information and Bureau publications.^" And in a reorganization of housekeeping elements, budget and management, person- nel, plant, and shops became formal divisions. Changes in Secretary Wallace's Visiting Committee to the Bureau included the appointment in 1945 of Harold C. Urey, research chemist at the University of Chicago and Nobel laureate, and in 1946 of Eugene P. Wigner, physicist at Princeton and director of research at the Oak Ridge laboratories, who was to receive the Nobel Prize in 1963. The appointment of two theoretical physicists resulted in a significant change in the composi- tion of the Visiting Committee, long dominated by representatives of industry. Urey and Wigner joined long-time members Gano Dunn of the J. G. White Engineering Corp., Karl T. Compton, president of MIT, and William D. Coolidge, director of research at General Electric. In place of the informal notices and occasional memoranda on ad- ministrative matters that previous directors had issued were the numbered Bureau Orders, Administration Procedural Memoranda, and Bureau Memo- randa introduced in December 1945. They were timely, for the next decade was to see more changes in organization, policies, and staff than in all the previous years put together. For one thing, the wartime influx of workers that raised the staff above the 2,000 level for the first time in Bureau history did not recede with the end of hostilities but increased steadily. Administra- tion grew proportionately more complex. Between serving on the McMahon committee and familiarizing him- self with the Bureau establishment, it was May 1947, a year and a half after assuming the directorship, before Dr. Condon completed his initial reorganization of the Bureau structure.*^ In the new order, divisions were merged to bring related interests or functions together,*^ new divisions and new sections were created,*^ and still other sections were relocated as a matter of logic. Several sections, some of them one- or two-man units, were absorbed * A third special assistant, Nicholas E. Golovin. trained in physics but then a management specialist from Naval Ordnance, arrived in the spring of 1949 to take over the analysis and planning of Bureau technical programs. " Announced in NBS BuOrder 47-14, May 19, 1947. *^ The new electricity and optics division included three sections from optics (photom- etry and color, optical instruments, and photographic technology) that depended upon electrical standards. Simplified practices and trade standards were combined as the commodity standards division. " The atomic physics division grouped all Bureau facilities and activities relating to atomic and molecular physics and also certain phases of optics and of electronic physics. The Central Radio Propagation Laboratory stemmed from the radio section in electricity. Building technology division took over the fire resistance and heat transfer sections of heat and power, the masonry section (renamed structural engineering) from silicate products division, and the whole of the codes and specifications division. The applied mathematics division had its origin in the New York mathematical tables project. EDWARD UHLER CONDON 445 in larger units elsewhere.** Two divisions saw little more than a name change as weights and measures became the metrology division, and clay and silicate products became the mineral products division.*'^ And as Dr. Stratton had once headed his own optics division, so Dr. Condon for a time doubled in brass, as chief of his new atomic physics division. Laboratory space became critical even before the President's decision in 1950 to construct the hydrogen bomb and the onset of the Korean war. Under the shadow of atomic war, talk of dispersal of military installations and defense facilities was translated into policy. The pressure for space and Truman's refusal to permit expansion of facilities in Washington led to the establishment of two Bureau stations far from the Nation's Capital, the Corona Laboratories in California and the Boulder Laboratories in Colorado. Two major Bureau projects stepped up when the Korean war began were those in nonrotating proximity fuzes for Army Ordnance and guided missiles for the Navy. Additional temporary structures across Van Ness Street were sufficient to accommodate the augmented fuze group, but the missile staflF was approaching a hundred members and its development mis- sion had been accelerated by the requirement for an expanded series of production models for possible use in the Pacific. The project needed space quickly and there was no time to build.*'' On June 1, 1951, the project left Washington and moved into surplus Navy hospital structures, idle since the war, at Corona.*^ Still another cooperative project, for the Atomic Energy Commission, called for large-scale assistance from the Bureau and required facilities for which space was lacking in Washington. The year before, in 1949, a 220-acre tract had been donated by the citizens of Boulder, Colo., at the foothills of the Rockies, on what was then the outskirts of the city, for new radio facilities for the Bureau. On the slope back of the site marked out ^'Underground corrosion went to metallurgy. The huge special projects section (i.e., guided missiles) in mechanics became part of the ordnance development division, and a ballistics group in electricity was transferred to the new division. Transferred to chemistry and no longer separate units were the polarimetry, radiometry, and inter- ferometry sections of optics. Combined with the temperature measurements section of heat and power were the division's thermometry and pyrometry sections. One section in heat and power, aircraft engine research, was discontinued in 1948 when the work was taken over by the NACA laboratory at Cleveland. ''' Weights and measures administration, for a time a section in metrology, became a separate Office of Weights and Measures in October 1947, and was later joined by an Office of Basic Instrumentation. All of these organization changes are shown in app. J. "■ Letter, EUC to Secretary of Commerce, Dec. 13, 1949, and letter, EUC to Director, Bureau of the Budget, Sept. 13, 1950 ("General Correspondence Files of the Director, 1945-1955," Boxes 4 and 6) . '■BuOrd 51-18, June 1, 1951; Hearings * * * 1952 (Apr. 10, 1951), pp. 497-502; interview with Dr. Condon, Oct. 27, 1963. 446 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) for the radio laboratories, ground was leveled for the erection of new Bureau cryogenic laboratories/* TECHNOLOGICAL vs. BASIC RESEARCH In 1944 Harry S. Truman was nominated to the Vice-Presidency, suc- ceeding Henry A. Wallace who had held that office during the previous term. On the day after the inauguration Wallace replaced Jesse Jones as Secretary of Commerce/" It was a brief tenure. Truman became President a month later, and in the fall of 1946 Wallace's differences with the President's policy toward the U.S.S.R. led to his resignation. Jesse Jones, as had his predecessors under Roosevelt, Daniel Roper and Harry Hopkins, found that "The President was never genuinely friendly to business, and there .was little the Secretary of Commerce could do for business and industry * * *." '" Nevertheless, Wallace asked for the Com- merce post, in exchange for his loss of place on the ticket. Wallace had reform in mind, for he was convinced that "not until businessmen were educated could any sort of economic justice be attained in this country." "^^ A biographer has said : "As Secretary of Commerce, Wallace * * * settled down into relative obscurity for nearly a year. How- ever, during this period significant changes took place within the ornate walls of the Commerce Building. A strong friend of small business was now in power. Expansion of technical and other assistance for small firms from .$300,000 to $4,500,000 per year was initiated." == He intended the Bureau to assist in the aid to business. In a prepared statement before the House Appropriations Subcommit- tee in January 1946, Wallace outlined his proposed reorganization of the Department. It proved rather a reemphasis of effort than a reorganization. ■" The site was acquired in mid-December 1949 and construction began in the summer of 1951 (Department of Commerce records, NARG 40, file 83583; NBS BuOrd 52-7, Aug. 15, 1951). ^° For behind the scenes accounts of the juggling of posts and men, see James A. Farley, Jim Farley's Story, pp. 371 ff; Grace Tully, F.D.R.— My Boss, p. 188; Raymond Moley, 27 Masters of Politics, (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1949) , pp. 84 ff. ™ Jesse Jones, Fifty Billion Dollars, p. 257. Almost wholly taken up with the opera- tions of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation he also headed, Jones left Department of Commerce details to his Under Secretary, Wayne C. Taylor. Ibid., p. 538. "'Russell Lord, The Wallaces of Iowa (Boston: Houghton Miffln, 1947), p. 615. ^'Karl M. Schmidt, Henry A. Wallace: Quixotic Crusade, 1948 (Syracuse University Press, 1960), p. 7. For fear that Wallace as Secretary would establish, through the National Bureau of Standards, Federal consumer standards in place of trademarks, see George E. Sokolsky article in "New York Sun," Feb. 27, 1945, copy in NBS Box 503, IDA-ASA. TECHNOLOGICAL VS. BASIC RESEARCH 447 a new deal designed to promote foreign trade and provide special services to business in the fields of science, technology, management, and marketing. He intended to expand the Department's output of basic statistical informa- tion and provide detailed analyses on the economic outlook for the use of business. Government, and the public, and to this end the scientific and tech- nical bureaus of his Department must be strengthened. What he had in mind for the National Bureau of Standards was not spelled out, except that it was to be responsible for "technological research and development on problems of direct and practical interest to industry." ^^ Before the same subcommittee 2 weeks later. Dr. Condon asked for increased funds for intensified activity by the Bureau "from an industrial and economic point of view" in the fields of metallurgy, high polymers, build- ing materials, thermodynamics, rubber, hydraulics, atomic energy, electronics, and radio propagation. Their research was "no more than simple national wisdom." The four fields in which the Bureau planned to concentrate its greatest resources, however, were nuclear physics, building materials and structures, radio propagation, and rubber chemistry. They would require "research in fundamental science of a long-range and basic character" and "a great deal closer cooperation in fundamental research by the universities." ®* Dr. Condon's remark, that his Assistant Directors would "see that appropriate research work is initiated in new fields * * * [and] that there is not too much effort expended on routine tests [at the expense of basic re- search]" did not entirely satisfy the subcommittee, the Bureau of the Budget, or senior members of the Bureau who viewed testing — with an appropria- tion of $1.5 million annually — as a primary and irreducible function of the Bureau.^^ " Hearings * * * 1947, p. 5. Considering its importance to the Government, said Wallace, the program and appropriation for the Bureau were modest, no more than "comparable to the scientific program of a single large private corporation" (ibid., p. 8). "Hearings * * * 1947, p. 178; NBS Annual Report 1946, p. 172. Discussed at length at the hearings but unreported elsewhere was an appropriation in the budget of $100,000, to provide specifications for consumer goods. Since the 1930's the Bureau's codes and specifications division had maintained a small section called "consumer contacts." Almost certainly at the prompting of Secretary Wallace, funds were inserted in the 1947 budget to expand the section to 32 members in order to extend the work on Federal specifications and the factfinding tests of products for the Federal Trade Commission lo the consuming public. As a beginning, the Bureau was to develop at once methods of testing and test machines for determining consumer standards and specifications in leather goods, to "provide simple means of finding out what we get for our money" (Hearings * * * 1947, pp. 205-206, 217-220). It was a short-lived project. Within months, along with most of the simplified practices and trade standards divisions of the Bureau, it was transferred to another agency of Commerce. Its chief, George N. Thompson, went to the Bureau's new building technology division. 1947, p. 191; interview with Dr. McPherson, Dec. 5, 1961. 448 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) Amid the general apprehension over the unsettled conditions of the postwar world, Condon anticipated what was later to become a commonplace, that any interruption in the flow of new knowledge, or even a slackening of its pace, posed a potential threat to national security. The war demonstrated the necessity of narrowing the leadtime between the discovery of new knowl- edge and its application, and the Federal Government had come to recognize its responsibility for securing the basic research that made purposeful appli- cation possible. In a lighter moment early in the hearings in 1946, Congressman Rabaut said to Condon: "With this atomic age on our hands we must treat your Bureau with respect, as we do not want to get in wrong with anybody who has anything to do with it." ^^ But neither Congress nor the public was quite ready yet to pay for the basic research of the atomic age. A year later when Dr. Condon presented his research program in greater detail, the mood of the subcommittee was economy. Dr. Condon's original request to the Department of Commerce for 1948 funds totaled $25 million, almost four times the direct appropriation of the previous year. The new Secretary of Commerce, W. Averell Harriman, had whittled it to $17.1, and the Bureau of the Budget had brought it down further to $10.6 by deleting, "without prejudice," the Bureau's proposed research in synthetic rubber, as well as research auxiliary to the atomic energy program (the latter in the amount of $2.5 million), by reducing initial construction funds for a new radio propagation laboratory in Wash- ington by two-thirds ($1.9 to $0.6 million), and refusing most of the proposed cost of rehabilitating the Bureau plant (including $1.5 million for electrical modernization, $2 million for plumbing). Left more or less intact were the new programs planned in building materials, hydraulics, computers. X-ray research for medicine and industrial radiography, funda- mentals of metallurgy, fundamental studies in the properties of chemical compounds, electronics, high polymers, and radio propagation.^^ The kind of industrial research that the Bureau had long carried on, said Dr. Condon, was no longer necessary, except in building. With industry booming, the civilian economy was running at the highest level in its history, about $200 billion a year, and more than 2,400 industrial laboratories were engaged in keeping that production going. As a conse- quence, the laboratories were making unprecedented demands on the Bureau '" Hearings, ibid. "Hearings * * * 1948 (Mar. 12, 1947), pp. 287-292. Including $1.1 million for equip- ment- and facilities, the final appropriation came to $7.9 million, representing a slight increase over the previous year. TECHNOLOGICAL VS. BASIC RESEARCH 449 for the fundamental instrumentation they needed and could not do.^ Some of the new industries, especially those based on electronics, required work on measurements that had never been done before. And the Bureau had to continue to supply basic information to many of the new small businesses that could not afford research laboratories. The funds for this research, on which the Bureau of the Budget had agreed, were approved, but not without a struggle.'^'' Even before final approval, the Bureau began to free itself from con- siderable industrial-type research, as well as direct research for industry, by abandoning some of its former lines of investigations or shifting to more basic aspects. Research in the rare sugars, for example, turned to wider studies in carbohydrate chemistry and in radioactive carbohydrates. Much of the basic work in plastics, leather, paper, rubber, and other organic ma- terials became centered in the new science of high polymers. In optical glass, production was sharply curtailed and research shifted to the theory and constitution of glass in general. Because of the delay imposed by the Korean war, it was 1957 before all production of optical glass ceased and the plant was dismantled. '^° Still another Bureau activity, its member participation in the work of the American Standards Association, diminished after 1948 when the as- sociation was incorporated under the laws of New York State. As a result, the Department of Commerce and other Federal agencies withdrew from active participation in the administrative affairs of the association, although members of the Bureau continued to serve on the council, boards, and tech- nical committees of the association, as they do to the present day.''^ ''Hearings * * * 1947, p. 203; Hearings * * * 1948, p. 290; Hearings * * * 1950, p. 483. ^' In final justification of Bureau funds, Dr. Condon found, at the request of the sub- committee, that the estimate of total appropriations for all Federal research and de- velopment in the 1948 budget came to 1730 million, of which |10 million, including con- struction, equipment, and facilities, represented the Bureau's share (Hearings * * * 1948, pp. 299-300). "NBS Annual Report 1948, pp. 218, 230-231: Annual Report 1951, p. 36; NBS Con- solidated Report on Projects, fiscal year 1958, Project 0902-40-4408; interview with Clarence H. Hahner, May 6, 1964. "'NBS Report 6227, "American Standards Association, Inc." (1958), pp. 11-12 and app. 8. The propriety of NBS membership, on the premise that the Bureau was more con- sumer-directed than ASA, was first raised in memo, Soliciter, Department of Commerce, for Under Secretary of the Department, June 11, 1943. NBS and Federal withdrawal was also urged in memo, EUC for Secretary of Commerce Harriman, Oct. 16, 1946, based on the doubtful legal grounds of the mixed membership and as misleading to the public (correspondence in NARG 40, Secretary of Commerce, file 75388/18). The formal resignation of the NBS and Department of Commerce from ASA was accepted in letter. Secretary ASA to Secretary of Commerce, July 29, 1948 ("General Correspondence Files of the Director, 1945-1955") . 456 THE NEW' WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) One whole division at the Bureau, commodity standards, a recent con- solidation of the trade standards and simplified practices division, was trans- ferred with its staff of 30 out of the Bureau to the Office of Technical Serv- ices in the Department of Commerce in July 1950. Essentially nontechnical in nature, and with minor justification under Bureau legislation, the division had little relevance to the postwar mission of the Bureau, to provide stand- ards of physical measurement. ''- Talk of reducing routine testing, as an impediment to the scientific work of the Bureau, met strenuous objections from both inside and outside the Bureau. Some lines, such as clinical thermometer testing, were sub- sequently discontinued, and the workload in testing electric lamps, cement and other large-scale Federal purchases was somewhat lightened by resort- ing to statistical analysis test procedures. But while some routine calibrating and testing decreased, that of materials and equipment and the calibration of instruments increased steadily through the 1950's and 1960's."^ To share the administrative burden on division and section chiefs, responsibility for all testing was subsequently centered in a new Associate Director for Testing. Plans to increase fundamental research and reduce technological re- search foundered on a simple economic fact. The military services and the Atomic Energy Commission had vast sums available for research in the new technologies, and the Bureau had the staff, facilities, and knowledge in these fields. As the principal legacy of World War I had been new fields of in- dustrial research, so that of World War II brought to the Bureau the realms of electronics and nuclear energy. Both offered as much opportunity for pure research as for applied research and technical development. For that reason, the technology could not be refused. Thus in 1947, with many wartime programs still uncompleted, the Bureau reported military research still "a considerable portion" of the total work of the Bureau. By 1951, in the midst of a new emergency, the greater part of Bureau research was again concerned with national defense projects.''* For this research the Bureau acquired a great array of new tools: an electron microscope, the first of its kind ever constructed, using energies up "^ Letter, Secretary of Commerce Sawyer to EUC, May 26, 1950, and attached corre- spondence ("General Correspondence Files of the Director, 1945-1955," Box 4). *" Tests, calibrations, and standard samples in 1946 had an estimated value of $1.2 million. By 1960, test and calibration fees alone amounted to $2.7 million, and by 1963 to 13.4 million (NBS Annual Reports) . "NBS Annual Report 1947, p. vii; Annual Report 1951, p. 1. "Three-fourths of the total effort * * * is directed toward meeting vital requirements of the defense pro- gram" (NBS BuMemo 52-11, Sept. 17, 1951). TECHNOLOGICAL VS. BASIC RESEARCH 451 to 1.4 million volts, for research in metallurgy and electron optics; ''" and a magnetic electron spectrometer, for the study of the beta- and gamma-ray spectra of radioactive isotopes and measurement of their disintegration schemes and nuclear energy levels.'^'^ A mass spectrometer was obtained with the help of the Office of Naval Research, for precise measurement of nuclear masses. It was to be used initially for research in the components of syn- thetic rubbers."' A 50-million-volt betatron was also acquired, for studies in protection and proper shielding against high-energy radiation; °* and a 1.5- million-volt X-ray tube, for an investigation of the broad X-ray beams used in medical and industrial radiography. ''•' Still another new "tool" was the Bureau's ultrasonic laboratory for special studies of the properties of gases and liquids, employing sound waves of extremely high frequency.^" In the field of electronics, military and naval ordnance projects pre- dominated, including advanced design work on nonrotating proximity fuzes; development of electronic and servomechanism controls for an advanced guided missile, the Kingfisher series; development of a proximity fuze for guided missiles; and refinement of the toss bombing device, the aircraft bomb director. Important to these projects was the research initiated in the basic elements of electronic computing machines, and the investigation of electronic components in a new electron tube laboratory set up at the Bureau. A secondary purpose of the laboratory was to apply its knowledge of electronic instrumentation and controls to measurement problems in the other divisions of the Bureau."^ Apart from the highly classified work on proximity fuzes for guided missiles, the research in electronics centered on electron tubes, printed cir- cuits, and automatic computers. The Bureau designed special equipment "■ NBS Annual Report 1948, pp. xv, 214-215. For the Bureau's new microsectioning pro- cedure involving; organic materials, in high polymer studies employing the electron microscope, see RP2020 (Newman, Borysko, and Swerdlow, 1949) and Hearings * * * 1950 (Feb. 23, 1950), p. 2169. "' NBS Annual Report 1946, p. 183. " LC791, "The mass spectrometer" (1945) ; NBS Annual Report 1946, p. 193. ''NBS Annual Report 1946, p. 184: Hearings * * * 1948, p. 356. With the installation of the first betratron in late 1949, the Bureau ordered a second unit, a 180-million-volt synchrotron (Hearings * * * 1951, p. 217; Science, 105, 230, 1947). Unlike the conventional X-ray machine used in the treatment of most cancer patients, the betatron is used against deepseated cancers, producing high-speed electrons that on striking an internal target produce X rays. Its electron beam can also be used directly to irradiate a tumor. The machines at the Bureau were for studies in basic radiation physics, not medical research or treatment of patients. '■" NBS Annual Report 1946, p. 184. ™ NBS Annual Report 1948, p. 221. '' NBS Annual Report 1946, pp. 201-203. 452 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) The four stages of an early printed electronic circuit: the plate, the circuit wiring, addition of the resistors, and final assembly with miniature tubes. for measuring the characteristics of the growing family of electron tubes to determine, among other things, the principles by which their life service might be extended.'- A new field of research was the semiconductors, crystalline materials of high purity, such as germanium and silicon. With their elec- trical conductivity between that of a metal and an insulator, and their unique ability to change their resistance characteristics, they opened new vistas in the development of communication equipment." They appeared first in the crystal diode developed during the war for radar, and subsequently in the crystal triode or transistor, as replacements for the vacuum tubes in amplifiers. The ubiquitous pocket transistor radio was less than a decade away. New advances were made in printed circuits, first devised for the proximity fuze, that substitute printed wiring, resistors, and coils for the conventional rigging in electronic devices. Along with subminiature tubes, semiconductors, and circuit design, the printed circuit established a whole " NBS Annual Report 1948, p. 244; Annual Report 1949, p. 80. '" NBS Annual Report 1949, p. 21 ; Annual Report 1951, p. 4. TECHNOLOGICAL VS. BASIC RESEARCH 453 new field of electronic miniaturization for which the Bureau was to provide useful engineering data/* Problems submitted to the Bureau by the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics included devising reasonably stable and long-lived electronic components capable of withstanding rapid changes in temperatures, and design of minia- turized amplifiers with printed circuits. Within a year the Bureau produced a radar-type amplifier with the same electrical performance but one-quarter the usual size, and a miniature battery-powered radio transceiver, for use as an air-sea rescue device. A miniature radio range receiver, a navigation aid for the Navy, which fitted into a sealed envelope 6 by 5 by 1% inches, had the range and power of a conventional 12-tube unit. These amplifiers and receivers were made possible in part by a Bureau-built rotary printer that applied printed circuits on either flat or cylindrical surfaces."'' A printed resistor, applied by a silk-screen process (later replaced by an adhesive-tape resistor) , and a tiny ceramic capacitor, the latter devised at the request of the Signal Corps, contributed to still more rugged and efficient miniaturization."'' Much of the work on electronic tubes, printed circuits, and minia- turization saw its most important application in the automatic electronic computing machine project set up at the Bureau for Army Ordnance early in 1946. Two decades earlier, about 1925, the present era of mechanical computation began when Dr. Vannevar Bush and associates at MIT con- structed a large-scale computer run by electric motors. This and an im- proved model completed in 1942, both requiring hand computations as an adjunct to the machines, were extensively used during the war in the com- putation of artillery firing tables. The modern electronic computer had its genesis in the work of Dr. John W. Mauchly, physicist at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania. In 1942, convinced that the mechanical calculation of firing tables could be speeded up by the applica- tion of electronics, he began the study of such a machine. Four years later, with J. Presper Eckert, Jr., as designer, the Electronic Numerical Integrater and Automatic Computer (ENIAC) was completed, performing 5,000 addi- tions a second, where mechanical calculators handled 10 a second. "'' '*C468, "Printed circuit techniques" (Brunetti and Curtis, 1947); M192, "New ad- vances in printed circuits" (1948), a symposium discussing their application to radio, radar, TV, guided missiles, airborne electronic equipment, computers, and industrial control equipment. ''■ NBS Annual Report 1949, pp. 49, 59, 61 ; Annual Report 1951, pp. 69-70. '"NBS Annual Report 1951, pp. 2, 71; C530, "Printed circuit techniques: an adhesive- tape resistor system" (B. L. Davis, 1952) . " Eckert, Mauchly, et al., "Description of ENIAC," Applied Mathematics Panel Report 171.2R (NDRC, November 1945); Jeremy Bernstein, The Analytical Engine: Com- puters—Past, Present and Future (New York: Random House, 1964), pp. 50, 54-55. 454 THE NEIF WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) Capable of handling large amounts of statistical data with revolution- ary speed, thoroughness, and efficiency, the new machines permitted, among other things, the solution of equations hitherto, from the standpoint of time, impossible to solve, and were to take the guesswork out of problems previously undertaken by constructing costly experimental equipment, such as the wind tunnels used in aerodynamic studies. The computer project at the Bureau was first assigned to the machines development section of the applied mathematics division. An increasing amount of its component research, however, was carried out by another com- puter section, that under Dr. Chester H. Page and Samuel Alexander in Dr. Astin's electronics division. In the latter division, utilizing its research in specialized electron tubes, high-speed memory organs, transference means, input and output equipment (a system of electric typewriters and magnetic recording devices derived from standard teletype machines), and transcriber" and converter elements, the first Bureau computer was built. A crucial breakthrough was the substitution of the new germanium crystal diodes for electron tubes in all switching and computing elements, with tubes used only for power amplification."' In 1947. a year after the Bureau began its research on computer components, the Bureau of the Census and the Office of Naval Research, with assistance from the Air Force, contracted with the Bureau for the construction of two full-scale computers at an estimated cost of $300,000 each. Their design was assigned to the Eckert and Mauchly Computer Corp., the Ray- theon Manufacturing Co., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tufts College. One was to be assembled in the electronics division in Washington, the other at the Bureau's Institute for Numerical Analysis, recently organized at the University of California at Los Angeles.'* Presiding over the computer project. Dr. Condon saw the Bureau as "the centralized national computer facility" for the Government, the Wash- ington unit serving the eastern half of the Nation, that at Los Angeles the "NBS Annual Report 1946. p. 202; Annual Report 1948, pp. 240, 256; Annual Report 1950, p. 81. The germanium or silicon crystal as transistor, first developed by Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley, physicists at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, in 1948, conducts electrical current in much the same way as a vacuum tube. Unlike the tube, which boils off electrons that flow as directed by an electrical field, the transistor operates without heating and there is nothing to burn out (Bernstein, The Analytical Engine, p. 68) . ■"" Negotiations began with memo. Director NBS for Director of the Census, Apr. 26, 1946, sub: Design and construction of electronic tabulation equipment ("General Corre- spondence Files of the Director, 1945-1955") ; NBS Annual Report 1947, p. 187; Hear- ings * * * 1949, p. 523. 455 The Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) , its cover doors removed, with the operator s table in the foreground. From left to right, the nine racks of the computer include the control unit, the arith- metic unit, the time pulse generator, the clock pulse generator, the magnetic wire and magnetic tape input-output unit, controls and power supplies, and electronic circuitry for the punched tape input-output system. The small panels at the bottom of each rack hold "grasshopper" fuses to protect the circuits above them. 786-167 O — 6(1^ .■!! 456 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) western half. Centralizing in the Bureau the solution of complex mathemati- cal problems confronting Federal agencies in aeronautics, atomic and nuclear physics, ballistics, and guided missiles, as well as analysis of massive data problems, would avoid duplicating computer facilities in other agencies and make maximum use of the Bureau facility, as was being done in radio propagation."^ , The "central facility" idea was short lived. Other agencies wanted their own computers, and at the request of the Army Map Service and the Air Comptroller, the Bureau entered into additional contracts with Eckert and Mauchly.^° While awaiting design results, the Bureau began work on a small-scale unit, the NBS Interim Computer, with which to test components, train opera- tors, and handle computational work in its laboratories. The successful operation of the unit led to its expansion, with Air Comptroller support, as a full-scale machine. In the autumn of 1949, 20 months after beginning construction, it emerged as the National Bureau of Standards Eastern Auto- matic Computer ( SEAC) .*' The fastest general purpose, automatically sequenced electronic com- puter then in operation, SEAC was dedicated on June 20, 1950. Failure of a single one of its more than 100,000 connections and components, even for a millionth of a second, would result in computer misfunction. Yet operating often on a 24-hour-a-day. 7-day week, SEAC performed for 4.000 hours in its first 9 months without a malfunction. Besides handling a number of classified problems for the military services and the Atomic Energy Com- mission, it carried out computations on electronic circuit design, optical lens calculations, statistical sorting and tabulating studies for Social Security "Hearings * * * 1948. pp. 350-351. The idea persisted, in NBS Annual Report 1950, pp. 71-72, and Annual Report 1951. p. 67. '" Discussed in Hearings * * * 1956 (Apr. 18, 1955) , p. 29. ''NBS Annual Report 1948, p. 239; Annual Report 1949, pp. 64-65; Hearings * * * 1951 (Feb. 23. 1950). p. 2175; Hearings * * * 1952 (Apr. 10, 1951), pp. 502-504; interview with Dr. Edward W. Cannon, July 7. 1964. In 1950 there were no more than six or eight electronic computers in operation. By 1960 over 10,000 of one type or another had been built. Eckert and Mauchly's Elec- tronic Digital Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC). for the Ordnance Ballistics Research Laboratory at Aberdeen, was completed in 1950. Between 1951 and 1953 Eckert and Mauchly, at Remington Rand, constructed six Universal Automatic Com- puters (UNIVAC). the development and assembly of the first of these commercial stored-program computers monitored by NBS for the Bureau of the Census. See Office of Naval Research report, "A survey of automatic digital computers" (Washington, D.C., 1953). 4S7 «J 3 1 *^ o • 2 ^ ^ ^ c a , "^"i ^-^ e o ^u r^ ^ CO ;3 S 1~ •S ~ci o a. = a ), under a wide range of pressures. The report by Woolley, Scott, and Brickwedde on the thermal properties of hydrogen became a classic and established the Bureau as the Federal expert on cryogenic engineering.^-" "'NBS Annual Report 1948, p. 218; Isbell in Science, 113, 532 (1951) : Hearings * * * 1953 (Ian. 18, 1952), p. 441; Chem. Eng. News 30, 1112 (1952) ; RP2886, "Carbon-14 carboxy-labeled polysaccharides" (J. D. Meyer and H. S. Isbell, 1958) . ™NBS Annual Report 1950, p. 44; C467, compiled by Charlotte E. Moore. ""NBS Annual Report 1951, pp. 35-36; C499, compiled by Katharine Way, Lilla Fano, et al. ^^ RP1932, "Compilation of thermal properties of hydrogen in its various isotopic and ortho-para modifications" (1948) ; NBS Annual Report 1948, p. 207. Subsequent re- search by the cryogenic group made at the request of the AEC early in 1951 included the measurement of the vapor pressures, dew points, and critical constants of hydrogen, deuterium, and hydrogen deuteride (NBS Annual Report 1951, p. 27). Bureau interest in cryogenics dates back to the turn of the century, when a plant for making and maintaining liquid and solid hydrogen, the invention in 1898 of Prof., later Sir, James Dewar, British physicist, was exhibited at the St. Louis Fair in 1903 and pur- chased by the Bureau (see ch. II, pp. 83-84). In 1923 Clarence W. Kanolt of the 786-167 0—66 ;^2 472 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) The Bureau had long since outgrown the facilities for cryogenic re- search in its small low temperature laboratory in Washington when in April 1951, with the cooperation and financial support of the AEC, ground was broken at Boulder, Colo., for the construction of the world's largest liquid hydrogen plant and cryogenic laboratory. The plant at Boulder was com- pleted that summer and the staff to man the plant and laboratory buildings moved in. The hydrogen liquefiers, the units producing liquid nitrogen to precool the hydrogen, and the purifiers, all in duplicate to insure continuous operation, were designed and constructed by the Bureau. Both the plants and laboratories incorporated elaborate safety and anti-explosion features to minimize the hazards of working with liquid hydrogen in large quantities.^-^ Engineering research and production at Boulder accelerated when in 1956 the Air Force became interested in liquid hydrogen as an aircraft and rocket fuel.'-- Large-scale operations were established after 1957, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) began negotia- tions for all the liquid hydrogen the Boulder plant could supply, as a missile and satellite fuel. It followed the announcement by the U.S.S.R. in August 1957 of its first successful test of an intercontinental ballistics missile (ICBM). Two months later Russia's 184-pound satellite. Sputnik I, was launched and began orbiting the earth. A new race, to span continents and send men and machines into space, was on. The cryogenic plant at Boulder shared the 220-acre tract with the Central Radio Propagation Laboratory (CRPL), the new Bureau division evolved from the wartime Interservice Radio Propagation Laboratory (IRPL) that had operated out of the Far West building at the Bureau. ^-^ Established on May 1, 1946, under Bureau operation and administration, CRPL came under the direction of an executive council representing the Army, Air Force, Navy, Federal Communications Commission, Civil Aero- nautics Administration, Coast Guard, the Bureau itself, the Weather Bureau, Bureau devised a standard and precise method of producing liquid and solid hydrogen at a temperature 25° ahove —459.7° F or absolute zero (Sci. Am. 129, 106, 1923). In 1931, with the same apparatus, Dickinson and Brickwedde, by precooling with solid hydrogen, produced liquified helium for the first time in this country, at a temperature of —456° F. ( Science News, 73, 12, 1931 : Time, 17, 58, 1931 ; NBS Annual Report 1931, p. 8) . '-'' NBS Annual Report 1952, p. 14. ^^ Russell B. Scott, "Liquid hydrogen for chemical and nuclear rockets," Discovery, 21, 74 (1960). '"^ While the cryogenic plant began operations at Boulder in the fall of 1951, not until completion of CRPL were the Boulder Laboratories formally dedicated, on Sept. 8, 1954. 473 ■13 C 3 13 O £ 03 o 3 o 474 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE ( 1946-5 ij and commercial radio, as the central agency of the Nation for basic research in the propagation of radio waves. ^-' Besides continuing operation of the worldwide chain of stations — the total number was 58, of which 14 were directly operated or supported by the Bureau — to provide prediction services for long-distance radio, CRPL took over the research functions of the radio section of the Bureau's electrical division. It at once undertook extension of the research in lower frequencies into the ultrahigh frequency and microwave region (3000 megacycles or more) for the new fields of television, of frequency modulation (FM) broad- casting, and military and commercial radar. Severely limiting the range and minimum usable signals in FM broad- casting, television, and other very-high-frequency services, the Bureau found, was the noise associated with cosmic and solar radio waves reaching earth from outer space. To study these phenomena, the Bureau instituted a pro- gram in radio astronomy, setting up at Boulder two solar radiometers with mirrors 25 feet in diameter, operating at different frequencies, to track the sun and observe its outbursts of radio energy.^'-"' While outer space phenomena produced measurable limitations on very-high-frequency transmission, the major influences on propagation at microwave frequencies proved to be nearer to earth. Studies in tropospheric meteorology and terrain geometry — that is, the effects of rain and trees and hills — first begun several decades earlier for ordinary radio transmission, were resumed in order to learn the causes of attenuation of very short micro- waves, particularly those used in radio relay operations.^-'" Both the radio astronomy program and that on the troposphere became long-range projects. An innovation in the radio services of the Bureau, begun on October 3, 1945, shortly before setting up CRPL, was the shortwave broadcast of stand- ard time signals each 5 minutes around the clock. It augmented the standard radio frequencies, standard time intervals or pulses, standard audio frequen- '-' Hearings * * * 1948 ( Mar. 12, 1947) , p. 339. Establishment of CRPL was authorized in letter. Secretary of Commerce Wallace to Secretary of the Treasury, Jan. 9, 1946 (copy in NBS Historical File), and activated as a division of the Bureau by memo, Director, for Division and Section Chiefs, NBS, Apr. 19, 1946 ("General Correspondence Files of the Director, 1945-1955") . '■' NBS Annual Report 1948, p. 247. The new branch of science, radio astronomy, had its beginnings in 1932 when Karl G. Jansky of the Bell Telephone Laboratories described the reception of extraterrestrial radio waves and from their diurnal variation in direction tentatively identified their source in the Milky Way. See Proc. IRE, 20, 1920 (1932) ; Nature, 132, 66 (1933). Grote Reber, both before and after he came to the Bureau in the 1940's, and the Bureau's chief of radio research, Dellinger, were to extend these observations. See F. T. Haddock, "Introduction to radio astronomy," Proc. IRE, 46, 3 (1958). '"» NBS Annual Report 1949, p. 71. NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIO PROPAGATION 475 cies, and standard musical pitch (middle A at 440 cycles per second), which the Bureau radio station, WWY, had broadcast since 1935.^" As supple- mentary to the time signals of the Naval Observatory, the signals are widely used by such industries as mining, shipping, railroads, power, air transport, and communications, among many others.^-* Within a year after beginning its new time signal service, improved standards resulted in achieving a maximum change of 0.001 second per 24 hours and deviations of as little as 0.009 to a maximum of 0.031 second from corrected Naval Observatory time.'-'' Extending reception of the frequency and time signals of WWV, on November 22, 1948, the Bureau established a new experimental broadcast station, WWVH, on the island of Maui in Hawaii. Soon after it began operations, reports confirmed the expected success of the station in reaching with consistency a far greater range of areas in the Arctic and the Pacific than had been possible from Maryland."" - CRPL's extension of the primary frequency standard to 40,000 mega- cycles in 1948 helped to open research in a field of physical science first explored during the war, that of microwave spectroscopy. Of immediate importance to the Bureau work on guided missiles, the new methods devised for measuring electrical quantities at microwave frequencies made possible the use of sharp microwave beams on systems where high resolution was needed, as in short-range target-seeking rockets and missiles.^^^ '-'NBS Annual Report 1946, p. 206; NBS TNB 31, 21 (1947) ; Radio News, 38, 118 (1947). ^ Long concerned with time as a factor in all measurement, and with clocks, watches, and sundials (on which it issued many Letter Circulars), the Bureau began testing time- pieces shortly after its founding. See C51 (1914) and the current C432 (1941) on the testing of timepieces. The propagation of standard time signals has been by tradition the prerogative of the Naval Observatory at Washington. The Bureau has also had an interest in standard timekeeping, dating back to World War I. Under an act of March 19, 1918, authorizing the establishment of daylight saving time and standard tin.e zones in the United States, Congress appointed the Interstate Commerce Commission to define the limits of each time zone for the Nation. As a matter involving "standards," the ICC requested the Bureau to prepare the map from data that ICC supplied. The map was first published in 1925, in an NBS circular on standard times throughout the world (C280, currently C496, 1950) , and a "standard time conversion chart" appeared in 1928 (M84). In 1930, over objec- tions from the Department of Commerce that such a map was no function of the depart- ment, the Bureau replied that it was part of its information service to the Nation's commerce. It appeared in a separate publication that year as Mill, currently M190, 1948. See Department of Commerce correspondence of August-September 1930 in NARG 40, Box 120, 67009/93. ''•" NBS Annual Report 1947, p. 223. "° NBS Annual Report 1949, p. 81. ■'' NBS Annual Report 1948, p. xiv. 476 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) Dr. Condon and Dr. Harold Lyons with the first atomic beam clock. It operated with an ammonia-regulated quartz crystal and ran with a constancy of one part in 20 million. The Bureau atomic clock program sought to provide a spectroscopic standard capable of being used as a new atomic standard of time and frequency to replace the mean solar day and so change the arbitrary units of time to atomic ones. With such a clock, new precise values might be found for the velocity of light; new measurements of the rotation of the earth would provide a new tool for geophysicists; and new measurements of the mean sidereal year might test whether Newtonian and atomic time are the satne. yielding important results for relativity theory and cosmology. The new microwave measurement technique, by overcoming the limi- tations of conventional optical and infrared equipment, also promised to extend spectroscopic analysis methods to high polymer research, that is, to the investigation of organic substances such as paper, leather, and plastics which are made up of very large molecules. ^'^ An immediate and dramatic application of the microwave technique, however, was in the Bureau's con- struction of an atomic clock. ' NBS Annual Report 1948, pp. xiv, 249. HIGH POLYMERS AND BUILDING RESEARCH 477 Some of the first microwave measurements of the spectrum Hues of ammonia gas against the NBS primary frequency standard suggested that they might serve as an invariable secondary frequency standard. A year later, in 1949, the Bureau devised means for utilizing the vibrations of atoms in the ammonia molecule, derived from the microwave region of ammonia gas, to control an oscillator with which to drive a clock. The result was the first atomic clock ever built. While its magnitude of accuracy was only a little better than that of the 24-hour rotation of the earth, and not as good as time based on the annual rotation of the earth around the sun, a breakthrough had been achieved. With further refinement, using the cesium rather than ammonia atom, and with precise control of the radio frequency, much higher accuracy became possible. A time accuracy of at least 1 part in 10 billion, representing an error of 1 second in 300 years, was thus achieved, without reference to the earth's rotation or the planetary motions.^^' Such timing is not possible with the 2,000-year-old solar time system. And on an earth gradually slowing down, millionths of a second become vital in projecting such feats as timing rocket launches to meet in orbit hundreds of miles above the earth where a space platform might be assembled. Of special importance to astronomy, both the clock and the method of construction represented new tools of research in technical fields where pre- cise measurement of time and frequency are crucial, from long-range radio navigation systems and tracking of satellites to basic research in microwave spectroscopy and in molecular structures.^^* HIGH POLYMERS AND BUILDING RESEARCH In 1944 Dr. Robert Simha, an Austrian chemist teaching at Howard University in Washington, came to the Bureau to give a series of lectures in a new field of science, that of the high polymers. The word "polymers" or "high polymers" was then less than 5 years old, and the study of the molecular ™ H. Lyons, "Microwave spectroscopy frequency and time standards," Elec. Eng. 68, 251 (1949) ; NBS Annual Report 1951, pp. 13-14; H. Lyons, "Atomic clocks," Sci. Am. 196, 71 (1957). The achievement represented an outgrowth of work started at Westing- house by Dr. Condon. See WiUiam E. Good, "The inversion spectrum of ammonia," Phys. Rev. 69, 539 (1946). '^^ With continued refinement of the cesium atomic beam apparatus, the accuracy of time measurements increased to 1 part in 100 billion, or 200 times greater than that achieved by astronomical means. Subsequent use of atomic hydrogen masers promised to increase the order of accuracy still further. Meanwhile, on Oct. 8, 1964, the 12th General Con- ference of Weights and Measures, meeting in Paris, authorized a temporary atomic defi- nition of the second, derived from the cesium clock, as the international unit of time. NBSTNB48,209 (1964). 478 . THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) properties of these systems little older. The science deals with the chainlike molecules of relatively very high molecular weight that make up substances as different as rubber, textiles, paper, leather, and plastics, all of which owe their strength, elasticity, durability and plasticity to the long chainlike struc- ture of their molecules. Dr. Simha's lecture-seminars led the Bureau to invite him to join the staff, and he remained for 2 years organizing high polymer research at the Bureau. ^^^ The growth of the synthetic rubber and plastics industries in this country during the war raised the problem of new standards based on accu- rate determination of the structures and properties of polymer substances. Awareness of the problem was accentuated by the discovery of German ad- vances made in plastics and textiles, learned from the search of their labora- tories in the last months of the war in Europe.' ''' Particularly pressing was the need for more basic research in the rubber industry, both in natural rubber, flowing freely once again, and in synthetic rubber, as insurance "in the event of any future emergency." ^" Apart from the Bureau program, rubber research in industry and in the universities on behalf of the Federal Government was then running over ' ''' R. Simha, "Preliminary Proposal for a Plan of Research on Molecular Properties of High Polymers," Aug. 1, 1945 (NBS Historical File) ; Science, 104, 572 (1946). Important in the history of the Bureau have been the guest lecturers from industry and the universities who have become temporary consultants or stafE members in order to initiate new lines of research or even whole new programs at the Bureau. In many instances they have subsequently sent their graduate students or laboratory assistants to join the Bureau staff. The guest lecturer policy was introduced by Dr. Stratton, who even after leaving the Bureau continued to invite leading scientists, among them Niels Bohr, to lecture there. In 1923 Prof. Arnold Sommerfeld of the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Munich, early pioneer in the quantum theory and quantum interpretation of spectra, spent 2 weeks at the Bureau as consultant and lecturer. The practice continued in the 1930's when, among others, Wojciech Swietoslawski and his pupil Mieczyslaw Wojciechowski of the Polytechnic Institute of Warsaw brought the technique of ebulliometry to the Bureau fch. VI, see p. 343) , and Prof. John D. Ferry of the University of Wisconsin came to lecture on rheology, the science of the flow and deformation of materials. Dr. Herman F. Mark, who fled Nazi Germany and started polymer science in this country, came as a consultant to the Bureau in 1941-42. Another lecturer on high polymers. Dr. Paul J. Flory of Stanford University, later sent his prize student. Dr. Leo Mandelkern, who did some of the first work in this country on the crystallization of polymers. Simi- larly, Dr. Herbert P. Broida came to the Bureau in 1949 to work in flame spectroscopy, and stayed to direct a research program on free radicals. The policy continues to the present day. Interviews with Dr. Lawrence A. Wood, June 30, 1964; Dr. Meggers, July 7, 1964; and Dr. Samuel G. Weissberg, Sept. 8, 1964. On the free radicals program, see NBS AdminBul 56-66, Oct. 29, 1956. ''■'■". NBS Annual Report 1946, pp. 190-192. ^"' NBS Annual Report 1947, p. xv; LC871, "Bibliography of recent research in the field of high polymers" (Simha, 1947) ; LC922, ibid., 1948; C498, ibid., 1950. HIGH POLYMERS AND BUILDING RESEARCH 479 S5 million a year. As Federal activity in this field was in danger of being stopped through termination of the war agency which handled it, Dr. Condon proposed that the Bureau assume direction over the major programs in progress and, "as in the fields of mathematics and radio propagation," be- come "the centralizing and coordinating agency" in rubber research for the Government.^'* Instead, the whole of the Federal research program was curtailed as operations in its synthetic plants were cut back and a number of the plants were put in standby status. Bureau research in rubber continued as part of the investigation of high polymer substances. The investigation centered on the constants and properties of the high polymer compounds that are formed chemically in nature by the process known as polymerization. Using X-ray diffraction, infrared spectroscopy, and electron microscopy, along with standard chemical, optical, and thermo- dynamic techniques, the Bureau sought better knowledge of the fundamental properties of both natural and synthetic polymers. On the basis of early results, the Bureau explored the incorporation of rubber into sole leather to improve wearing qualities, obtained new tire and tube evaluations, standard- ized fading tests in textiles, and improved leather hides by impregnating them with resins or rubber. Related studies were concerned with the nature of adhesion in polymers, with adhesives among the synthetic resins, and the use of resins in the fabrication of aircraft, housing, and containers.^'" Research into the molecular dimensions of the polymers provided the standards necessary for the utilization of Dextran as a blood-plasma substitute and the control tests for its manufacture and maintenance in storage. ^^" For the Office of Rubber Reserve, important studies were made in the degradation of rubbers and on the rheological (flow and deformation) properties of various rubbers and rubber solutions."^ And in 1950, with the procedures it had devised for measuring molecular weights by osmotic pressure, viscosity, and light scattering (ultracentrifuge) techniques, the Bureau started its standard sample program of high polymers.^*" When an examination of the high-polymer characteristics of paper and paper materials offered no immediate solution to a filter problem, the Bureau, with the cooperation of the Naval Research Laboratory, produced from commercial "glass wool" a new kind of paper composed entirely of glass fibers. Originally sought for use in gas mask filters, its excellent in- '^^' Hearings * * * 1948 (Mar. 12, 1947), p. 322; NBS Annual Report 1947, p. xv. '"' NBS Annual Report 1947, p. 209; Annual Report 1948, pp. 224-225. "»NBS Report 1713 (Weissberg and Isbell, June 13. 1952). Although the current availability of whole blood from donors reduced the necessity of Dextran except in an emergency, 10 million pints were made and stored against that contingency. '"NBS Annual Report 1951. p. 51; Annual Report 1952, p. 34; Annual Report 1953-54, p. 51. '" See RP2257 (Weissberg, Simha, and Rothman, 1951) . 480 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) sulating properties and high resistance to heat readily suggested that glass paper might have extensive use in electronic and other electrical equipment. ^*^ An area of research that had become scattered over many divisions at the Bureau was reorganized in 1947 to form a new division, that of build- ing technology. For the first time a unified approach was made to the problems of the construction industry as the Bureau coordinated its investiga- tions of properties of building materials, studies in structural strength, fire resistance, acoustics and sound insulation, heating, ventilation, air condition- ing, and building and electrical equipment.^** As after every war, the construction industry turned its attention first to conventional housing, of which there was an estimated shortage of 5 mil- lion units.^*^ The Bureau made home construction its immediate target. With building materials approaching the cost of labor, the Bureau aimed at new structural designs based on engineering principles tested in the war- time construction of ships and planes — something of an innovation itself — and on maximum use of nonconventional building materials that provided structural strength with the minimum of materials and labor. Bureau re- ports went out to the industry on the properties of materials unknown a decade before, such as some of the new plastics, laminated woods, lightweight concretes, and slag aggregates. New and better masonry paints and asphalts were also reported. ^^"^ In order to formulate standards of heating, the Bureau built a test bungalow 25 feet square with an 8-foot ceiling. One after another, com- mercial heating devices including stoves, furnaces, and panel heating were installed and the detailed data gathered on temperature gradients attained inside were correlated with outside temperatures.^*' A long series of fire tests of building structures and materials were carried out in search of better means of reducing the direct annual loss from fire, currently estimated at 8,000 lives and $700 million in property damage.^** The next decade witnessed a steady rise in private and public housing, in construction of office buildings and Federal buildings. Aided by the new Swedish-invented hydraulic self-lifting Linden crane, high-rise apartment houses went up as fast, and in some cities, faster than homes. Bureau re- search figured to some extent in much of the high-rise construction, but could "'NBS Annual Report 1951. p. 48; M. J. O'Leary, B. W. Scribner, et al, "Manufacture of paper from glass fibers," Tappi, 35, 289 (1952) . '** NBS Annual Report 1947, pp. xiii-xiv. "'Hearings * * * 1947 (Jan. 29, 1946), p. 203. "" BMS107, "Building code requirements for new dwelling construction * * *" (Thomp- son, 1947) ; BMS109, "Strength of houses: application of engineering principles to structural design" ( Whittemore et al., 1948) . '"NBS Annual Report 1947, pp. 202-203, 208; Hearings * * * 1950, p. 492. '" NBS Annual Report 1945, pp. 234-235. HIGH POLYMERS AND BUILDING RESEARCH In this test of house wall fire resistance, the fire took 27 minutes to come through the Douglas fir siding as gas flames were applied to the other side. An instrument on the pole measures the bulge of the wall. (Picture by courtesy of the National Geo- graphic Society.) take no blame for a major flaw in many of the new buildings, their woeful failure in soundproofing. As it only added to the comfort of tenants, accept- ance of Bureau studies in the acoustic properties of materials had little appeal. But as they saved time or money or material. Bureau reports on asphalt stabilizers, vapor-barrier materials, thermal conduction, and heat transfer found ready acceptance in the industry. ^*^ As a service to new homeowners and old, the Bureau revised and reissued its publication, "Care and repair of the house." On its first appear- ance in 1931, "Care"' went through 12 printings, selling 175,000 copies at 20 cents each.^^° In the 5 years after 1949 that the 209-page revision, Cir- cular 489, was available to the public it sold 253.000 additional copies, at 50 cents each. Undergoing a second revision in 1955, the Bureau's best- '"NBS Annual Report 1949, p. 36; Annual Report 1951, p. 61. '=' See ch. V, pp. 251-253. 482 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) seller was suddenly withdrawn from further publication, with the official explanation that it was both an inappropriate publication for a scientific agency of the Government and was competitive with private industry/^^ Bureau services such as "Care" represented, whether to homeowners or to the public in general, have sometimes been unwelcome to private indus- try, as well as to the friends of industry on Capitol Hill. One such public effort in the postwar period came close to spelling disaster for the Bureau. Ever since its founding, the Bureau, alone or in conjunction with the Federal Trade Commission or some other watchdog agency, has from time to time impinged on one aspect or another of rugged individualism or the prin- ciple of laissez faire. It was the Bureau that led the first crusade against fraudulent weights and measures in the marketplace, against faulty railroad scales, mine scales, and truck scales. It aroused the ire of the public utilities by pointing out the hazards of electrolysis, of poor gas appliances, and by insisting on electrical safety codes. It angered the building industry with many of its codes and specifica- tions and some of its assessments of building materials. It repeatedly warned the public against so-called gas-savers on kitchen stoves, against gasoline additives, gasoline "dopes," destructive antifreeze solutions, and useless anti- leak compounds. It exposed the fraud in proprietary radium and radioactive nostrums. It reported the inferiority of reclaimed rubber for automobile tires. Its research on photographic emulsions was stopped. Attempts were made to suppress a number of its reports, including those on the quality of heating and illuminating gas, on gypsum and certain other building mate- rials, and on chemical glassware. And from time to time the Department of Commerce itself considered it necessary to su])press Bureau releases, as it did one in 1926 describing the quality of dental amalgams. Every Director of the Bureau has come under fire from business inter- ests or industry, entrepreneurs, or legislators as a result of some Bureau investigation or other. Dr. Condon had been at the Bureau only a matter of months when the "Aquella" incident occurred. In January 1946 a popular magazine published the story of a fabulous new paint formula for waterproofing masonry, with the claim that it had been tested by the National Bureau of Standards and won an unqualified "Excellent" rating.^ '- It was being made at home and sold from door to door by a family of French refugees who had arrived in New York in 1941 with no possessions but the secret formula for their paint. They claimed that their waterproof paint called "Aquella" had been used throughout the Maginot Line. ''^"New York Times," May 15, 1955, p. 68; correspondence with Vincent B. Phelan, March 9-May 27, 1963 (NBS Historical File). ^^' Kurt Steel, "Water, stay away from my wall," Reader's Digest, 48, 45 (1946) . HIGH POLYMERS AND BUILDING RESEARCH 483 The story with its testimonials drew thousands of inquiries about "Aquella" and hundreds of requests seeking licenses for "Aquella" agencies. On the strength of the mail, the family obtained capital and began selling manufacturing rights to distributors. The Better Business Bureau of New York asked the Bureau to test the waterproofing paint. The Bureau already had. At the request of the military services it had obtained samples and reported its findings in Decem- ber 1942. Six months later it had made a second report. The new tests confirmed the earlier ones. Judged "excellent" immediately after applica- tion, "Aquella" on the outer face of masonry after 10 months offered no more than "good" protection against water seepage. The inner face rated "poor." "Aquella," at $3 to $4 a quart was judged a fair waterproof paint but no better than a Bureau recipe made with 10 cents' worth of material. The Bureau also learned that "Aquella" had been used in the Maginot Line, but only for decorative purposes, as a blue calcimine. Newspaper accounts of the Bureau reports, following publication of the magazine story, resulted in almost 20,000 inquiries about the Bureau tests. They were answered with a mimeographed letter summarizing the findings on "Aquella." The mail also brought numerous protests of Govern- ment interference with private enterprise, notably the intercession of Gov. Ellis Amall of Georgia with Secretary Wallace on behalf of prospective "Aquella" distributors in his State. Wallace "recalled and retracted" the Bureau's mimeographed letter. ^^^ No such simple detente marked the results of Bureau tests of a battery additive called "Protecto-Charge," later known as AD-X2. Its history went back to the years immediately after World War I when the resurgence of the automobile industry brought on the market a freshet of battery additives, substances whose makers claimed would restore vitality to dying batteries. Through the next three decades the Bureau, at the request of the Federal Trade Commission, the Post Office Department, and various Government agencies with fleets of cars and trucks, tested these additives as they appeared on the market. By the early thirties almost a hundred of the preparations had come to the Bureau, but whether based on epsom salts or other substances, none showed any notable effect on either battery life or performance.^^* 153 "jsjg3 Report of water permeability tests on coating of 'Aquella' paint applied to masonry walls," Dec. 8, 1942; ibid., June 4, 1943; mimeo letter, "Summary of water- nermeability tests of 'Aquella' * * *, Aug. 9, 1946; report on "Aquella," Consumers' Res. Bull. 17, 20 (May 1946) ; letter, H. A. Wallace to President, Prima Products, Inc., New York City, June 3, 1946 ("General Correspondence Files of the Director, 1945- 1955") ; interview with Dr. E. U. Condon, Oct. 29, 1963. '" See ch. V, p. 281. The correspondence on battery additives in the early thirties is in NBS Box 369, TE. 484 ' THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) The appearance of new gasoline "dopes," antifreeze compounds, and battery additives continued through the forties. Routine tests to determine the validity of their advertised claims turned up nothing new.^'" Then in the spring of 1948, Jess M. Ritchie, whose firm. Pioneers, Inc., of Oakland, Calif., made the battery additive AD-X2, wrote to the Bureau asking for special tests of his product, on the grounds that it was an exception to the negative findings of the Bureau's Letter Circular 302 on battery additives, published in 1931, but still current and available to the public."" Since the Bureau does not make tests for private individuals or firms, it refused. In January 1949, in connection with a current program of research on the properties of batteries, the Bureau undertook a reinvestigation of battery additives, in preparation for a revision of the 20-year-old LC302. Among the additives tested, but as in all such cases unidentified except by a number, was AD— X2, samples of which had been recently received from the Better Business Bureau of Oakland. Essentially compounded of common epsom and glauber salts (magnesium and sodium sulfates), AD-X2 was found by the Bureau to have no special merits. Where these salts ordinarily sell for about 22 cents a pound, when packaged as a proprietary battery additive, at .S3 per packet, they came to almost $20 a pound. Dr. George W. Vinal of the electrochemistry section, coauthor with Paul L. Howard of the Bureau circular in preparation, reported the test results on AD-X2 to the Better Business Bureau in Oakland in April 1950, identifying AD-X2 by name. This was admittedly a deviation from the usual practice, but was intended as a reply to proponents of AD-X2 that prior statements of the Bureau on battery additives did not apply to that particular product.''^ Four months later the national office made the report public. Pioneers, Inc., directed its distributors to write to their Congressmen in protest.'''* Before the end of 1951, 28 Senators and 1 Congressman had sent queries to the Bureau on behalf of AD-X2. The issue sm.oldered for more than a year, arousing public interest for the first time when in December 1952 a national magazine reported that laboratory tests of AD-X2 made at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were at variance with those of "" NBS Annual Report 1947, p. 221 ; Annual Report 1948, p. 251. '"Particularly objectionable to Pioneers, Inc., was the fact that the National Better Business Bureau had reprinted LC302 in its own circular of June 19, 1931, as the authoritative statement on the subject. '■" [Senate] Hearings before the Select Committee on Small Business * * * on investi- gation of Battery Additive AD-X2, 83d Cong., 1st sess., March 31-June 26, 1953, p. 220. '™ The findings on AD-X2, unidentified as such, were also reported in the reissue of LC302 in 1949 and in C504, "Battery additives" (Jan. 10, 1951), the latter including confirming tests of AD-X2 made for the Federal Trade Commission in March 1950. The NBBB letter is reprinted in Senate Hearings, above, p. 549. HIGH POLYMERS AND BUILDING RESEARCH 485 the National Bureau of Standards. The issue ignited soon after the Eisen- hower administration took office in 1953. In the controversy over AD-X2 that erupted in the Department of Commerce, the Director of the Bureau was temporarily relieved of his post.^''' Under press attack for an act of dismissal without a hearing, and con- fronted with the reaction of scientists and scientific organizations, Secretary Weeks rescinded his dismissal order pending a congressional hearing and called upon the National Academy of Sciences to appoint a committee "to evaluate the present functions and operations of the Bureau of Standards ' '" In the Eisenhower administration, Sinclair Weeks, a manufacturer from Newton, Mass., became Secretary of Commerce. The new Secretary appointed Craig R. Sheaflfer, presi- dent of the Sheafler Pen Co. in Fort Madison. Iowa, his Assistant Secretar>' for Domestic Affairs. Both the Secretary and his assistant were concerned over Federal agencies that in their view often hampered the efforts of small business to get ahead. Both seem to have thought the Bureau was one of those agencies. The Federal Trade Commission not long before had forced the Sheafler company to discontinue advertising its ballpoint pen as a lifetime pen. (Senate Hearings, above, pp. 272. 511). He now found the Bureau, long closely associated with the FTC, under his immediate supervision. More than a year prior to the Eisenhower election, in August 1951, Dr. Condon, who was Director when Circular 504 on battery additives appeared, resigned from the Bureau to become director of research for the Corning Glass Works. Dr. Allen V. Astin, elec- tronic and ordnance physicist and a guiding hand in the development of the Bureau's proximity fuze, became Acting Director until his appointment as Director was confirmed by the Senate on May 30, 1952 (see Hearings * * * 1954, Jan. 11, 1954, p. 76). During that period. Pioneers, Inc., its distributors, and supporters continued pressure on the Bureau to reverse its findings on AD-X2. At the request of the Post Office Depart- ment in September 1951, the Bureau retested AD-X2. Six months later it was again tested for the House and Senate Committees on Small Business, and again, almost a year after, much more extensively, for the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee. On Feb. 24, 1953, the new Postmaster General, Arthur E. Summerfield, as a con- sequence of the latest Bureau findings, put AD-X2 on the mail fraud list. Six days later, the fraud order was suspended. Assistant Secretary Sheaflfer instructed Dr. Astin to impound all copies of Circular 504 and all other reports, pamphlets, and data on battery additives, including AD-X2. On Mar. 24, 1953, Secretary Weeks forced the resignation of Dr. Astin "for a number of reasons," none of which was specified, except that "the National Bureau of Standards has not been suflBciently objective because they discount entirely the play of the market place" ("Washington Post," Apr. 1, 1953, p. 1) . The action raised a basic question: whether Government through its regulatory and scientific agencies was to judge the merits of new products offered to the public, or whether this function was to be left to the test of the market place. The integrity of the Government's primary scientific research body had been impugned. The Bureau was being subjected to pressure, and to reorganization in accordance with an outside concept of scientific objectivity. The attack on the Bureau implied a radical reversal in the role of Government as the regulator of commerce. 486 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) Try ll Ajiaiii, MeD, And BeSureYouOelTliiiA The Washington, D.C., newspaper cartoonists capture the fervor of the AD-X2 case. (1953 © cartoon by Herhlock in the ''WasHington Post"; other cartoons lay courtesy of Berryman and Crocket, '"Washington Evening Star.") in relation to the present national needs." ^''" (The report of this com- mittee is considered in the envoi of the present history. ) A second committee of the National Academy of Sciences was appointed specifically to appraise the work of the Bureau on AD-X2. A Department of Commerce press release on August 23, 1953, an- nounced the resumption of his duties by the Director of the Bureau. It also disclosed that on the basis of Senate hearings, the merits of AD-X2 remained controversial but "there [was] insufficient proof of an actual intent * * * to deceive." "^ On November 13 the committee of 10 scientists named by Dr. Detlev W. Bronk, president of the National Academy of Sciences, to study the claims made for AD-X2, reported that the MIT tests "were not well designed for old batteries differing markedly in the characteristics of the cells." The committee found the Bureau staff fully competent, the quality of its work "° "Washington Post," Apr. 18, 1953, p. 1. The Director of the Bureau had recommended early in March that the Secretary call upon the Academy and his Visiting Committee to the Bureau to review Bureau operations, including its testing of battery additives. See "Washington Post," Apr. 2, 1953, p. 1. ^"'^ The Secretary's press release also announced the transfer of direct supervision of NBS from the Assistant Secretary for Domestic Affairs to the Assistant Secretary for ■Administration. Soon after, Mr. Sheaffer resigned and returned to his business. The Senate Hearings * * * on * * * Battery Additive AD-X2 comprised 511 pages of testimony and exhibits and 274 pages of appendices. GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY 487 on storage batteries "excellent * * * without reservations," and supported ''the position of the Bureau of Standards that the material is without merit." ^'^- GOLDEIV ANNIVERSARY Dr. Condon could have had no inkling of the tempest to be visited upon the Bureau when he approved the letter circular and formal circular on AD-X2. They were routine test reports, as had been that on "Aquella" and hundreds of other commercial products since the founding of the Bureau. Of greater concern to him were the new lines of research he had set going, the reorganization of the Bureau laboratories, the establishment of new facilities at Corona and Boulder, and, not least, the preparation of a new and compre- hensive handbook on physics, to be written by the Bureau staff. The hand- book, with worldwide distribution, would not only be scientifically im- portant and prestigious but would set a capstone on 50 years of modern physics. Precedent for the encyclopedic work planned by Dr. Condon was the Dictionary of Applied Physics, the five-volume work edited by Sir Richard T. Glazebrook. first director of the National Physical Laboratory in England and published in 1922-23.^*^^ The idea of the handbook was preceded in March 1946 by plans for another comprehensive work, a Bureau proposal to the Commerce Science Committee to prepare 50 or more publications designed especially to aid small business. Bureau circulars, letter circulars, and other publications in print were to be revised and new ones prepared by recognized authorities at the Bureau, describing products, methods of manufacture, and processes developed in this country and abroad during the war that might serve as a basis of new enterprises. At the time, the estimated cost of the project, $250,000, was considered by Congress to outweigh the merits of the enterprise.^''* '"' Report of the Committee on Battery Additives of the National Academy of Sciences, Oct. 30, 1953, pp. 1, 31, 33-34 (NBS Historical File) ; "Washington Post," Nov. 14, 1953, p. 1; Hearings * * * 1955 (Jan. 11. 1954), pp. 105-107. The AD-X2 affair is presented as a case history in puhlic administration and policy formation, for teaching purposes, in Samuel A. Lavvrence's The Battery Additive Con- troversy, Study No. 68 ( University of Alabama Press, 1962 ) . NBS contributors to the Glazebrook dictionary included Silsbee on superconductivity, McCollum on electrolysis, Coblentz on radiation and radiometry, Gibson on spectro- photometry, and Meggers on the measurement of wavelengths. ^" The 13-page outline, "Proposed technological services to business, industry, and the public, in collaboration with the Office of Declassification and Technical Services," Mar. 1, 1946, is in NBS Historical File. 786-167 0~G6 32 488 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) The outline for the first project, the "NBS Handbook of Physical Measurements." as it was originally entitled, appeared in a 117-page mimeo- graphed study in December 1946. It called for eight volumes, on metrology, mechanics, heat, electricity, optics, atomic and chemical physics, and physical chemistry, each volume and its chapters and sections assigned to Bureau authorities in the field. In March 1947, Dr. Condon asked the House Ap- propriations Subcommittee for $30,000 to initiate the project.^''' No demur was made and the work was launched. Progress on the handbook was slow. Besides their reorganization and some shifting around of laboratories, the divisions were clearing up backlogs of paper work, completing reports on wartime research, and plan- ning new programs of research. Since the handbook was to be a formal Bureau publication. Dr. Condon directed that it might be done on Bureau time. The working day simply wasn't long enough, and the only writing accomplished was that done on nights and weekends, on individual initiative. Four years later, when Dr. Condon left the Bureau, some 10 or 12 chapters out of the 57 projected had been completed. No longer to be a Bureau enterprise, the handbook was modified in scope and the aid of authori- ties in industry and the universities was enlisted. A progress report and new outline late in 1952 described a more extensive work. It was to comprise 88 chapters, of which 40 were completed or in the first draft form. The published book, Condon and Odishaw's Handbook of Physics, appeared in 1958. Of the contributors to "what every physicist should know," as the editor described the volume, 13 were members of the Bureau staff. ^''^ Dr. Condon himself wrote 17 of the final 90 chapters in the 1,459-page hand- book.^''' An accomplishment of importance to the Bureau that Dr. Condon saw achieved in somewhat less time than the handbook was amendment of the Bureau's organic act of 1901. Even before Congressman Stefan raised the question in 1947 of the Bureau's spending millions of dollars "on the basis of a two-page law," Dr. Condon had already initiated final preparation of the draft legislation for submission to Congress in order, as he said, to "remove some of [the] ambiguities and try to state more explicitly and in "'■•Hearings * - '■' 1948 (Mar. 12, 1947), p. 367. "'" In addition to their articles and books published under Government imprint, members of tlie Bureau staff have produced almost a hundred books and textbooks, including two autoliiographies. See app. N. '"' New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co. The progress report of 1952, with instructions for authors and a sample section, is in NBS Historical File. Some of the material prepared by Bureau members for the handbook subsequently ap- peared as NBS publications: C476, "Measurements of radioactivity" (Curtiss, 1949) ; C478, "Colorimetry" (Judd, 1950) ; C484, "Spectrophotometry" (Gibson, 1949) ; C544, 'Formulas for computing capacitance and inductance" (Snow, 1954) . GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY 489 more up to date language what the exact functions of the Bureau of Standards are.""s The reformulation of functions that the Science Advisory Board re- commended in 1934, to cut the depression suit of the Bureau to its cloth, had been filed at the time and all but forgotten.^"^ The burst of scientific ac- complishment in World War II had since changed the course of Bureau re- search. Its orientation was to science rather than, as in the original act and in 1934, to industry. The new statement of Bureau functions, as an amendment to the organic act, became official with the enactment of Public Law 619 in 1950. The restatement included a significant change in direction. In the original act. the basic authority for the functions of the Bureau resided in the Bureau itself. Relieving it of this sometimes onerous responsibility, the amendment transferred the authority to the Secretary of Commerce."" The amendment consolidated the broad range of special Bureau activities that had been granted piecemeal in appropriation legislation through the years. Finally, it made specific in the scientific research and testing activities of the Bureau its responsibilities in the new fields of science opened in the past decade. As in the organic act, the Bureau still had six basic functions, but they included nothing quite like Dr. Stratton's wonderful catchall, "the solution of problems which arise in connection with standards." ^'^^ It was the Secretary of Commerce, rather than the Bureau, that was responsible for: The custody, maintenance, and development of the national stand- ards of measurement, and the provision of means and methods for making measurements consistent with those standards, including the comparison of standards used in scientific investigations, engi- neering, manufacturing, commerce, and educational institutions with the standards adopted or recognized by the Government. ^^^ Hearings * * * 1948 (Mar. 12, 1947), p. 352; Hearings * * * 1951 (Feb. 23, 1950), p. 2179. Secretary of Commerce Wallace recommended amendment of the organic act to Con- gress in 1945, in order to incorporate authority for such Bureau activities as were covered only by supplemental legislation. Executive orders, and customary procedures. The drafting of the amendment was almost entirely the work of Dr. Crittenden. See Report of the Visiting Committee, Oct. 31, 1945, and attached correspondence ("General Correspondence Files of the Director, 1945-1955," Box 6) ; interview with Dr. Condon, Oct. 28, 1963. '™ See ch. VI, p. 323n. ^'° For the general reorganization of executive departments, in line with the recom- mendations of the Hoover Commission, that was the immediate occasion for enactment of the Bureau amendment, see "New York Times," Mar. 14, 1950, p. 1, and May 24, 1950, p. 1. ''^ See ch. I, p. 43. 490 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) The determination of physical constants and properties of materials when such data are of great importance to scientific or manufactur- ing interests and are not to be obtained of sufficient accuracy elsewhere. The development of methods for testing materials, mechanisms, and structures, and the testing of materials, supplies, and equipment, including items purchased for use of Government departments and independent establishments. Cooperation with other governmental agencies and with private organizations in the establishment of standard practices, incorpo- rated in codes and specifications. Advisory service to Government agencies on scientific and technical problems. Invention and development of devices to serve special needs of the Government. The first two functions encompassed the original organic act and were vir- tually identical with the statements of responsibilities. The next two con- firmed the responsibilities acquired through the special appropriations that Congress had made to the Bureau over the years. The last two functions rep- resented Bureau responsibilities accrued under transferred funds from other Federal agencies, as established by acts of 1920 and 1932 (see app. C) and, affirming its advisory capacity, gave a firm legal basis to what had become the dominant direction of the Bureau. Spelled out in the amendment were 19 specific activities of the Bureau which the Secretary of Commerce was authorized to undertake in carrying out these functions.'^" Public Law 619 was approved on July 22, 1950, 4 months before the Korean incident became a full-fledged conflict and put the Nation on a war- time footing once again. In the national emergency, the Federal Govern- ment reopened its synthetic rubber plants that had been on a standby basis, and ordered stepped up production at the Bureau of optical glass for use in large optical elements. Proximity fuze and guided missile development was at once greatly intensified, as were other defense projects at the Bureau, including some scheduled for termination.^^' Anticipating the acceleration in scientific research, a program of re- search in basic instrumentation was initiated, in cooperation with the Depart- ^'^ The complete amendment appears in app. C. See also "Bureau of Standards Func- tions," H. Kept. 2349, to accompany S. 2201, 81st Cons., 2d sess. [July 22, 1950]; NBS BuMemo 50-7, Apr. 24, 1950; BuOrd 51-12, Aug. 11, 1950. ''= NBS Annual Report 1951, pp. 2, 8, 9, 59, 84. GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY 49-1 ment of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission."* As the conflict began, the Bureau established its North Pacific Radio Warning Service for the Arctic region, operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to insure reliable radio communications in the war zone. Yet, even with almost half the staff engaged once more in classified defense programs, the Bureau reported a total of 630 unclassified projects going on in its laboratories.^^' As it braced itself for the national emergency, the Bureau marked the approach of March 3, 1951, the 50th anniversary of its founding. The pub- lications staff prepared a number of designs for a commemorative stamp for the semicentennial but efforts to interest the Post Office were unsuccessful.^^® In celebration of the anniversary, some 30 scientific and technical societies of the country elected to hold their meetings that year in Washington. ^'^ In addition, the Bureau, with the special cooperation of the Office of Naval Research, sponsored 12 special symposia on subjects of current importance to the Bureau and the Department of Defense.^^® The symposia were in mid-career when on August 10, 1951, Dr. Con- don announced his resignation as Director of the Bureau. For more than 4 years he had been under intermittent attack by a subcommittee of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, headed by Congressman J. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey, as an alleged security risk in high public office.^'" ^■* Projected in Condon's "Is there a science of instrumentation?" Science, 110, 339 (1949). '" NBS Annual Report 1952, pp. 1, 2 ''" It has been stated that as a rule it is not Post Office policy to so honor Federal bureaus or agencies. '" Also marking the semicentennial were companion articles by Dr. Briggs on the early work of the Bureau and by Dr. Condon on its current program, in Sci. Mo. 73, 166 (1951) . See also Condon, "NBS: a Semicentennial," Science, 114, suppl. 3 (Aug. 17, 1951) . '™ NBS Annual Report 1951, p. 100, and file, "NBS Semicentennial, 1951," in the Office of Technical Information and Publications, NBS. The subjects of the symposia were low temperature physics (subsequently published as C519, 1952), mechanical properties of metals at low temperatures (C520, 19.52), gravity waves (C521, 1952), the solution of systems of linear equations and the determination of eigenvalues (AMS39, 1954), mass spectroscopy in physics research (C522, 1953), energy transfer in hot gases (C523, 19.54), electrochemical constants (C52^i'. 1953), polymer degradation mechanisms (CSflS, 1953), optical image evaluation (CS^S, 1954), electron physics (C527, 1954), char ic- teristics and applications of resistanci' strain gages (C528, 1954), and electrodeposit on research (C529, 1953). ^'^ The trouble began on July 17, 1947, when the press reported that Thomas' Spe< iai Subcommittee on National Security w;\s investigating Dr. Condon because his acquaint- ances included Russian scientists ano'' alleged Communist sympathizers in this country. In the uneasy years after the war, resentment arose against the scientists who worked on the atomic bomb, and over transfer of control of atomic energy from the Army to 492 THE NEIF WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51) Despite the failure of the subcommittee to prove its charges, despite vindication in the press and by the security procedures of the Departments of Commerce and Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission, and the wide support of his fellow scientists. Dr. Condon came to feel that he might best serve Bureau interests by resigning. Accepting an appointment as director of research at Corning Glass Works, Dr. Condon submitted his resignation to President Truman, effective September 30. The resignation was regretfully accepted. You have served [said the President] in a most critical position with continued and loyal attention to your duties as director, and by reason of your standing among scientists and the supervision you have given to the bureau's activities, you have made of it a more important agency than it ever has been before.^^° After presiding over the semicentennial symposia that month on mass spectroscopy, on electrochemical constants, and on polymer degradation mechanisms. Dr. Condon left the Bureau. Confronting the new Acting Direc- the civilian Atomic Energy Commission. Also, rumor were widespread of domestic Communist activities in connection with the development of the bomb. Dr. Condon had been at Los Alamos, and was scientific adviser to the McMahon com- mittee that had obtained enactment of the law for civilian control of atomic energy. He now directed, according to Mr. Thomas, "one of the most important national defense research organizations in the United States, the target of espionage agents of numerous foreign powers." Then in a statement handed to the press on Mar. 1, 1948, the Thomas subcommittee charged that "the Soviet Union and her satellite nations have been desperately attempting to * * * secure our complete atomic knowledge. * * * From the evidence at hand, it appears that Dr. Condon is one of the weakest links in our atomic security." He had, Thomas said, "knowingly or unknowingly, entertained and associated with persons who are alleged Soviet espionage agents." From the first. Dr. Condon expressed his willingness to appear for a hearing but was ignored. Almost unanimously the press, the world of science, and other members of Congress questioned the charges and the procedure of the House Committee. Although he was cleared by the Loyalty Board of the Department of Commerce and by W. Averell Harriman and Charles Sawyer, the Secretaries under whom he served, the criticism of the Director of the Bureau by this committee of Congress continued. See Stephen K. Bailey and Howard D. Samuel, Congress at Work (New York: Henry Holt, 1952), pp. 321-336, 487; "Trial by Newspaper," Sci. Am. 180, 16 (1949); and congressional documents and newspaper accounts in NBS Historical File. "" "New York Times," Aug. 11, 1951, p. 1. GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY 493 tor was the trouble, already warming up, over AD-X2. But that too would pass, and with time adjustment to the new world of science would be made. The standard troy pound of Queen Eliza- beth, formed of 8-ounce and 4-ounce nesting weights. 'pMZ '■^-■^-rtT':r-.-y1i]i U^A Lm^a One of the three ginnt Wurtsburg antennas at the Bureau's Gun Barrel Hill, Colorado, field station. Used in radio propagation research, a dipole at the focal point of the paraboloid reflector receives radio energy from the sun. 494 THE CRUCIAL DECADE— AN ENVOI AN AD HOC COMMITTEE REPORTS In April 1953, in the midst of the impasse raised by the controversy over AD-X2, Secretary of Commerce Weeks asked the National Academy of Sciences to convene an ad hoc committee to evaluate the functions and operations of the National Bureau of Standards in relation to the current national needs. At stake was not only the reputation but the purpose and direction of the Bureau. It was recognized that they were threatened not so much by the controversy over AD-X2 as by the impact on Bureau research of the Korean war. As in the two World Wars, the staff, facilities, and programs of the Bureau were mobilized for the new conflict across the Pacific. A year after that war began, prolonged negotiations for its end commenced. As in the case of industry, commerce, and science, the Bureau was on a war footing beyond its control. In March 1953, anticipating Secretary Weeks' own request by almost a month, the Director of the Bureau had written him to seek the counsel of the National Academy of Sciences on the current pro- gram and operations of the Bureau. The ad hoc committee appointed by the Academy submitted its initial findings in late July and its formal report on October 15. Under the direc- tion of Dr. Marvin J. Kelly, director of the Bell Telephone Laboratories and a member of the Visiting Committee, the 10 members of the committee thor- oughly explored the place of the Bureau in the Federal structure, its orga- nization, programs, technical operations, administration, and funds and financing. There was no question, the 109-page report declared, of the vital importance of the Bureau to the Nation or of the quality of its professional staff. The heart of the report dealt with certain of the Bureau programs. The years following World War II witnessed an unprecedented growth in the science and technology of the Nation, and the Bureau's basic research programs expanded in aid of them until 1950. Then basic research began to lose ground "at a tragic rate," as the Committee expressed it, to the weaponry 495 496 ■ THE CRUCIAL DECADE— AN ENVOI development work proffered through transferred funds by the Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission. The principal recommendation of the ad hoc committee called for the transfer of these weapons programs to the Department of Defense. Ex- cept in wartime, such work did not belong in the Bureau. On the other hand, its nonweaponry research, testing and calibration, and evaluation projects for the Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission should continue, as valuable to the basic programs of the Bureau.^ To redress the imbalance that had occurred, the committee recommended greatly increased direct appropriations for the basic programs of the Bureau and for such fundamental research as the determination of physical constants, properties of materials, standards and standard practices, and testing and evaluation procedures. The committee further recommended that the Bureau decrease many of its remaining repetitive test operations as costly in time, effort, and funds. And it urged the Bureau to seek greater use by other agencies of the Government of its scientific and technical facilities. The imbalance in the basic programs of the Bureau occasioned by the military demands of the Korean war could be reversed, said the committee, and, with adequate appropriations, the staff and research level of 1950 achieved again within 2 years. Within 4 years "the Bureau should be in a position to perform its authorized functions in balance at the minimum level for the nation's needs." ' The Nation was confronted with a permanent industrial revolution, a continuing technological revolution. The objective of the committee study and its recommendations was to restore to the Bureau its "essential services for our industrial society." For the translation of new scientific knowledge into industrial products, the Bureau must maintain balanced programs in those areas of science and technology requiring new measurements and stand- ards. To that end the committee urged that advisory groups from the scien- tific and technical societies represented on the ad hoc committee be formed to aid the Director in achieving balance in the current program and in insti- tuting new programs.^ ' Ad Hoc Committee, NAS, "A Report to the Secretary of Commerce," Oct. 15, 1953, pp. 19-20 (NBS Historical File) ; NBS Annual Report 1953-54, preface and p. 10. Only recently had it become true, as the committee said (p. 12), that "the work of the Bureau for the Atomic Energy Commission, which has a dollar value of almost $2,900,000 in 1953, is not of a weapons development nature." 'Ibid., pp. 14, 20-21; NBS Annual Report 1953-54, pp. 11, 126. For the procedure by which the Bureau's budget is presented to Congress, and the "need for a new philosophy [in] the appropriation of funds," see pp. 80-81. "Ibid., pp. 18, 95. The 10 technical advisory committees to the Bureau represent the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Institute of Radio Engineers, American Insti- tute of Physics, NAS Policy Committee for Mathematics, American Institute of Mining AN AD HOC COMMITTEE REPORTS 497 Secretary Weeks accepted the recommendations of the committe in their entirety and promptly began issuing the directives to carry them out. On September 27, 1953, at one stroke, the Bureau lost four of its divisions, comprising the whole of the proxiniitv fuze and guided missile programs. Three of them, the ordnance electronics, electromechanical, and ordnance de- velopment divsions, working on fuzes and related materials, centered around the new electronics laboratory erected in 1946 by the Army Engineers on the Bureau grounds across Van Ness Street. This complex became the Harry Diamond Ordnance Laboratories in 1949, honoring the inventive prodigy who came to the Bureau in 1927 and presided over ordnance development from 1940 until his death in 1948. With the staff of almost 1,600 members, the laboratories were transferred to Army Ordnance.^ At Corona, Calif., the Bureaus missile development division, with a staff of over 400, that same month became the Naval Ordnance Laboratories (Corona) .'' The transfer of the two major weapons programs involved a loss of over one-third of the Bureau staff and more than half its $50 million budget for the fiscal year 1952-53. A year later the Institute for Numerical Analy- sis in the applied mathematics division, supported by the Office of Naval Re- search and the Air Force at the University of California at Los Angeles, was formally transferred to the University. By the end of 1954 the Bureau had been reduced from almost 4,600 to 2.800 members, of which approximately 400 were out at Boulder, Colo.'' The curtailment of weapons development was quick. More time was required to implement three other recommendations of the committee: the insuring of quality and incentive in the Bureau staff; adjustment in the test- ing and calibration program, to reduce the burden of massive routine test- ing; and the modernization of facilities, with increased space provided for basic programs. The high quality of the professional staff had become imperiled by the contraction in basic programs in recent years, with consequent reduction in staff as large numbers of the junior staff were siphoned into the Bureau's mili- tary programs. The future of the staff was threatened by the challenge of and Metallurgical En<;ineers, American Chemical Society, American ('eramic Society, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, National Conference on Weights and Measures, and American Society of Civil Engineers ( NBS Annual Report 1953-54, p. 127). ^ NBS BuMemo 49-45 (July 25. 1949). Upon its transfer, the complex was renamed the Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratories (DOFL). See AdminBul 53-57 (Sept. 30, 1953). It is now the Harry Diamond Laboratories. = Hearings * * * 1953 (Jan. 11, 1954) , pp. 6, 66, 77-82. " NBS Annual Report 1953-54, pp. 11-12. 498 THE CRUCIAL DECADE—AN ENVOI supply and demand posed by the postwar surge in employment opportunities for young scientists and engineers.' Although not mentioned by the committe, there was also an element of discontent among the staff, particularly in the upper echelons, induced in part by clashing personalities introduced during the previous administra- tion.* The postwar reorganization of the Bureau, with its attendant changes in research assignments and work loads, staff changes, and increase in ad- ministrative duties and paper work, had been carried out largely by new administrative assistants brought in for that purpose. Some confusion and concern naturally resulted. In order to hear out the staff, both professional and nonprofessional, and to discover and strengthen the factors making for a good research environment, the Director in November 1953 invited an advisory service. Social Research, Inc., of Chicago, to conduct a survey or inventory of staff attitudes towards the Bureau, Bureau policies, and working relationships. It was an altogether unique experience in the history of the Bureau." The two reports of Social Research made to all members of the staff 8 months later disclosed that, on the whole, most of the professional staff believed the Bureau compared favorably with the best universities and best industrial laboratories as a place to work, and that it provided many of the amenities of university life with the financial and equipment advan- tages of industry. Still, a significant group seemed to feel that the Bureau offered less in the way of individual freedom and opportunity to build a scientific reputation than elsewhere, and some apparently considered the pressure to publish or perish a unique requirement for promotion at the Bu- reau. The morale among the nonprofessional staff was about average, com- pared with that in similar groups in business and industry — an encouraging finding considering the late highly publicized unpleasantries. The sheer size of the Bureau and its high degree of specialization, particularly since World War II. had dissipated to some extent the strong sense of community that since its founding had been the special quality of the Bureau. Yet the survey found identification high among the staff, both with their working unit and with the Bureau as a symbol representing a ' Ad Hoc Committee report, p. 13. Reduction of funds for basic programs resulted in a loss of 328 members of the research, operations, and testing staff between 1949 and 1952, bringing it down from 1,728 to 1,400 members. Report of the Visiting Committee, July 1, 1952 ( in the Ofiice of the Director) . * As Bernard L. Gladieux, Executive Assistant to the Secretary of Commerce, told the House Appropriations Subcommittee, "There is an underlying problem [of personalities] out there." It was discussed off. the record. Hearings * * * 1951 (Feb. 6, 1950), p. 1361. ° Announced in NBS AdminBul 53-66, Nov. 25, 1953. ■ AN AD HOC COMMITTEE REPORTS 499 particular way of scientific life. The professional group almost without exception, and most of the nonprofessionals, agreed with the ad hoc com- mittee report on the importance of the basic research programs to the Bureau and with the fact of their recent serious attenuation. The task of the administration, to recover the basic programs and enhance and promote the Bureau symbol, was evident.^" The ad hoc committee had urged some modification in the testing program of the Bureau. The program in 1953, comprising calibration, quality control, acceptance, qualification, regulatory, and referee testing, preparation of standard samples, and product testing, had funds amounting to $2.6 million. Both the committee and the Bureau were especially con- cerned over the relative efforts expended on product or acceptance testing and calibration testing, and the vital need of the latter as the way in which the Bureau disseminated its standards. Yet calibration testing, perhaps the most important end product of the Bureaus basic programs, was to a degree vitiated by the large amounts of repetitive testing, far more than the high level of technology in industry really required. Where such testing could not be dispensed with, said the committee, it should be turned over to commercial laboratories. While the committee agreed that the Bureau must continue to make evaluation tests on commercial products at the request of other agencies of the Governm.ent, such testing was the area that most frequently brought the Bureau to the unfavorable attention of the general public — as had happened with AD-X2. The committee had no solution. The Bureau must make the tests but leave "the policies and activities of a nontechnical nature" connected with such tests to the Secretary of Commerce. ^^ The first postwar Director, Dr. Condon, had for a time resented the effort expended by the Bureau on routine and repetitive testing, but he came to argue more persuasively for the routine work on Federal purchases, as representing "one of the most fertile fields for Government economy," than any Director ever had before. Contrary to general opinion, the '"NBS AdminBul 54-49, Aup. 2, 1954: AdminBul 54-68, Sept. 27, 1954. The "attitude survey" conducted by social scientists has become an accepted adjunct of administration. In 1957 the Bureau joined with eight other Federal agencies and eight private laboratories in a questionnaire designed to find ways "to attract and hold scientists and engineers in the Government." Apart from the predictable responses (low salary scales. Civil Service examining techniques and processes, inadequate in- centive, uncertain fringe benefits), the principal finding of the survey was that a permanent group be created in the Civil Service Commission to work with agencies making such attitude surveys (NBS AdminBul 57-39, July 29, 1957; AdminBul 58-1, Jan. 16, 1958). " Ad Hoc Committee report, pp. 15-16. 500 THE CRUCIAL DECADE— AN ENVOI Bureau had never been given responsibility for laboratory surveillance over the quality of Government purchases. There never had been any legisla- tion authority for this activity. Such surveillance as existed offered "only a very spotty check." except in the purchase of cement and of electric lamps. Bureau testing controlled the acceptance of some 4 million light bulbs bought for the Government each year, assuring a consistent quality product; the same was true of Government cement purchases.^- Not less but much more routine testing was required in other Govern- ment purchases, and Dr. Condon pointed to the $100 million spent by Fed- eral agencies for paint each year and the .$500 million for labor to apply it. Yet the Bureau in fact tested very little of the paint that the Government bought, although it knew there was abundant reason for more testing. It had neither the funds nor authorization from other agencies to do that testing. The Government spent $12 million annually for automobile tires and $5 mil- lion for tires on Air Force planes, without any check on their quality. A preliminary study made at the Bureau on truck tires for the Post Office sug- gested that $150,000 spent on testing tires offered to the Government might well save between $3 and $4 million annually." Acting with the support of recommendations of the ad hoc committee, however, the Bureau sought to transfer to nongovernmental organizations a number of its other testing services. Efforts to decrease routine calibration work met with little satisfaction or success. The U.S. Testing Co. of Ho- boken, N.J., set up a calibration service for thermometers but. met little de- mand and abandoned it. Urged by the ad hoc committee report, the Bureau approached other commercial testing companies to take over routine calibra- tion not only of therm( meters but of volumetric glassware. Following the '" E. U. Condon, "Developing purchase specifications," Pacific Purchasor, February 1949, p. 13; Hearings * * * 1951 (Feb. 23, 1950), p. 2288; Hearings * * * 1952 (Apr. 10, 1951), p. 473. "Hearings * * * 1951, p. 2288: Hearings * * * 1952, pp. 464-465. Dr. Stratton was chairman of the committee that drew up the act establishing the Federal Supply Commission (later the Federal Supply Service), responsible for Federal supplies and making purchase contracts. (See Stratton's account of Bureau relations with the Commission, in Hearings * * * 1921, Jan. 2. 1920, pp. 1569-1570.) In 1949 the FSS was transferred from the Treasury Department to a new independent agency, the General Services Administration (GSA). Except for the maintenance of Federal Specifications, the Bureau has been called on to provide little more quality control over Federal pur- chases under GSA than under the Treasury, despite the interest of GSA and a "memo- randum of understanding" between GSA and the Bureau in 1953 (Hearings * * * 1951 Feb. 23, 1950, p. 2288; NBS Annual Report 1953-54, p. 131). The necessity for the testing is beyond question. In Annual Report 1953-54, p. 99, the Bureau noted that of 280 samples of building materials submitted to the Government in that period and tested by the Bureau, 137 failed to meet specifications. AN AD HOC COMMITTEE REPORTS . 501 unfavorable response ("the work does not appear attractive as a commercial venture"), the Bureau began to promote reference standards laboratories^* in both Government and industry to handle calibrations whose accuracy did not necessitate comparison with the national standards.^ ' Further unburdening itself of routine efforts, in 1953-54 the Bureau turned over three of its service publications requiring periodic revision to the American Society for Testing Materials and the American Standards As- sociation, with considerable success except for necessary price increases.^® At the same time, commercial firms were given two classes of standard samples to prepare and distribute, the Bureau's short-lived radioisotopes and its viscosity oil standards.^' As foreseen, the rapid advances in technology in the decade after the war made relentless demands on the Bureau for more and more testing, cali- bration, and greater precision measurements. Even with the reduction in repetitive testing and standard samples, restriction of calibration to basic standards, and the institution of statistical engineering procedures and semi- automatic methods of calibration, the number of tests and calibrations con- tinued to rise. With an authorized increase in the charges made for these services, fees rose from $2.9 million in 1953 to more than $5.4 million just a decade later. Even though increasingly confined to serving the regulatory, purchas- ing, or functional responsibilities of other Government agencies, the Bureau's testing program and especially its calibration services, grew with the expan- sion of the Nation's research program. To augment cement testing, for ex- ample, a Cement Reference Laboratory was set up at the Bureau under the joint support of NBS, the Bureau of Public Roads, the Army Engineers, and the American Society for Testinar Materials. The Bureau also initiated a " "Reference standards" are defined in ch. 11, p. 76. ^^ Memo, A. T. McPhcrson, '"Experience in turning ever activities of NBS to non-gov- ernment organizations," Mar. 19, 1960 (NBS Historical File) ; NBS Annual Report 1953- 54, pp. 96-97. For an earlier attempt to shift cement testing to commercial laboratories, without success, see letter, P. H. Bates to N. T. Stadfeld, Dec. 11, 1942 (NBS Blue Folder Box 72). '" The publications were M187, "Directory of commercial and college testing labora- tories" (1947; issued since 1927) ; M178, "National directory of commodity specifica- tions" (1945; issued since 1925); and C410, "National petroleum oil tables" (1936; issued since 1916). " Memo, A. T. McPherson, Mar. 19, 1960. Another service discontinued as no longer necessary was the performance testing of dry cells, which began in 1924 and cost $10,000 annually. Memo, Director NBS for Assistant Secretary of Commerce, July 7, 1952 ("General Correspondence Files of the Director, 1945-1955") . 502 THE CRUCIAL DECADE— AN ENVOI mobile laboratory service, to make cement tests where time schedules pre- cluded use of the Bureau's area laboratories.^^ Calibration and standard samples programs were similarly augmented. In 1955 construction of a new calibration center began at the Boulder Labo- ratories, initially to calibrate for the Air Force and Navy Bureau of Aero- nautics the vast quantity of radio, radar, and other electrical equipment mak- ing up more than half the cost of some of their new planes. Representing an investment of $2 million, almost half that sum for interlaboratory standards and special equipment, the center would serve science, industry — particularly the new aerospace industries — as well as the military and other Government agencies." The new importance of Bureau testing was further recognized when on May 3, 1956, Public Law 940 authorized the Bureau, for the first time since its founding, to retain as working funds its fees charged for the calibration of standards and the sale of standard samples to commerce and industry.-" Congress might let the Bureau retain its testing fees, but it could not be immediately persuaded to support the major ad hoc committee recom- mendation, the restoration of the level of basic research at the Bureau through increased appropriations. The chairman of the committee, appearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee, informed it that the Bureau was not keeping up with the great growth in U.S. technology and was nowhere "big enough for its normal basic functions." -^ The House members were not moved. Even with the severance of the fuze and missile programs and their funds, the remaining sums transferred to the Bureau by other Federal agen- cies still exceeded by more than three times the direct appropriations of Congress, and Congress was concerned about those funds beyond its control. "It is the same old program that we are faced with every year," Congressman Prince H. Preston, Jr., of Georgia told his fellow members on the House subcommittee. and that is, lack of control we have over the Bureau of Standards' appropriation by virtue of the fact you have so much transferred " NBS Annual Report 1957, p. 98. The new facilities, and better test methods, resulted in more testing of cement but re- duced the volume handled by the Bureau. By the 1960's, just two of the NBS cement laboratories were in operation, at Seattle and Denver, and those at Houston, Kansas City, San Francisco, Allentown, Pa., and Riverside and Permanente in California were closed down. Conversation with Martin R. Before, Dec. 22, 1964. ^'' NBS Annual Report 1955, p. 123. Wider dissemination of high precision laboratory Standards, calibrations, and procedures was the objective of the first meeting of the Na- tional Conference of Standards Laboratories held in 1962, attended by over 600 repre- sentatives of 200 industrial laboratories and other organizations and reported in NBS M248 (1962). ^ NBS Annual Report 1956, pp. 108, 140. =' Hearings * * * 1955 (Jan. 11, 1954), p. 81. GAITHERSBURG 508 money or reimbursable projects. * * * I do not know what the answer * * * is as long as [the Bureau] can get more money from other agencies than we appropriate * * *. As a matter of fact, if we were to try some economies * * * a 20 percent cut [for example] * * * there would be nothing in the world to pre- vent the Bureau of Standards from doing a little staff negotiation with the Navy, or somebody [and get more transferred funds. Thus the Bureau doesn't] have to put into effect any reduction by virtue of the appropriations we make. [It] would just be going to some other source to get the money we denied.-- Apart from the presumed ease with which the Bureau obtained transferred funds was the fact that, while they supported research valuable to basic programs of the Bureau, little fundamental research was ever authorized by those funds. For that research, and for expansion, the Bureau looked to Congress. The predicament was to be resolved 3 years later, with the coming of the space age. GAITHERSBURG Second only to the importance of restoring the basic programs at the Bureau to their former high level was the ad hoc committee's recommendation for modernization of its facilities and increased space for those basic programs. Attention had been called to the condition of the Bureau plant a year after the war when a new plant division chief arrived. His initial survey disclosed that Bureau facilities were "in a sordid mess." The main buildings were 30 to 40 years old and looked it, since funds had never been made available for their periodical rehabilitation. Deterioration had accelerated with their great use, abuse, and meager care during the war. Just as alarming was "the almost total lack of basic records on what had been built at the Bureau, where power, steam, water, electrical and other lines ran, and what the ramifications of the facilities really were." -'* The Public Buildings Administration, responsible for the design, con- struction, and protection of all Federal buildings, was called to reconstruct "Ibid., pp. 90-91, and Hearings * * * 1957 (Mar. 20, 1956), p. 102. The counterpart of this observation had been voiced three decades earlier in industry's complaint that the special appropriations of Congress to the Bureau expanded its sphere of operations, without controls and contrary to the intention of the organic act of the Bureau. See ch. V, p. 231n. '' Intervievtr with William I. Ellenberger, Aug. 12, 1964. The condition of the buildings and the so-called excessive expenditures for their maintenance were particular targets of the House Appropriations Subcommittee survey made at the Bureau in 1949. See Hearings * * * 1951 (Feb. 23, 1950) , pp. 2179 ff. 786-167 0—66 34 504 THE CRUCIAL DECADE— AN ENVOI the records and survey the Bureau plant.-* Its restoration of records, recom- mendations for rehabilitation of utilities, and for destruction of some of the temporary structures beyond repair were salutary. The modernization of electrical, plumbing, and heating facilities, accomplished in 1949-53 as a result of the survey, still left the Bureau plant a maze of over a hundred buildings, annexes, and minor structures. Most were antiquated and far short of modern laboratory standards, and all were so crowded that no expansion of activities was possible in them."'' As a solution to the maze, the visiting PBA architects drew up splen- did plans for a completely remodeled Bureau on its present site, reconstruct- ing the entire interiors of the major buildings and replacing the scores of lesser buildings with a dozen new and architecturally satisfying modern structures.-'" The plans were subsequently described as "purely objec- tive * ""' * on the presumption of unlimited resources," a condition to which Congress was not likely to agree.-' Less than a decade later, convinced of the need of new Bureau facili- ties and their importance to the national welfare. Congress approved reloca- tion.-** In May 1956 the Director selected a 550-acre plot of high-level ground near Gaithersburg, Md., approximately 19 air miles (45 minutes by "^ The PBA reconstruction is the basis for the Bureau's plant data given in app. 0. ^ The request to the PBA, to survey the plant and determine the repairs and alterations necessary to put it in satisfactory condition, was made in January 1946. The report was made on May 21, 1947. The survey is discussed in Hearings * * * 1948 (Mar. 12, 1947), pp. 295, 308: Hearings * * * 1949 (Jan. 20, 1948), p. 537: Hearings * * * 1951 (Feb. 23, 1950), p. 2274; and NAS-NRC Report, "The role of the Department of Commerce in science and technology," Mar. 2, 1960, p. 92. -' In a three-stage "redesign of the entire plant," the prospectus called for retention and thorough modernization of 26 of the original buildings, demolition of 68, and erection of 12 new structures. "Redevelopment Program Survey, NBS," Oct. 1, 1948 (PBA, Federal Works Agency, Project 49-118, in NBS Historical File). The estimated cost of the PBA modernization was subsequently reported as approximately $40 million. [Senate] Hear- ings * * * 1958 (Apr. 11, 1957), p. 137. -' Interview with W. I. EUenberger, Aug. 12, 1964. ^ As late as the fall of 1957 the Visiting Committee to the Bureau wrote to Secretary Weeks that the immediate needs of the Bureau were so great that the committee would prefer modernization, new buildings, and expansion at the present site rather than recon- struction at a new site. Letter, M. J. Kelly, Chairman, Visiting Committee, to Secretary Weeks, Oct. 17, 1957 (Visiting Committee files in Office of the Director) . A year later the Visiting Committee approved the decision to build on a new site, but in the interest of haste recommended retention of the Washington site and construction only of new types of research facilities at Gaithersburg (Minutes of meeting of the Visiting Committee, June 19, 1958). Ultimately, complete reconstruction was agreed on. A new plant could be more efficiently managed and, as had dictated the choice of the original Bureau site, relocation would remove the Bureau from a variety of mechanical, electric, and atmospheric disturbances to precise scientific measurement that now surrounded the Bureau in the city. GAITHERSBURG 505 car) from downtown Washington, and available for an estimated $750,000.^^ Four years later Congress appropriated approximately $23.5 million as the first installment on a building program estimated to cost in the neighborhood of $70 million for buildings and $45 million for special facilities and equip- ment. On June 14. 1961, ground was broken. The first contracts had been let for construction of the central boiler plant, to serve the complex planned, and for an engineering mechanics laboratory. That fall additional con- tracts were negotiated for a radiation physics laboratory, administration building, supply and plant structures, the shops, and a service building. The third phase called for construction of seven general purpose laboratories, each occupying an area larger than a football field. The fourth and final phase was to include several small special purpose laboratories and a re- actor building. When completed the new Bureau complex would comprise over 20 structures. The ad hoc committee report of 1953, laying down fresh guidelines for the work of the Bureau, gave it a direction it had almost lost in the turbulence of the postwar decade. The approval of plans to construct a great Bureau plant at Gaithersburg bespoke new national needs and a confidence in the future. It also reflected the phenomenal involvement of the Federal Govern- ment in postwar science. Before World War II, Federal participation in research in the physical sciences was negligible. Striving to close the gap in the technology of war, the Federal research budget between 1940 and 1944 rose from $74 to $1,377 million. Two decades later, in continuing escalation. Federal research and development exceeded $15 billion annually or close to 15 percent of the na- tional budget. Almost 60 percent of all research scientists and engineers in the Nation worked wholly or in part on programs financed by the Govern- ment. Approximately 68 percent of the $15 billion went into development research, 22 percent to applied research, and 10 percent to basic research, encompassing every field of physical, biological, and social science. The Department of Defense and the National Aeronautic and Space Administra- tion alone accounted for nearly 80 percent of the total funds, supporting de- velopment research in hardware immediately pertinent to the national de- fense, as well as basic and applied research in meteorology, oceanography, astronomy, high temperature physics, and low temperature physics.^" ™ NBS Budget and Management Division, Summary of Files on Gaithersburg (Office of the Director). Early estimates of the cost of the Gaithersburg plant appear in Senate Hearings * * * 1958 (Apr. 11, 1957), p. 138. *■ National Science Foundation, "Federal Funds for Research, Development, and other Scientific Activities" (Washington, D.C., 1964), p. 2 and appendix, table C-32; NSF, "Reviews of Data on Research and Development" (Washington, D.C., 1963) , p. 1. 506 1) lo 13 lU a 2 'S S GAITHERSBURG 507 It was this fact, the mobilization of national science as a permanent peacetime responsibility of the Government, that made anomalous the Bu- reau's topheavy role in development research. As a consequence, the Bureau was unable to produce new methods of measurement and standards at the rate required by the Federal science program. The result was a growing measure- ment pinch in the physical sciences. An event in 1957, the lofting of Russia's Sputnik I into space, marked the advent of the space age and made glaring the gap in measurement.^^ Three years before, both the ad hoc committee and the Bureau had expressed concern about the unpredictable advances that were being made in science, about the shortening lead time between basic discoveries and their applica- tion. Forty years had separated Maxwell's publication of the laws of the electromagnetic field and the first radio experiments; 10 years the discovery of the neutron and the first nuclear reaction; and 6 years the invention of the transitor and its appearance in an amplifier on the market. Although space science was moving in this country, its slow pace was suddenly mocked by the Russian achievement. The Nation's missile and space programs lagged badly for want, among other things, of high temperature measurements in the combustion of high- energy missile fuels; accurate thrust measurements in the million-pound range, instead of the hundred-thousand-pound range available ; and high and low temperature, corrosion, and radiation damage measurements of metals, alloys, ceramics, and other materials. Measurements were needed on the effects of sudden and violent changes of temperature and pressure on the thousands of components in a missile system, on the materials and mechanisms of their rocket engines, airframes, electronic devices, and guidance systems.^- Science, industry, and the military establishment looked to the Bureau for new precision measurements that only the most basic research in chem- istry, physics, and mathematics could provide. But reflecting public opinion during and after the Korean war, budget cuts over the 5 years after 1950 reduced the basic research capabilities of the Bureau by almost 30 percent.^^ ^ The significance of the event, and of Russia's support of five standards laboratories and 129 calibration centers, was discussed at Hearings * * * 1959 (Apr. 23, 1958), pp. 421-22. °^ See Beverly Smith, Jr., "The measurement pinch," Sat. Eve. Post., Sept. 10, 1960; "Measurement standards report," ISA J., February 1961, pp. 1-40. *" Operations and research funds fell from S5.5 million in 1951 to $3.9 million in 1955. By 1957 small congressional increases over the previous 3 years brought the staff up to 75 percent of the 1950 level. Transferred funds still accounted for 63 percent of total Bureau funds, even though half of the transferred fund programs were reported as 508 THE CRUCIAL DECADE—AN ENVOI Famed for its lead time in measurement to meet the requirements of industry, the Bureau for almost the first time in its history found itself caught in a measurement pinch, by the surging demands of the space age. As public opinion veered, the budget cuts were reversed. New plan- ning began in order to restaff the Bureau and provide new facilities and programs. Waiting for the Bureau to acquire more physicists, chemists, and mathematicians and space research results, the Army, Navy, and Air Force resorted to long and costly series of empirical trials and test firings. Waiting for the Bureau, the services worked to improve their measurement procedures, training engineers and technicians in metrology and calibration and setting up calibration centers and mobile measurement laboratories. Even before ground was broken at Gaithersburg, better thrust measurements were in sight, temperature calibrations rose from 2,800° C beyond the 15,000° mark, and mtensified research in high-purity materials had begun. Highest priorities were assigned to the construction at Gaithers- burg of the mechanical engineering laboratory, to undertake thrust measure- ments for new' missiles; the radiation laboratory, with its linear accelerator in the 100 million-electron-volt range, for safety studies of radiation ex- posure; and housing for the Bureau's new research reactor, for programs on neutron and fission physics measurements, radiation damage, and radioisotope applications — all of which were impractical or impossible in the Washington laboratories."*^ As appropriation of research funds rose, the Bureau came on course. To meet the challenge of space research, to affirm the purpose, focus, and urgency of Bureau operations, and give meaning to the individual effort of each Bureau staff member, the Director prepared for the staff a formal statement of the Bureau's central, continuing mission. The emergence of science and technology as the paramount concern of the Nation in the 20th century, he declared, demanded the highest order of measurement com- petence, in order to provide the standards and measurement techniques on which maintenance of scientific progress depended. The paramount mission of the Bureau henceforth, because of its unique responsibility for leadership close enoufzh to Bureau statutory responsibilities to he put under direct appropriations. Minutes of meeting of the Visiting Committee, Apr. 25, 1957 (Office of the Director). A special advisory committee of the National Academy of Sciences, chaired by Dr. M. J. Kelly who had headed the ad hoc committee in 1953, was appointed in 1958 at the request of Secretary Weeks to evaluate the operations of all elements of the Department of Commerce. The focus of the restudy of Bureau operations was on the progress of implementation of the 1953 recommendations. The principal finding was that the Nation's need for measurements and standards was not being met by the Bureau, "only because of inadequate funds." NAS-NRC Report, "The role of the Department of Commerce in science and technology," Mar. 2, 1%0, pp. 81, 94. ^^ Minutes of meeting of the Visiting Committee, June 29, 1959 (Office of the Director). RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 509 in physical measurement, must be: (1) Provision of the central basis within the United States of a complete and consistent system of physical measure- ment, and coordination of that system with the measurement systems of other nations; (2) provision of essential services leading to accurate and uniform physical measurements throughout the Nation's science, industry, and com- merce, and consonant with their advancing requirements; (3) provision of data on the properties of matter and materials which are of importance to science, industry, and commerce, and which are not available of sufficient accuracy elsewhere.'*^ The mission statement by no means encompassed all of the Bureau's future activities. The Bureau had, and would continue to assume, other important tasks within its special competence, as its organic act and amend- ments provided. But physical measurement, and those specialized services of a supporting nature, such as applied mathematics and instrumentation, were to be the essential focus of future Bureau activities. RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT In creating a National Bureau of Standards in the Federal structure at the turn of the century. Congress sought to redress a long-standing need, to provide standards of measurement for commerce and industry, the public, and the Government. Inevitably, the focus was on industry. The United States had only recently become a trading nation, manufacturing for the first time more than it could consume and moving into foreign markets. Recognition of the need for higher standards of measurement, of better quality of product and performance, had prompted manufacturing interests to become the moving force in the founding of the Bureau. In its first two decades the Bureau Avon an international reputation for its outstanding achievements in physical measurement, development of stand- ards, and test methods. Through its new standards of measurement, instru- mentation, and performance it sought to raise the scientific level of industry. Industry accepted the measurements it so desperately needed but tended to resist the introduction of scientific methods for the achievement of better products and service. In seeking to goad into action those elements of industry reluctant to improve the quality of their product or service, the Bureau championed consumer causes, and in testing commodities pur- chased for the Government found a lever to move industry. The latter effort fell short of its goal because the lever could not be fully applied. At the end of World War I the Bureau reluctantly admitted "= Minutes of meeting of the Visiting Committee, June 29, 1959; NBS AdminBul 60-40, Sept. 9, 1%0; NBS Annual Report 1960, p. 150. 510 THE CRUCIAL DECADE— AN ENVOI that Federal agencies, representing the largest single consumer of products in the Nation, were still far from united on the need for quality or stanQ- ardization in their purchases, and tended to neglect or ignore test results made by the Bureau on their behalf. The techniques of mass production introduced during the war never- theless gave an enormous impetus to standardization of methods and materials, and the w£:ri,i?Bi!s.» -.si^act of science on industry raised Bureau hopes that it might find readier acceptance of its efforts. Determined to foster the new industries born of the war, the Bureau sought to become the national re- search laboratory for all industry. By the early 1920's a few industries had begun to exploit the new industrial revolution, most successfully in radio and the automobile, but in general industry and commerce resumed their wasteful habits. Under the Hoover administration, the Bureau continued its efforts to raise the scientific level of industry and saw itself firmly tied to the service of commerce. In Hoover's crusade to eliminate waste in industry, conserve materials and resources, and standardize products and procedures, almost every element of the Bureau participated. The Bureau made notable ad- vances in both scientific and industrial research in the period, but as a result of its almost total identification with industry, shared the obloquy heaped on commerce and industry when the depression came. Industrial research funds dried up and industrial projects were cur- tailed or eliminated during the great disenchantment. With greatly reduced appropriations and staff, but its lop echelon almost intact, the Bureau turned increasingly to fundamental research during the depression. The fund of basic knowledge acquired in those years served the Nation well in the Second World War, and with the mobilization of science in the Nation vastly extended the limits of technological attainment. Few could have foreseen the wartime developments in nuclear physics, atomic energy, electronics, mathematics, in aviation, and in missile research, requiring the extension of ranges of all former measurements and determination of an array of new measurements never contemplated before. Unlike the experience after World War I, the impetus given science and technology did not recede but accelerated enormously in the succeeding years. The import of science for the national welfare became so imperative that the Federal Government dared not relinquish its direction of science, and its costs had become so great that only Government could support it. The Bureau found itself in the forefront of the scientific revolution that had overtaken the Nation. In the stream of the new revolution were the basic programs intro- duced or built up at the Bureau in nuclear and atomic physics, electronics, RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 511 mathematics, computer research, and polymer research, as well as in the instrumentation, standards, and measurement research required by the pace of science and industry. In this period of rapid reorientation some of the long established programs at the Bureau suffered, and for a time the measure- ment requirements in new fields of science appeared to flourish at the expense of traditional metrology. The onrush of space science put all metrology at hazard. Resolution of that hazard became the aim and continuing achieve- ment of the present decade. In that same decade, as the Bureau prepared to move to its new laboratories at Gaithersburg, its organization and functions underwent a new realinement of focus and purpose. Believing the Bureau soundly grounded in its role as adjunct of the new science, the Department of Com- merce called for reorientation of its services to increase its effectiveness as "a principal focal point in the Federal Government for assuring maximum appli- cation of the physical and engineering sciences to the advancement of tech- nology in industry and commerce." ^'^ Early in 1964 the programs of the Bureau were regrouped into four institutes. The Institute for Basic Standards comprised its long-standing programs in the field of basic measurement standards and its recently estab- lished National Standard Reference Data Program. The Institute for Applied Technology brought together the industry-oriented programs of the Bureau and the Department's program in textile technology and its OflSce of Technical Services, for the promotion of technological innovation and use of the results of science and technology in industry. The Institute for Materials Research combined the Bureau programs in chemistry and metallurgy, with a view to augmenting their measurements of the properties of materials, strengthening and extending the standard samples program, and improving the efficiency of production processes in industrial technology. A year and a half later the Bureau's Central Radio Propagation Lab- oratory at Boulder, originally intended as a fourth institute, became scheduled for transfer from the Bureau to a new agency within the Depart- ment of Commerce, the Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA). With inclusion of the U.S. Weather Bureau and the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the new environmental agency of the Commerce Depart- ment was planned to provide broader based research and better service to the public, to business, and to industry.^' ■"Department of Commerce, Department Order No. 90 (revised), "National Bureau of Standards" (Jan. 30, 1964). "Memo, Director NBS for all employees, May 13, 1965. Exempted from the transfer to ESSA was the radio standards work carried on at Boulder, which was to remain a function of NBS. to .sc "§ •§ t^ •-J je o ■14 i>. b» u lO "« On V o * to s s o e RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 513 The spin-off of CRPL, the new realinement of functions and purposes, are endemic in the history of the Bureau. Its history over more than half a century discloses a highly viable form, a living organism of the Federal Gov- ernment, responsive to national needs as they arose. Established to do no more than provide the Nation with its necessary yardsticks of measurement and performance, a seemingly mechanical destiny, the Bureau from the be- ginning reached out to the whole life, the whole welfare of the Nation. The present history has tried to show this life force that is the Bureau, acting as individuals and as agency, and the part it has played in the scientific, industrial, and business life of the Nation. As crusader and arbiter, creator and counselor of standards, it works for the future, as it has in the past, for the good society, and by its learning and good will makes itself felt throughout the Nation and the world. The Exchequer standard corn gallon oj Henry VII 514 APPENDIX A FERDEVAISD RUDOLPH HASSLER First Superintendent of the Coast Survey and of Weights and Measures When Professor Stratton arrived at the Office of Weights and Measures on B Street in Washington in the spring of 1898 to survey its equipment and operations, he found there in the person of Louis A. Fischer, the adjuster, a link with Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, the first Superintendent of Weights and Measures in the Federal Government. It was in the atmosphere of the office over which Hassler had presided, Stratton said, with its sacred traditions concerning standards, its unsurpassed instrument shop, its world-known experts in the construction and comparison of standards, and especially in the most precise measurement of length and mass, that the boy Fischer, scarcely over 16, found himself when he entered the employ of Govern- ment in a minor capacity [about the year 1880]. * * * Scarcely 40 years had passed since the end of Hassler's services and the beginning of Fischer's. His first instructors were the direct disciples of Hassler and he knew and talked with those who had come in personal contact with the first superintendent.^ Fischer's reminiscences concerning the early history of the Weights and Measures office, gathered from his association with the successors of Hassler, were never recorded, to Stratton's regret, and the only biography of Hassler, by Florian Cajori, professor of mathematics at the University of California, centers on his career in the Coast Survey gathered from his association with the successors of Hassler, were never recorded, to in the history of science in the Federal Government, is the principal source of the present sketch." ^ Stratton, "Address Memorializing Louis Albert Fischer, 1864-1921," 15th Annual Con- ference on Weights and Measures, May 23-26, 1922, NBS M51 ( 1922) , p. 3. " Cajori, The Chequered Career of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler. First Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey: A Chapter in the History of Science in America (Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1929) . The biography is a sound summary of the known facts about Hassler. It is based on the numerous published reports Hassler made of his work for the Government; on the Hassler correspondence in the Ford Collection of the New York Public Library; Rosalie L. H. Norris's unpublished "Recollections" (written in Paris, 1856) in the Simon New- comb Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; and the papers in the Archives of the American Philosophical Society. Considerable use is also made of the 558-page work, Emil Zschokke's Memoirs of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, published in Aarau, Switzerland, 1877, with supplementary documents published in 1882, and translated by Rosalie L. H. Norris (Nice: V.-Eng. Gauthier & Co., 1882). Zschokke's actual memoirs occupy pp. 11-31, and a "Sketch of His Life" by Hassler himself, appears on pp. 35-40. The bulk of the Memoirs, an omnium-gatherum, comprises reports, newspaper accounts, letters and other correspondence by or relating to Hassler. 515 516 APPENDIX A Hassler, a man highly trained in mathematics and of great practical ability as a scientist, had scant talent in the an of living and even less in the management of everyday affairs. Proud, improvident, singleminded in his pursuit of precision, and intolerant of expediency, he was destined by events to a life of unending storm and stress. Had not revolution in Europe brought him to America, he might have found his place in the scientific community abroad. The political and economic climate of the New World had room for the practical, the philosophical scientist, but little for the often impractical but wholly dedicated man of science such as Hassler.^ He was born in the town of Aarau, in the northern or German part of Switzer- land, on October 7, 1770, his father a member of a distinguished family, a prosperous watch manufacturer, and high local official. At 16, Hassler entered the institute that was later to be the University of Borne and there came under the influence of Johann Georg Tralles, a young professor of mathematics and physics, who turned Hassler from the study of law to mathematics, astronomy, and geodesy. 'The scientific climate Hassler found in America is well depicted in Brooke Hindle's The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735-1789 (University of North Carolina Press, 1956) , especially pp. 79, 84, 255-256, 327. i^^^ d^/^/ta^H^/ t>z . t^oMce^ An engraving of young Hassler, probably made sometime in the 1790's. From the scenery and the spyglass in Hassler s hand, it may be inferred that he and his friend Tralles were at that time mapping the area around Berne, Switzerland. Less than a decade later, Hassler left for America. APPENDIX A 517 Geodetics became their hobby, and in 1791, with apparatus and funds supplied by Hassler, the two began mapping the area around Berne. Since even tolerable maps of any part of the canton did not exist then, the town fathers encouraged the project, seeing that it would promote better land utilization and development. Among the difficulties that confronted Tralles and Hassler was the lack of precise instruments and measurement standards, and so began young Hassler's lifelong preoccupation with instrumentation. Between field expeditions, Hassler traveled to Paris and the university towns of Germany to attend courses, collect books for his growing library, and acquire better instruments and standards for the survey work. His friend Tralles in that same period, as deputy of the Helvetic Republic, was to participate in the establishment of the metric system in France. The French Revolution of 1798 brought rebellion and French military occupation to Switzerland. That same year Hassler, now 28 and a prominent local official, married Marianne Gaillard, daughter of a schoolteacher. Of a cheerful disposition and great social ambitions, Marianne was not of a very domestic turn and is said to have con- cerned herself little with the seven sons and two daughters she subsequently bore Hassler. Under some harassment from the new political regime, and his association with Tralles severed when the latter left to become a member of the Academy of Science in Berlin, Hassler in 1804 joined with a chance acquaintance to organize a stock company for the purchase of large tracts of land in South Carolina, or possibly Louisiana, and there found a Sv^dss colony. On May 15, 1805, Hassler left his native land with his wife, four children, servants, and 96 trunks and bales for the trip down the Rhine. He had also engaged 120 laborers, artisans, and craftsmen, with their families, to estab- lish the colony, defraying all their expenses. At Amsterdam he chartered the 350-ton ship Liberty, out of Philadelphia, and on October 18 after a 6-week voyage the company arrived at that port. His partner, who had sailed earlier, had in the meantime speculated with the funds entrusted to him and lost them. To maintain his family while waiting for remittances from his father, Hassler sold many of the works of art he had brought with him. He assisted his company of colonists to find new places and, determined not to return home, applied for American citizenship. Shortly after his arrival in Philadelphia, the seat of Government at that time, he met and was cordially welcomed by his compatriot Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, and introduced to President Jefierson. Through them he became a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1807. To the Society he later sold some of his instruments and standards in order to maintain his family, and to the Library of Congress part of his scientific library of about 3,000 volumes. Hassler came to America intending to lead a rural life as steward of the colony he planned to establish somewhere in the South. His mathematical books and in- struments were to be his recreation, and his youthful interest in triangulation and astronomy only recollections of former employments. Instead, a year after his arrival, his possessions much reduced, he settled on a small farm on the banks of the Schuylkill, north of Philadelphia, and began looking for an occupation. He was now 35, possessed of a hardy constitution, considerable learning, but with few immediate prospects. Like many of the well-educated of his time he knew Latin and spoke several languages, in his case German, French, Italian, and English, the latter clear but heavily accented and unidiomatic. Besides his training and experience in political science and juris- prudence, he had an extensive knowledge of mathematics and a good knowledge of chemistry, mineralogy, and all the other branches of natural philosophy. And he was versed in astronomy and practical geodetics. 518 APPENDIX A When he made known his need of an income, his new friends in the Philosophical Society wrote to President Jefferson recommending Hassler's employment in a geodetic survey of the coast then under consideration. On February 10. 1807, Congress appropri- ated $50,000 for— a survey to be taken of the coasts of the United States, in which shall be designated the islands and shoals, with the roads or places of anchorage, within twenty leagues of any part of the shores of the United States; and also the respective courses and distances between the principal capes, or head lands, together with such other matters as [the President] may deem proper for completing an accurate chart of every part of the coasts within the extent aforesaid.^ Of a number of plans solicited for conducting the survey, Hassler's proved most satis- factory. It provided for the determination of true geographic positions by astronomical means at key points near the coast, networks of precise triangulation between these points, a topographical survey of the coast, and a hydrographic survey of coastal waters controlled by triangulation.^ The President recommended that Hassler be appointed to carry out the work, but the solicitations and more pressing affairs of state delayed action on the survey for 4 years. While awaiting acceptance of his plans for the coast survey, Hassler secured a place as acting professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at West Point, resigning in February 1810 to teach natural science at Union College at Schenectady. He left a year later when Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin commissioned him to go to London to obtain the instruments he would need for the survey. Hassler had stipulated in seeking the post that "good instruments are never to be obtained by buying in shops, where only instruments of inferior quality are put up to sell; they must be made on command and by the best mechanicians." He embarked with his family for Europe on August 29, 1811, to seek out those mechanicians and direct the construction of his instruments. Hassler's eighth child and sixth son was born to his wife during the 4-year stay in London and named Edward Troughton, after his next door neighbor and the chief instrumentmaker supplying the equipment for the survey. Besides Hassler's reluctance to hurry the construction of his instruments, delays arose when shortly after his arrival war broke out between England and his country, and for a time he was detained in London as an alien. Two years later while his family was living in Paris, England and her allies invaded France, Napoleon escaped from Elba and, collecting troops as he went, m.arched to his final battle. Hassler went to France to extricate his family. Not all the instruments that Hassler ordered abroad were for the coast survey. .Some were for two astronomical observatories, as "a permanent national institution," that Hassler planned, one in Washington or somewhere in the Southern States, the other in the North. Not until his return were the President or Congress to learn of, and defer, Hassler's "institution." ' Quoted in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. Report of the U.S. National Museum, part II, A Memorial of George Brown Goode * * * " [including hisl history of science in America (Washington, D.C. 19011, p. 293. Jefferson, anticipating war with Great Britain and aware that the only charts of the coast were those of the early Dutch, English, and French colonists, proposed the survey to Congress in 1806. " A. Joseph Wraight and Elliott B. Roberts, "The Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1807-1957" (Washington, D.C, 1957), p. 5. APPENDIX A 519 When not tending the construction of his instruments and apparatus, the great 24-inch theodolite for measuring the angles of the survey, and the telescopes, transit instruments, astronomical clocks, chronometers, barometers, thermometers, micrometers, and balances he had ordered, Hassler met and discoursed with the astronomers and geodecists in London and Paris on the state and progress in these fields in Europe. He procured new copies of both French and English standard weights and measures, for their like was not known in America and they were needed for the survey, and made comparisons of the meter bars and other measures with Troughton's own scales. In the spring of 1815, upon the death of his father, he went to Switzerland to settle the estate, returning with his inheritance of some 1,100 pounds sterling. Besides more instruments he bought lavishly of the best and most recent books on astronomy and geodesy, some for the instruction of the young officers who would be employed in the survey, the rest for his own use and instruction. The value of the equipment ordered by Hassler in London and Paris came to $37,550. With his salary of 14,500 and traveling expenses, his accounts came to a grand total of $55,634, well above the congressional appropriation. He had to come home at his own expense. In the first week of August 1815 he and his family left London, to arrive in Philadelphia 9 weeks later. He had, as Gallatin pointed out, outrun his time and his funds, but the instruments he had procured were excellent. In the spring of 1816, without waiting for formal approval, Hassler set to work. On August 3, 3 months after Congress appropriated funds to initiate the survey itself, Hassler was notified of his appointment as Superintendent of the Survey of the Coast, with a salary of $3,000 and $2,000 for expenses. He had discussed with the Secretary of the Treasury the operation of the survey and the amount of freedom he should have in the work. In a confirming letter that rang like a personal declaration of independence he said in part: My task would be fully large enough, to make all the combinations, operations, and principal observations; to bring up the young officers given to me to the capability required for their employment, (as it will in fact be a practical school that I shall have to keep, besides the work), and to direct, inspect, and verify, the detailed surveys, and their uniting in proper charts, etc. To load me with any of the mechanical, or economical parts, would be impeding the work, * * * and place me in a situation not to be supported. At 46, Hassler's character was fully formed. He was a scientist of unlimited enthusiasm and devotion to his work. He was honest, a proud spirit, and knew his worth. He also habitually planned things on a large scale, without giving much thought to the practical realities or limitations of his projects. The Swiss colony project had been characteristic, and his mentors should have been warned by the apparatus he had purchased for his two unauthorized observatories. And, his biographer notes, as "the head of a large family, the husband of a woman fond of society and unqualified to struggle along devotedly on small means, a scholar who in youth was accustomed to almost unrestricted expenditures for books, scientific instruments, and travel, he was to find himself in maturer years in sharp conflict with economic conditions." But he had on his side warm supporters in the American Philosophical Society, and more valuable, the Presidency. As Jefferson first befriended him, so succeeding Presidents Madison, Monroe, Adams, and Jackson were to come to his defense and to extricate him from his repeated difficulties with accountants and Congress. A letter from the Treasury in February 1817, 6 months after his appointment, asked Hassler to state the probable time required to complete the survey. He couldn't say, for he had not yet begun. Owing to the severity of the winter, he had not even found 786-167 O— 66 35 520 APPENDIX A Hassler sets up camp in the field, a drawing based on a reproduction of a time-darkened painting. Visible under tents are his 24-inch theodolite for measuring angles and his wonder- ful Jersey wagon, with its ivine chamber, disappearing dining and work table, and array of compact instrument and provision chests. a satisfactory location for a baseline. On the other hand, he had started to train the first of the lieutenants of artillery sent him from West Point as assistants, and there was under construction a remarkable carriage for transporting the theodolite and other delicate instruments to be used." Not until April did he determine on the location for his first baseline, near the Hackensack River in New Jersey, and begin establishing triangulation points. A year after beginning the survey, Hassler was asked again when it would be completed and was warned of Congress's dissatisfaction with his meager progress. On April 14, 1818, Congress acted, modifying the law authorizing the survey in order to put Army and Navy officers in charge of the work, thereby excluding Hassler from further direction or participation. His biographer is doubtless right in declaring that ' As completed a year later, the barouche-like vehicle he designed to convey his instru- ments, some weighing a hundred pounds or more, was based on a Jersey wagon mounted on strong braces and huge springs, to be drawn by two or four horses. Ruggedly con- structed to maneuver on rough roads and hilly terrain, it had numerous compartments in a double bottom for storing smaller instruments, tools, stationery and books, and a music box to keep him company as he worked late into the night. In a locker under the seat were his traveling clothes and "a little spirit-room," containing his supply of Swiss wines and the crackers and cheese he lived on in the field. A tent covering secured tiie carriage in Jjad weather. With its suspended table, the vehicle served as Hassler's office by day and, with the table secured, as a sleeping chamber at night. APPENDIX A 521 "Hassler wanted his survey to be not only practically useful, but also a contribution to the science of geodesy * * * on a par with European contributions * * *. Congress had not the least idea of the coast survey as a science; to them it was an enterprise no different from the survey of the Northwest Territory" — a simple matter of using compass and chain and turning out maps and charts with regularity. After a year's work Hassler had no maps to offer.' The next decade was as bleak a period for Hassler as it was for the progress of the survey. A week after militarization of the coast survey, President Monroe appointed Hassler as one of the astronomers in the party sent to fix the boundary line with Canada in upper New York State, as provided in the treaty ending the War of 1812. A year later Hassler, in conflict with the U.S. Commissioner over his progress and his expenses, resigned. He sought a professorship at Jefferson's University of Virginia, still under construction. He considered returning to Europe, but his wife would not consent. He decided to farm and teach, and in 1820, despite the known severity of climate and his complete lack of experience as a farmer, he purchased a tract of land at Cape Vincent in New York State, overlooking the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence. There he planned, with characteristic enthusiasm, to establish a normal school and agricultural college. With high expectations, he sold at a sacrifice most of the furniture and all of the pictures, statuary, and Sevres porcelain in the house the family was then occupying on the Commons in Newark, N.J., and almost all that was left of his original collection of books. The remaining furniture was packed in two large Jersey wagons, and with Hassler's wonderful instrument carriage, which he purchased when it was sold at auction in 1819, the family set out on the 400-mile journey to Cape Vincent. The house he had bought sight unseen in New York State for $1,000 proved to be two 1-room log cabins. Gathering together the carpenters and masons in the neighborhood, he began construction of a great 16-room house, destined to be com- pleted but never occupied. Some farming was begun, but the plan for a college was soon abandoned. In the spring of 1823, while Hassler was on one of his frequent absences from home, perhaps attending a meeting of the Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, and his children were in the fields, his wife gathered her personal belongings and left him, never to return. Leaving his eldest son in charge of the farm, Hassler soon after took a teaching position at Union Hall Academy at Jamaica, Long Island, and brought the other chil- dren to New York. When the Academy failed in 1827, he taught at another in Richmond, Va., and continued to seek a university position. But his marked foreign accent, his rather erratic temperament, and his age, then 55, were against him. Always a tireless talker, he had also been a tireless writer, about his projects, his progress in the survey work, his construction of instruments, his scientific observations delivered before the Philosophical Society. Now he turned to writing textbooks, and with some success found publishers for his "Elements of Analytical Trigonometry" ( 1826) , "Elements of Aritiimetik, Theoretical and Practical" (1826), "Elements of Geometry of Planes and Solids" (1828), "A Popular Exposition of the System of the Universe with Plates and Tables" (1830), and "Logarithmic and Trigonometric Tables" (1830). «b- latter with introductions published in five languages. Hassler's undertaking, "which Congress supposed would be finished in a few years, has now taken 150 years, and no end is in sight." Elliott B. Rolierts, "LInited States Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1807-1957," Ann. Rep., Smithsonian Institution. 1957, p. 222. 522 APPENDIX A A new employment came in the autumn of 1829 when, impelled by want, Hassler accepted an appointment as gager in the New York Custom House. Then his fortunes began to look up. For some time Congress had been discussing the establishment of standards of weights and measures for the United States. There was much talk about the jeopardy to this country's international trade arising from the different concepts of pounds and bushels entertained by the various collectors of customs. On May 29, 1830, the Senate adopted a resolution directing a comparison of the weights and measures used at the principal customhouses. Five months later, on November 2, President Jackson placed Hassler in charge of the study, at |3,000 per year, to make an inspection and review of the measures used in the customhouses. After 3 months. Secretary of the Treasury Ingham reported Hassler's inspection "far advanced ; and it has exhibited such a remarkable disparity in the weights and measures used at the different customhouses, as to demonstrate the urgent necessity of providing standards for their regulation." Called in from the customhouses, the standards, where any such existed, were transmitted to Washington, and it soon appeared that they were of so irregular character, and so unworthy of confidence, that the comparison of them, indefatigably pursued by Mr. Hassler, was a task entirely beneath his attention. The measure which proved the nearest to the standard was a folding yard stick from Philadelphia, the length of which is stated at 36.0002465 standard inches.* With no authority but the approval of Secretary Ingham and the President, Hassler determined to adopt standards for the United States and produce and distribute them to the customhouses. From among the standards that he and Gallatin had secured abroad many years earlier for the survey of the coast, Hassler selected the units to be used for the construction and comparison of suitable weights and measures, and out of his knowledge and skill began construction of the balances and other apparatus for their verification. The fundamental units of length, mass (weight), and capacity rec- ommended by Hassler were adopted by the Treasury Department in 1832, and Fdward Troughton Hassler, his 23-year-old son, was taken on to assist in the construction of standards based on those units." Apprised by Treasury reports of Hassler's progress, Congress in a joint resolution of June 14, 1836, gave its formal approval and directed the Treasury to fabricate for the customhouses the standards of weights and measures that had been established — that is, established by Hassler. By reason of the joint resolution of 1836, the Office of Weights and Measures in the Coast Survey, as the immediate antecedent of the present National Bureau of Standards, is considered formally established as of that date. Meanwhile, on July 10, 1832, 2 years after calling for the inquiry into the custom- houses. Congress reestablished the Coast Survey on the basis of the original act of 1807. Upon President Jackson's recommendation, Hassler again became its Superintendent, at * Report of Alexander D. Bache in J. Franklin Inst. 13, 238 ( 1834) . Cited in Cajori, p. 156, and available on L/C microfilm reel 283, series 01104. H. Doc. 229, 22d Cong., 1st sess., 1832 (L/C: J66), is Hassler's report on his examination in 1831 of the weights and measures used in the principal customhouses, and includes his description of the collection of instruments available to him for constructing weights and measures. ° The start of the work is described in Hassler's Documents Related to the Construction of Standards of Weights and Measures for the Custom-Houses from March to November 1835 (New York: William van Norden, 1835). L/C: QC1000U58. APPENDIX A 523 a salary oi 13,000 and $1,500 for expenses, and was to continue his superintendency over the work in Weights and Measures, without additional compensation.. The survey of the coast that had been carried out after 1818 largely under naval auspices produced a vast body of partial maps and charts at vast expense, Secretary of the Navy Southard reported in 1828. The maps and charts were based on nautical and chronometric surveys, not triangulation, and so far as their use for commercial and naval interests and means for national defense was concerned, Southard declared them "unsafe, and in many instances, useless and pernicious." Hassler resiuned the survey on his original plan. Once again in charge, he borrowed the mathematical books he had sold to West Point more than a decade before, refurbished his traveling carriage brought down from Cape Vincent, and ordered from Troughton of London a new and improved theodolite made to his specifications, as well as a dividing engine, new telescopes and microscopes of his devising, and other instruments. While his son Edward continued the work on weights and measures, Hassler himself began measuring a new baseline at Fire Island, off the south shore of Long Island, "the longest baseline," it was later reported, "ever run in the history of geodetic surveys." At the peak of activities in 1841, Hassler, with the Army topographic engineers and Navy officers detailed to the Survey, had unJer his superintendence in the two offices a staff of 93 officers and civilians. The years between 1832 and 1843 were filled with skirmishes with the Secretaries of the Treasury, with accountants and auditors, and with Congress over the financial procedure in operating the offices, over congressional demands that would have meant a less accurate, less scientific, and cheaper survey, and threats to form committees to supervise Hassler's expenditures and progress. In March 1834, possibly to insure more professional administration, the Coast Survey was transferred from the Treasury to the Navy Department, and Hassler at once asked to be relieved from the Survey work. President Jackson intervened, kept the accounting of Survey funds in the Treasury, and Hassler accepted Navy administration. At the time of the transfer, Hassler insisted that he keep his salary of $3,000 for superintending Weights and Measures alone. Secretary of the Treasury Levi Woodbury replied that the Office need not require much time and attention, and $1,200 or $1,500 was enough for the work. Hassler jmswered that he had large plans for Weights and Measures. As he wrote to the Secretary, he intended "to form an establishment which has never even been attempted in this country," for which much heavier expenditures would be necessary. He may have had in mind somthing like the bureau established almost 70 years later, but what he intended is not known. Before the plans were committed to paper. President Jackson in March 1836 restored the Coast Survey to the Treasury and to Hassler. It is said that on the occasion of the restoration a dispute arose about more compensation for Hassler's two superintendencies, and Hassler carried his case to the White House. "So, Mr. Hassler, it appears the Secretary and you cannot agree about this matter," remarked Jackson, when Hassler had stated his case in his usual emphatic style. "No, Sir, ve can't." "Well, how much do you reaUy think you ought to have?" "Six thousand dollars. Sir." "Why, Mr. Hassler, that is as much as Mr. Woodbury, my Secretary of the Treasury, himself, receives." "Mr. Voodbury!" declared Hassler, rising from his chair, "There are plenty of Voodburys, plenty of Everybodys who can be made the Secretary of the Treasury. But," said he, pointing his forefinger toward himself, "there is only one, one Hassler for the head of the Coast Survey." President Jackson, sympa- 524 APPENDIX A thizing with a character having some traits in common with his own, granted Hassler's demand.^" Then in his middle sixties and going strong, Hassler wore flannel both summer and winter, believing it kept off the heat as well as kept out the cold. He never used glasses for reading or writing, but kept his vest pockets filled with snuff, which he was convinced excited the optic nerves and was the only help his eyes needed. Working at night at the Coast Survey office, first on 13th Street and later in adjoining row houses on Capitol Hill, he had for light at his desk six or eight large wax candles, remolded from commercial candles to about 2 inches in diameter with double or triple plaited wicks." His daughter Rosalie in her "Recollections" of her father was to say that he never went to bed before 2 or 3, and finally lost the sight of one eye shortly before his death "by the over fatigue in adjusting the yard and liquid measures." To the last his heavy accent sometimes made it difficult to understand him, "but his singularities of manner," recalled a zealous friend in the House, Joseph L. Tillinghast of Rhode Island, "did not touch his intelligence and eminent capacity in his vocation." Between 1832 and 1841 Congress appropriated a total of $620,000 for the Coast Survey offices. At Hassler's death in 1843 Survey funds had paid for the triangulation of an area of 9,000 square miles, furnishing determinations of nearly 1,200 geodetic stations for the delineation of 1,600 miles of shoreline. One hundred and sixty-eight topographical maps had been surveyed and 142 hydrographic charts, although only 5 large charts were engraved and ready for publication.^" In the Weights and Measures Office, Hassler saw complete sets of weights with their multiples and submultiples finished and delivered to the customhouses and to the States. Half of the capacity measures and a third of the measures of length were constructed, but 13 years would pass before the last of them, and the necessary balances, were delivered. The summer and fall of 1843 found Hassler, now 73, in the field, surveying in New Jersey and Delaware. In a rain and sleet storm that October he fell and injured himself on a rock while trying to save the tent protecting one of his instruments. As a result of the injury and exposure he developed a fever and inflammation of the lungs that forced him to go home to Philadelphia for medical help, where Rosalie could look after him. During his last weeks he wrote out his annual report to the Secretary of the Treasury. The comprehensive plan for the continuation and expansion of the work that he outlined in the report had already been approved by the President. Its execution was begun by his successor, Alexander Dallas Bache, and the plan remained the basis for survey operations until the enabling act of 1947 established a new, but not greatly "^ Reported by T. C. Mendenhall in 1916 and by Cajori in 1929, at least two versions of this anecdote existed prior to 1900, in E. Zschokke's Memoirs, pp. 529-530, and in Harper's, 58, 508 (1878-79). It was therefore very much alive in 1900 when Secretary of the Treasury Lyman Gage retold it as his own story, with reference to Dr. Stratton's proposed salary. See ch. I, p. 45. " Admiral Richard Wainwright, who came to the Survey just after Hassler's death, said he "knew the old office building thoroughly, from the weights and measures in the base- ment to the computers' rooms in the attic." Centennial Celebration of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (Washington, D.C., 1916), p. 91. " For an account of Hassler's search for high grade copper plates in this country, Austria, and France, and his importation of two highly trained engravers from Hamburg, see Cajori, p. 216. APPENDIX A 525 Isrdlidiiid IR..I II *■?!*. ^- According to Dr. Lewis V. Judson, who came to the weights and measures division of the Bureau in 1917, this plaque or nameplate in gold with Hassler's name in black letters was brought from the Office of Weights and Measures on New jersey Avenue to Connecticut Avenue by Mr. Fischer. altered statement of functions. Hassler continued to work, writing in his journal, until shortly before his death on November 20, 1843. He left behind his daughter Rosalie Latitia Norris; his eldest son John James Scipio, a topographical assistant in the Coast Survey; Edward Troughton. in the Weights and Measures OflSce; Charles August, a surgeon in the Navy; Ferdinand Eugene, consul at Panama; and his second daughter, Caroline, a childlike woman of 43, in the care of Rosalie. His three other sons had died under age or in infancy. His wife Marianne, whom he saw just once briefly a few years after she left home, lived with friends for a number of years, then with her eldest son in Pennsylvania, later with Rosalie in New Brunswick, and finally with friends on Long Island, where her death occurred in 1858 at the age of 86. Hassler left no debts at this death, nor did he leave any money either. The farm at Cape Vincent was all that his surviving children inherited. Tribute to Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler as the first scientist of rank in the employ of the Federal Government has increased with the years. His genius lay in the design of instruments for his geodetic work and in his tireless efforts to contrive the best pos- sible standards of weights and measures with the best possible materials. He was dogmatic and uncompromising, qualities destructive in his personal life, perhaps, but true to the spirit of inquiry. As his biographer, Cajori, says, he "stands out greatest in perceiving what was best in the practical geodesy of his time, in making improvements upon what he found, and then clinging [without compromise to what] he had initiated as being the best that the science of his day had brought forth." At the centennial celebration of the Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1916, with its many tributes to Hassler, it was said: To him belongs the credit that to-day the operations of the Survey are bound together by a trigonometric survey with long lines and executed by the most accurate instruments and the most refined methods. Dr. Stratton on that occasion called him — not only the first and foremost man in the scientific work of our country at that time but one of the leading * * * metrologists of his day. I doubt if there were more than half a dozen people in the world at that time who 526 APPENDIX A possessed the scientific knowledge and the deftness of the artisan necessary to undertake his work. More recently it has been said: His greatest gift to America was not the surveys he accomplished — it was his reverence for sound thinking, integrity, and accuracy, which have endured as basic elements of Survey philosophy * * *. He may have been as consecrated a public servant as ever lived.^^ " Annual Report, Smithsonian Institution, 1957, pp. 223, 225. APPENDIX B THE METRIC SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES THE FRENCH ORIGIN OF THE METRIC SYSTEM The genesis of the modern metric system was a decimal system, based on the length of an arc of 1 minute of a great circle of the earth, first proposed by Gabriel Mouton, a vicar of Lyons, France, in the late 17th century. The proposal confronted a plethora of arbitrary systems of weights and measures current in France, as in the rest of Europe, their lineage going back to medieval measures based on the size of barley corns and the length of human feet. Mouton's plan was discussed for almost a hundred years before the progress of commerce and science called for more rational measures than the weights and measures in common use. The beginning of order took place in 1790 when Tallyrand proposed to the French National Assembly the desirability of a system of weights and measures that would not only bring uniformity to France but would also be international in application. It must, therefore, he reasoned, be based on some invariable unit of nature that could not only be readily reproduced but would be capable of being measured with a high degree of precision. A decree of the National Assembly on May 8, 1790, sanctioned by Louis XIV on August 22, called upon the Academy of Sciences, in concert with the Royal Society of London, "to deduce an invariable standard for all the measures and all the weights." ^ When English interest in a French undertaking could not be obtained, a committee of philosophers of the Academy, composed of Borda, Lagrange, Laplace, Monge, and Con- dorcet, began deliberations, reporting its conclusions in March 1791. The choice of a fundamental unit as the basis of a rational system of measures was between the length or fraction of the length of a pendulum, vibrating in intervals of 1 second or some chosen unit of time; the quadrant of a great circle of the equator; and the quadrant of a great circle of the earth's meridian. Since the pendulum introduced a new and unlike element, the second, and depended on the varying intensity of the gravitational force on the earth's surface, the committee preferred a terrestrial arc. ^ William Hallock and Herbert T. Wade, The Evolution of Weights and Measures and the Metric System (New York: Macmillan, 1906), p. 47. Hallock and Wade and the article by Henrie Moreau, "The Genesis of the Metric System and the Work of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures," J. Chem. Educ. 30, 3 (1953), pro- vide the basis for this account of the metric system. Other sources that have been consulted but not cited here include NBS S17, "History of the standard weights and measures of the United States" (Fischer, 1905), reprinted as M64 (1925); M122, "Weights and measures in Congress" (S. A. Jones, 1936) ; C570, "Units and systems of weights and measures" (Judson, 1956) ; C593, "The Federal basis for weights and measures" (R. W. Smith, 1958); TNB 43, 1-3 (1959); and M247, "Weights and measures of the United States" (Judson, 1963). The most complete history of the metric system is that of Guillaume Bigourdan, Le Systeme Metrique des Poids et Mesures (Paris, 1901). 527 528 APPENDIX B As the more practicable of the two earth circles, the committee proposed to measure an arc of meridian between Dunkirk, on the northern coast of France, and Barcelona, on the Mediterranean Sea. From the distance determined, computation would be made of the length of the entire quadrantal arc from the pole to the equator, allowing for the deviation of the earth's form from a true sphere. The ten-millionth part of the total computed length was then to be taken as the base or fundamental unit of length and accurately marked off on a suitable number of specially constructed metal bars, copies of which would provide working standards for science and commerce. The plan was adopted and the Academy of Science assigned the term metre (meter) from the Greek metron, a measure, to the one ten-millionth part of the quadrant, fixing the new unit provisionally at 3 pieds 11.44 lignes, based on calculations made of a meridian in France by Lacaille in 1740." This unit was roughly similar to the Dutch ell, the English yard, the Italian braccio, and other standard lengths in the nations of Europe. From the concept of this single length standard, all other weights and measures were to be derived. Decimal multiples and submultiples of the meter were to express its macro and micro versions. A new, single unit of weight or mass, the gram, with similar decimal multiples and submultiples, was to replace existing weights, the new standard corresponding to the mass of 1 cubic centimeter (that is, a cube one-hundredth of a meter on a side) of pure water. The unit of capacity, the liter, would be a volume of pure water equal to 1 cubic decimeter. The measure of volume, especially for cord wood, the stere, was to be a meter cubed. And the unit of land area, the are, was to be a square 10 meters on a side or 100 square meters. The concept had and still has merit and profundity. But as we shall see, the theoretical perfection of the metric system could not be realized. Working with the greatest precision attainable with the instruments and knowl- edge available, members of the Academy measured by triangulation the meridional dis- tance through Paris of the arc from Dunkirk to Barcelona, a strip of country made up of mountainous and inaccessible districts. The work was not only arduous but hazardous, since it was carried out during the Reign of Terror and was subject to repeated harassment. In April 1795, even before a definitive meter was derived from the astronomical and geodetic measurements along the Dunkirk-Barcelona meridian, the revolutionary government instituted the metric system in France, using the provisional meter as standard and fixing the nomenclature of the new units of measure. In June 1798, 6 years after beginning the fieldwork, the observations of the parties of geodecists under Mechain and Delambre were completed and at the invitation of the government a committee of delegates from the republics of Europe studied the assembled computations. While one section of the committee examined the measurements of the arc of meridian and the actual length of the meter, another, which included Johann Georg TraUes, deputy of the Helvetic Republic,^ undertook determination of the imit of mass, the gram. When so small a mass could not be realized with sufficient accuracy, its multiple, the kilogram, was selected for construction of the standard of mass. ■ Interestingly, the provisional meter in brass, constructed by Lenoir of Paris in 1795, proved to differ from the meter finally determined by only about 0.33 millimeter. Before the establishment of the metric system, the principal units in use in France were the pied du Roi (0.325 meter) for lengths and the livre poids de marc (489.5 grams) for weights. The pied du Roi was divided into 144 lignes, and 6 pieds du Roi made a toise (1.949 meters) , the common unit of length. ^ See Hassler appendix for note on Tralles. APPENDIX B 529 The results of the computations gave the distance from the pole to the equator as 5,130,740 toises, with the length of the meter 3 pieds 11.296 lignes. The weight of a cubic decimeter of distilled water at maximum density gave the value 18,827.15 grains (a submultiple of the livre poids de marc), which was adopted as the weight of the kilogram.* THE METER AND KILOGRAM OF THE ARCHIVES Construction in platinum of the prototype meter and kilogram was completed in June 1799, for deposit in the Archives of the Republic. Iron copies of these standards were then made and distributed among the committee delegates as models for the con- struction of their new weights and measures. On December 10 the provisional meter was abolished and the new standards adopted by statute as the definitive standards of the measures of length and of weight throughout the Republic.'^ The grand plan of unifying weights and measures was completed. One of the iron copies of the Meter of the Archives, the gift of Tralles to his friend Hassler, and destined to be known in the United States as the "Committee Meter," was brought to this country by Hassler in 1805. He also brought a copy of the kilogram, another gift of Tralles, and 3 toises, the rival of the meter in France until late in the 19th century. In financial distress, Hassler in 1806 sold these standards to a member of the American Philosophical Society. They were loaned to him when he became Superin- tendent of Weights and Measures in the Coast Survey, his Committee Meter serving as the standard of length in the Coast Survey until 1890. With other standards secured by Hassler abroad, it is now preserved in the vault of the National Bureau of Standards.* The advantages of the metric system then as now resided in its simplicity, uniform- ity, and convenience. It is entirely decimal, like our system of counting.' The measures of area, capacity, and volume are obtained by squaring and cubing measures of length. Weights are directly related to the measures of volume. And the names of their multiples and submultiples are obtained by the simple addition of prefixes to the principal unit, for example, kilo (k) =1,000; hecto (h)=100; deka (dk)=10; deci (d)=0.1: centi (c)=0.01; milli (m) =0.001. Thus a kilometer is 1,000 meters, and a milligram is a thousandth (0.001) of a gram.* But the metric system was not beyond cavil. Lukewarm to pronounced opposition under the succeeding imperial government confronted the standards established by the ' Hallock and Wade, p. 62. ' Ibid., p. 63. " The metric and English weights and measures acquired by or available to Hassler for his survey of the coast are described in his report to Congress, H. Doc. 299, 22d Cong., 1st Sess., 1832. ' The metric system is a decimal system, but the terms "metric" and "decimal" are not synonymous. The decimal system, of oriental origin, refers to a numbers system pro- gressing by tens, based on the biological fact that man has that many articulate fingers. Equally arbitrary and useful numbers systems have been based on 2, 5, 6, 8, and the duodecimal system of 12. " In 1962 the International Committee on Weights and Measures added two new metric prefixes (atto, the submultiple 10'"* and femto, 10"'') to the scale already ranging from tera, 10" to pico, 10-'=. See NBS TNB 48, 61-62 (1%4). 530 APPENDIX B republican regime, as witnessed by the failure of the State to construct and distribute the necessary secondary standards. The new standards were especially threatened by a decree of Napoleon in 1812 that, yielding to prejudice, permitted for a decade a system of mesares usuelles using odd multiples and fractions of the metric system to harmonize with the very measures the metric system was intended to replace, those long established in commerce and common usage. In 1837 the State repealed the edict and allowed 3 years for full compliance with the new measures. After January 1, 1840, under pain of severe penalties for the use of any other weights and measures, the metric system was made universal and compulsory throughout France. The instability of 19th-century Europe, with its profusion of petty kingdoms and principalities and its wars and revolutions acted to retard acceptance of the metric system. Upon TraUes" return from Paris he urged introduction of metric weights and measures into Switzerland and in 1801 saw a law passed adopting them. But the metric system was not made compulsory in that country until 1856. Some of the Italian provinces adopted it in the early 19th century, in 1816 the metric system was declared obligatory in the Low Countries, and Spain accepted it in 1849. After 1860 adoptions increased rapidly, the entering wedge in most instances the necessity of uniform weights and measures in international trade. The metric system crossed the Atlantic when by law it came into effect in Mexico in 1862, and before the end of the century it had become the legal system in most South and Central American countries. Italy made the metric system obligatory in 1863. In Great Britain, an act of July 29, 1864, authorized the use of the metric system concurrently with the imperial system. Two years later, with passage of the Metric Act on July 28, 1866, Congress also made use of the metric system legal through- out the United States." By this act, the meter was declared to be 39.37 inches, the kilogram 2.2046 pounds, based on the best metric standards available in this country, Hassler's Committee Meter and the platinum Arago kilogram obtained in 1821 by Secre- tary of State Gallatin. The agreement among the federated states of Germany in 1868 to adopt the metric system became obligatory under the empire in 1872, the same year it was officially adopted in Portugal. Austria made its use compulsory in 1876, and Norway in 1882. THE METRIC CONVENTION It was not commercial application of the metric system but its growing use in scientific work in Europe that made the accuracy of its fundamental units of increas- ing concern, especially to mathematicians, geodecists, and physicists. The more accurate measurements of arcs of meridians reported by British and Russian geodecists at the International Geodetic Conference held at Berlin in 1867 resulted in new computations of the shape of the earth and hence the length of the quadrant. The changes in this last quantity therefore affected the length of the meter and raised serious questions about it as a natural and absolute standaid.'" ° An act of Congress on July 27, 1866, authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to furnish the States with sets of metric weights and measures, actually preceded passage of the Metric Act by 1 day. Hallock and Wade, pp. 128-129. " Hallock and Wade, p. 69. The actual difference in the Meter of the Archives, as in the International Meter that replaced it, is minute but significant in metrology. It is about 0.2 millimeter shorter than its definition, the ten-millionth part of the quadrant of the earth's meridian. Similarly, the International Kilogram exceeds by 0.028 gram APPENDIX B 531 In response, the French Government in 1872 held an international conference, attended by scientific representatives from 26 countries, including the United States, that resolved on the preparation of new prototypes. They would be arbitrary proto- types — as arbitrary, in a sense, as the weights and measures that the metric system supplanted — but practical, and if adopted internationally would place metric standards on a permanent basis for the service of science and commerce. The conference agreed to the construction of a number of prototype meters and prototype kilograms, their values copied exactly from those of the units in the Archives in Paris, made 75 years before. Upon examination, the meter and kilogram of the Archives were found perfectly preserved, and comparison of the meter with two others constructed at the same time demonstrated it had not appreciably altered in length. The Archives units were therefore to be reproduced in a new metal, a more stable shape, with greater refinement of line, and other precision factors. One each of the new meters and kilograms was to be chosen as the international standard of length and weight, respectively, and to be deposited in an international repository. It was agreed that the repository and its laboratory be located at Paris, its site neutral ground, acccessible to all the participating countries, and under their common care. After selection of the international prototypes, the remaining prototypes were to be distributed by lot to the contracting governments as their national metric standards. An international treaty, the Metric Convention ( Convention du Metre) , con- cluded in Paris on May 20, 1875, and signed by 18 countries including the United States and Russia, with Great Britain and Holland abstaining, put the recommendations into effect. The Pavilion de Breteuil, orginally a small royal palace, on the bank of the Seine near Sevres, off the Paris-Versailles Road, was offered by the French Govern- ment as the repository and designated the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (Bureau International des Poids et Mesures). After construction and verification of the new standards, the permanent functions of the Bureau were to include custody of the international metric prototypes, official comparison with national standards, comparison of other units with the metric standards, the standardization of geodetic instruments and other standards and scales of precision, and such other scientific work as international metrology might require. As organized in 1875 and continuing today, the authority governing the Bureau, its Director, and his staff emanates from the General Conference of Weights and Measures which meets every 6 years, made up of delegates from all the countries be- longing to the Metric Convention, presently 40 in number, whose contributions support the expenses of the Bureau. The decisions of the General Conference are put into effect by a permanent International Committee of Weights and Measures, at present numbering 18 scientists or technologists, each from a different member nation that has adopted the metric system, and this committee meets every 2 years at the Bureau at Sevres." The new standards constructed in the laboratories of the International Bureau were composed of an alloy of 90 percent platinum and 10 percent iridium. The inter- national prototype meter was defined as the distance between two fine lines on a particular platinum-iridium bar, at 0" C, the temperature of melting ice. The kilogram was determined with reference to its weight in a vacuum, using a new balance of extreme precision, especially constructed for that weighing. The actual work of construction began in 1877. its original definition, the mass of a cubic decimeter of pure water at maximum density. See Moreau, p. 13. ^' The U.S. representatives on the International Committee have been J. E. Hilgard (1875-97), B. A. Gould (1887-96), A. A. Michelson ( 1897-1905 ), S. W. Stratton (1905- 31), A. E. Kennelly (1933-39), E. C. Crittenden (1946-54), and A. V. Astin (1954- ). 532 APPENDIX B The preparation of the standards, the tracing of the defining lines, and com- parison with the standards of the Archives were carried out by the French section of the International Bureau. In 1889, at the First General Conference of Weights and Measures, the prototype units were selected and deposited in a multiple-locked sub- terranean vault located between the pavilion and observatory of Sevres. Distribution of the remaining identical meters and kilograms began, the national copies of the meter said to agree with the international unit within one-hundredth of a millimeter and with a probable error not exceeding two ten-thousandths of a millimeter. The copies of the kilogram agreed within 1 milligram, with a probable error not exceeding five-thousandths of a milligram. Two thermometers reading to one-hundredth of a degree Centegrade accompanied each pair of national standards. The initial copies of the international prototype meter and kilogram allotted to the United States, meter No. 27 and kilogram No. 20, arrived in Washington in January 1890 and with appropriate ceremonies were deposited in a fireproof room at the Office of Weights and Measures in the Coast Survey building. The following July, meter No. 2 and kilogram No. 4 were received and deposited with those accepted as the national standards. The new U.S. standards, meter No. 27 and kilogram No. 20, were formally recognized by an order of the Secretary of the Treasury on April 5, 1893, as the basis for deriving the customary units, the yard and pound, and for constructing and standardizing secondary metric standards. Over the next decade, efforts to legislate adoption of metric weights and measures as the universal standards in this country came closer to realization than at any time in the history of the Nation. Such legislation, seeking uniformity in weights, measures, and coinage, had been under consideration since the Colonies joined in the Articles of Confederation. THE AMERICAN ATTITUDE TOWARD THE METRIC SYSTEM The Colonies were in the midst of their war for independence when the question of uniform coinage was raised by Thomas Jefferson. The decimal system he urged was finally adopted by Congress on July 6, 1785, and a law of 1828 established a brass weight obtained by the Minister of the United States at London as the standard troy pound of the U.S. Mint for the control and stabilization of the currency. From the first, President after President and the successive Secretaries of the Treasury appealed to Congress for uniformity in the weights and measures, as well as the currency, "a subject of great importance," as Washington declared in 1789, "and will, I am persuaded, be duly attended to." Shortly after adoption of decimal coinage, Jefferson, disapproving of a unit derived from an arc of meridian determined on European soil, proposed instead decimal weights and measures based on a foot derived by taking one-fifth of the length of a rod forming the seconds pendulum." A Senate committee in 1792 reported favorably on its adoption but Congress took no legislative action. Nor was Congress moved by the President's report in 1795 announcing adoption in France of the metric system and urging its adoption also in America. The Coast Survey was the first Federal agency to require a definite length standard. Its Superintendent, Hasslev, chose the iron-bar standard copied by Lenoir of Paris in 1799 from the Meter of the Archives (the U.S. Committee Meter), given ' Hallock and Wade, p. 112. APPENDIX B 533 him by Tralles. Thus from the outset Coast Survey operations in the United States were based on a metric standard, and all base measurements of the Survey continued to be referred to this meter until receipt of the national prototype in 1890. Although arguments for uniformity were raised at almost every session of Congress, the slow progress of the metric system in France did not encourage its introduction in this country. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams in his classic report of 1821, prepared at the request of Congress, wrote that the French system '"approaches to the ideal perfection of uniformity applied to weights and measures * * *. The meter will surround the globe in use as well as multiplied extension, and one language of weights and measures will be spoken from the equator to the poles." " Nevertheless, Adams did not think its introduction practicable at that time, nor did Congress. A degree of order in the weights and measures in common use was achieved by Hassler when in 1838 his Office of Weights and Measures began delivering to the States and a year later to the customhouses sets of standard weights, measures of length, capacity measures, and balances, derived from yard and pound standards he had secured in England. In 1893 the incumbent Superintendent of Weights and Measures, T. C. Mendenhall, fixed their values by relating them to the international meter and kilogram. To this day the United States has no legal material standard yard or pound. USE OF THE METRIC SYSTEM MADE LEGAL Not until after the Civil War did serious consideration of the; metric system arise again, when on July 28, 1866, upon the advice of the National / cademy of Sciences, Congress authorized permissive and legal use of the metric system thoughout the Nation. Another act directed the Secretary of the Treasury to furnish a sit of standard metric weights and measures to each of the States, and a third act that year authorized use of metric measures by the Post Office Department.^* As increasing numbers of scientists and professional men v/ent to Europe in that period for their education and returned trained in the metric system, interest in it spread. About 1870 metric tables began to appear in American college textbooks, particularly in chemistry and physics, and a decade later in high school textbooks.^" Such active reform groups as the American Metrological Society, established in New York in 1873 (ceased publication in 1888), and the American Metric Bureau, founded in Boston in 1876, sought nationwide acceptance and use of the metric system in place of yards and pounds." When in 1869 France first proposed to construct new metric standards, the strong interest in this country led the Government to send delegates to Paris to participate in the deliberations. Prof. Joseph Henry, the preeminent physicist in America at that time, and Prof. Julius E. Hilgard, in charge of weights and measures in the Coast Survey, " Hallock and Wade, p. 117. ^' For a contemporary account of the provision of metric measures to the States, see Prof. J. E. Hilgard's report to Congress in H. Misc. Doc. 61, 45th Cong., 2d sess.. May 18, 1878. '^ Hallock and Wade, p. 125 n. " At the height of the movement, the first "society for opposing introduction of the French Metric System in this country" was also formed, with the establishment in Boston in 1879 of the International Institute for Preserving and Perfecting Weights and Measures. See Edward F. Cox, "The International Institute: First Organized Opposition to the Metric System," Ohio Hist. Q. 68, 3 (1959). 534 . . APPENDIX B and later Superintendent of the Survey, were sent to join the committee that assembled in 1872 to oversee the work of construction. On May 20, 1875, w^hen the American Minister to France, Elihu B. Washburn, signed the Metric Convention that established the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, commitment of the United States to the principle of international metric measures was formalized." The arrival of the national prototype meter and kilogram in 1890 again stirred interest in reform. Early in 1894 the Army Surgeon General's Office, following the Marine Hospital Service and the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, directed use of the metric system in all transactions pertaining to medical supplies, and Congress moved a step closer when its act of July 12, 1894, defined the national units of electrical measure- ments in the new international metric terms. '^ In another affirmation, continuation of the metric system, in everyday use in both Puerto Rico and the Philippines when they became a protectorate and possession, respectively, of the United States in 1898, was con- firmed. And a known champion of the metric system was raised to bureau status in the Federal Establishment when the Office of Weights and Measures became the National Bureau of Standards in 1901. Besides acquiring new standards for promulgation in American science and industry, the Bureau was also concerned with reverifying its existing standards. In 1904 Louis A. Fischer took meter No. 27 to Paris for comparison with the standards at the International Bureau and redetermined its value in terms of the International Prototype. The minute difference that Fischer reported, in the first scientific paper published by the Bureau, had little significance at that time; and since the relation of No. 27 to No. 21, the other national prototype, was accurately known, the Bureau con- sidered its standards quite sufficient to guarantee the accuracy and permanency of the measures in the United States.'" LEGISLATION FOR THE METRIC SYSTEM Legislation around the turn of the century for replacement of customary measures with the metric system appeared increasingly imminent and each bill won stronger support than the last. In 1896 a bill to make mandatory the metric system received unanimous recommendation for adoption by the House Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, only to fail of passage in its third reading. Another bill in 1901 was received too late to be considered by the Congress then in session. Hearings were held on similar bills again in 1902 and 1903, and although none proposed compulsory ac- ceptance but only gradual extension of the metric system into universal use, they suc- cumbed in committee. So did a new bill in 1905 that sought establishment of the metric system in all transactions and activities of the Federal Government, whence, it was thought, its use would filter down to industry and eventually to the general public. A notable impetus towards wider acceptance of the metric system loomed in 1914^15 when American industries supplying the French with war materiel necessarily converted their plants to the metric system. The conversion in industry became wide- spread in 1917-18 when the American armies in France adopted the metric system not only in ordnance and instrumentation but in all operational computations. But the armies did not bring the metric system home with them, and American industry reverted to its former habits when the war production lines stopped. ^■' Hallock and Wade, pp. 129-130. " Ibid., pp. 195-196, 208-210. "NBS Sl,"Recomparison of the United States Prototype Meter" (1904). APPENDIX B 535 By the 1930's metric measures had become sufficiently important in American industry to call for a simple factor for converting inch measurements to metric measure- ments, and in 1933 the American Standards Association approved an American standard inch-millimeter conversion for industrial use in which the inch was defined as 25.4 millimeters. As a result of difficulties in interchanging precision parts and products manu- factured during World War II, legislation was again sponsored between 1945 and 1947 to define the relation as a standard, this time as 2.54 centimeters. Although passage again failed, the obvious usefulness of the centimeter-inch ratio led to its adoption in 1952 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. When the Director of the National Bureau of Standards realized that legislation was not necessary if agreement could be reached with the other national standards laboratories to use the conversion factor, it was proposed to them. Apart from the Coast and Geodetic Survey, which, with its amassed calculations fixed, would be excepted, the proposal won agreement. On July 1, 1959, the directors of the national standards laboratories of Australia, Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States adopted the equivalents, 1 yard=0.9144 meter (whence 1 inch=25.4 millimeters) and 1 avoirdupois pound=0.453 592 37 kilogram. Without national legislation, the differences between the United States inch and pound and the British inch and pound, so important to industry and trade, were reconciled and uniformity was established in the science and technology of the English-speaking nations. WAVELENGTH DEFINITION OF THE METER When the National Bureau of Standards was established in 1901, the principal units of weights and measures were the yard and pound as defined by Mendenhall ( ' meter and 0.453 592 427 7 kilogram, respectively) and the gallon and bushel as defined by Hassler (a volume of 231 cubic inches and of 2,150.42 cubic inches, re- spectively) .™ These definitions remained unchanged for 58 years, and the last two are still the official values. Failure of the metric legislation in the United States has not, however, deterred American contributions to continuing refinement of the value of the meter upon which our units depend. When the original basis of the metric system on a terrestrial dimension proved untenable, and a more serviceable and secure basis was found in an internationally accepted definition of the meter, world metrologists continued to seek some other natural, physical standard that would make for higher precision and more universal reproduci- bility. Such a physical standard became available in 1892-93 when Prof. Albert A. Michelson, on leave from the physics department of the University of Chicago for a year's work at the International Bureau at Sevres, showed that the standard of length could be replaced by reference to a specific wavelength of light, one of those in the cadmium spectrum. The line of research stimulated by Michelson's work was not to change the magni- tude of the meter unit but to define it as a specified number of wavelengths. More than a quarter of a century later, in 1927, the Seventh General Conference of Weights and Measures provisionally adopted as a supplementary standard of length the equation, 1 meter=l 553 164.13 wavelengths, with an accuracy within 1 part in 10 million, as the relation between the meter and Michelson's red cadmium light wave. ' See ch. I, pp. 26-27, 30. 786-167 O— 66 36 536 APPENDIX B The small palace that is the In- ternational Bureau of Weights and Measures near Sevres, France. After another three decades of research, which saw light wave measurements pass from those of the elements to their isotopes, the 11th General Congress on October 14, 1960, adopted as a new definition of the meter, 1 650 763.73 wavelengths of the orange- red radiation of the isotope of krypton with mass 86. Adoption by the National Bureau of Standards of the new definition does 'not invalidate the fact that the International Prototype Meter is still the major source and support of the common measures of the United States, even though it is no longer neces- sary to take the U.S. prototype meter to the International Bureau for comparison. And, periodically, legislation will continue to be proposed for conversion in one degree or another to the metric system. Its completeness, uniformity, simplicity, and widespread use elsewhere in the civilized world make its use obligatory in almost all scientific measurements and computations. Besides our coinage, it is found in general use in library catalog cards, in book, pamphlet, postage, and film measurements, in describing the properties of photographic lenses, in track and field events in athletics, in electrical units of measurement, and in exact mechanical work. The thickness of metals, paper, and glass is commonly measured in metric terms, as is the diameter of wire, tubing, and similar products. The metric system is used in microscopy and spectroscopy, in geodesy and engineering, in the scientific measurement of mass and volume and capacity, and in much of international commerce. No voice disputes the complexity of the system in daily use that still necessitates, as do our "English" measures, weighing copper by one standard, silver by another, medicine by a third, diamonds and other precious stones by a fourth, and chemicals by a fifth, aU noninterchangeable. The varieties of units universally used in trade in the English-speaking countries have their source in a conglomeration of discordant series with no simple relation either between the different sets of units or between units of different size in a given series. The uniformity in measures that the founding fathers sought has yet to be duly attended to. APPENDIX C BASIC LEGISLATION Relating to Standards of Weights and Measures and to the Organization, Functions, and Activities of the National Bureau of Standards* 9 July 1778 ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION, Art. 9, § 4: The United States, in Congress assembled, shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective States; fixing the standard of weights and measures throughout the United States. . . . CONSTITUTION of the UNITED STATES, Article 1, § 8. The Congress shall have power ... To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures. . . . Act of 19 May 1828 (4 Stat. 278)— [Adoption of a brass troy pound weight copied by Captain Henry Kater from the British troy pound of 1758 as the standard for coinage. An Act of 12 Feb 1873 (17 Stat. 424, 432) reenacted the provisions of 1828 concerning the troy pound weight.] An Act . . . for the purpose of securing a due conformity in weight of the coins of the United States. . . . The brass troy pound weight procured by the minister of the United States at London, in the year 1827, for the use of the mint . . . shall be the standard troy pound of the mint of the United States, conformably to which the coinage thereof shall be regulated. Joint Resolution of 14 June 1836 (5 Stat. 133)- — A Resolution Provid- ing for the [construction and] distribution of weights and measures [as modified by Acts of 14 February 1903 and 4 March 1913 transferring the responsibility to the Secretary of Commerce] . That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he hereby is directed to cause a com- plete set of all the weights and measures adopted as standards, and now either made or in the progress of manufacture for the use of the several custom-houses, and for other purposes, to be delivered to the Governor of each State in the Union, or such person as he may appoint, for the use of the States respectively, to the end that an uniform standard of weights and measures may be established throughout the United States. "In most instances only the pertinent parts have been reproduced here. 537 538 APPENDIX C Joint Resolution of 27 July 1866 (14 Stat. 369) — Joint Resolution to enable the Secretary of the Treasury to furnish to each State one Set of the Standard Weights and Measures of the Metric System [as modified by Acts of 14 February 1903 and 4 March 1913 transferring the responsibility to the Secretary of Commerce] . Be it resolved . . ., That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, author- ized and directed to furnish to each State, to be delivered to the governor thereof, one set of the standard weights and measures of the metric system for the use of the States respectively. Act of 28 July 1866 (14 Stat. 339) — An Act to authorize the Use of the Metric System of Weights and Measures. Be it enacted . . ., That from and after the passage of this act it shall be lawful throughout the United States of America to employ the weights and measures of the metric system; and no contract or dealing, or pleading in any court, shall be deemed invalid or liable to objection because the weights or measures expressed or referred to therein are weights or measures of the metric system. Sec. 2. And be it further enacted. That the tables in the schedule hereto annexed [omitted here] shall be recognized in the construction of contracts, and in all legal proceedings, as establishing, in terms of the weights and measures now in use in the United States, the equivalents of the weights and measures expressed therein in terms of the metric system; and said tables may be lawfully used for computing, determining, and expressing in customary weights and measures the weights and measures of the metric system. ... ■ ' „ Joint Resolution of 3 March 1881 (21 Stat. 521)— Joint resolution authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to furnish States, for the use of agricultural colleges, one set of standard weights and measures and for other purposes [as modified by Acts of 14 February 1903 and 4 March 1913 transferring the responsibility to the Secretary of Commerce] . Resolved . . ., That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, directed to cause a complete set of all the weights and measures adopted as standards to be delivered to the governor of each State in the Union, for the use of agricultural colleges in the States, respectively, which have received a grant of lands from the United States, and also one set of the same for the use of the Smithsonian Institution: Provided That the cost of each set shall not exceed two hundred dollars, and a sum sufficient to carry out the provisions of this resolution is hereby appropriated out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated. Act of 11 July 1890 (26 Stat. 242) — An Act Making appropriations . . . for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1891. ... [to the] Office of Con- struction of Standard Weights and Measures [as modified by Acts of 14 February 1903 and 4 March 1913 transferring responsibility to the Secretary of Commerce] , making sums available : APPENDIX C 539 For construction and verification of standard weights and measures, including metric standards, for the custom-houses, and other offices of the United States, and for the several States. . . . For the purchase of materials and apparatus . . .: Provided, That hereafter such necessary repairs and adjustments shall be made to the standards furnished to the several States and Territories as may be requested by the governors thereof, and also to standard weights and measures that have been, or may hereafter be, supplied to United States custom-houses and other offices of the United States, under act of Congress, when requested by the Secretary of the Treasury. For the construction of standard gallons and their subdivisions for the use of States and Territories which have not received the same. . . . For purchase of a balance of precision and its mounting. . . . [Subsequently, the Sundry Civil Appropriation Act of 18 August 1894 (28 Stat. 383) directed the Secretary of the Treasury to furnish precise copies of standard weights and measures when lost or destroyed, upon defrayment of the expense of their construction.] Joint Resolution of 12 April 1892 (27 Stat. 395)— Joint resolution to encourage the establishment and endowment of institutions of learning at the National Capital by defining the policy of the Government with reference to the use of its literary and scientific collections by students. [Basis for the admission of Research Associates to the use of the research facilities of the National Bureau of Standards and for providing educational courses for undergraduate members of the staff towards higher degrees.] Whereas, large collections illustrative of the various arts and sciences and facilitat- ing literary and scientific research have been accumulated by the action of Congress through a series of years at the National Capital ; and Whereas it was the original purpose of the Government thereby to promote research and the diffusion of knowledge, and is now the settled policy and present practice of those charged with the care of these collections specially to encourage students who devote their time to the investigation and study of any branch of knowledge by allowing to them all proper use thereof ; and Whereas it is represented that the enumeration of these facilities and the formal statement of this policy wiU encourage the establishment and endowment of institu- tions of learning at the seat of Government, and prom' r the work of education of attracting students to avail themselves of the advantages afiKsaid under the direction of competent instructors: Therefore, Resolved: That the facilities for research and illustration in the following and any other Governmental collections now existing or hereafter to be established in the city of Washington for the promotion of knowledge shall be accessible, under such rules and restrictions as the officers in charge of each collection may prescribe, subject to such authority as is now or may hereafter be permitted by law, to the scientific investigators and to students of any institution of higher education now incorporated or hereafter to be incorporated under the laws of Congress or of the District of Columbia, to wit : 1. Of the Library of Congress. 2. Of the National Museum. 3. Of the Patent Office. 4. Of the Bureau of Education. 5. Of the Bureau of Ethnology. 6. Of the Army Medical Museum. 7. Of the Department of Agriculture. 8. Of the Fish Commission. 540 APPENDIX C 9. Of the Botanic Gardens. 10. Of the Coast and Geodetic Survey. 11. Of the Geo- logical Survey. 12. Of the Naval Observatory. Also Deficiency Appropriation Act of 3 March 1901 (31 Stat. 1039) : . . . That facilities for study and research in the Government Departments, the Library of Congress, the National Museum, the Zoological Park, the Bureau of Ethnology, the Fish Commission, the Botanic Gardens, and similar institutions hereafter established shall be afforded to scientific investigators and to duly qualified individuals, students, and graduates of institutions of learning in the several States and Territories, as well as in the District of Columbia, under such rules and restrictions as the heads of the Departments and Bureaus mentioned may prescribe. Act of 12 July 1894 (28 Stat. 101)— An Act To define and establish the units of electrical measure. Be it enacted . . ., That from and after the passage of this Act the legal units of electrical measure in the United States shall be as follows: First. The unit of resistance shall be what is known as the international ohm, which is substantially equal to one thousand million units of resistance of the centimeter- gram-second system of electro-magnetic units, and is represented by the resistance offered to an unvarying electric current by a column of mercury at the temperature of melting ice fourteen and four thousand five hundred and twenty-one ten-thousandths grams in mass, of a constant cross-sectional area, and of the length of one hundred and six and three-tenths centimeters. Second. The unit of current shall be what is known as the international ampere, which is one-tenth of the unit of current of the centimeter-gram-second system of electro- magnetic units, and is the practical equivalent of the unvarying current, which, when passed through a solution of nitrate of silver in water in accordance with standard specifications, deposits silver at the rate of one thousand one hundred and eighteen millionth of a gram per second. Third. The unit of electro-motive force shall be what is known as the international volt, which is the electro-magnetic force that, steadily applied to a conductor whose resistance is one international ohm, will produce a current of an international ampere, and is practically equivalent to one thousand fourteen hundred and thirty-fourths of the electromotive force between the poles or electrodes of the voltaic cell known as Clark's cell, at a temperature of fifteen degrees centigrade, and prepared in the manner described in the standard specifications. Fourth. The unit of quantity shall be what is known as the international coulomb, which is the quantity of electricity transferred by a current of one international ampere in one second. Fifth. The unit of capacity shall be what is known as the international farad, which is the capacity of a condenser charged to a potential of one international volt by one international coulomb of electricity. Sixth. The unit of work shall be the Joule, which is equal to ten million units of work in the centimeter-gram-second system, and which is practically equivalent to the energy expanded in one second by an international ampere in an international ohm. Seventh. The unit of power shall be the Watt, which is equal to ten million units of power in the centimeter-gram-second system, and which is practically equivalent to the work done at the rate of one joule per second. APPENDIX C 541 Eighth. The unit of induction shall be the Henry, which is the induction in a circuit when the electro-motive force induced in this circuit is one international volt while the inducing current varies at the rate of one Ampere per second. Sec. 2. That it shall be the duty of the National Academy of Sciences to prescribe and publish, as soon as possible after the passage of this Act, such specifications of details as shall be necessary for the practical application of the definitions of the ampere and volt hereinbefore given, and such specifications shall be the standard specifications herein mentioned. Act of 3 March 1901, 31 Stat. 1449 (Public Law 177—56 Congress) — An Act To establish the National Bureau of Standards Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Office of Standard Weights and Measures shall hereafter be known as the National Bureau of Standards. Sec. 2. That the functions of the bureau shall consist in the custody of the standards; the comparison of the standards used in scientific investigations, engineering, manufac- turing, commerce, and educational institutions with the standards adopted or recognized by the Government; the construction, when necessary, of standards, their multiples and subdivisions; the testing and calibration of standard measuring apparatus; the solution of problems which arise in connection with standards; the determination of physical constants and the properties of materials, when such data are of great im- portance to scientific or manufacturing interests and are not to be obtained of sufficient accuracy elsewhere. Sec. 3. That the bureau shall exercise its functions for the Government of the United States; for any State or municipal government within the United States; or for any scientific society, educational institution, firm, corporaion, or individual within the United States engaged in manufacturing or other pursuits requiring the use of standards or standard measuring instruments. All requests for the services of the bureau shall be made in accordance with the rules and regulations herein established. Sec. 4. That the officers and employees of the bureau shall consist of a director, at an annual salary of $5,000; one physicist, at an annual salary of $3,500; one chemist, at an annual salary of $3,500; two assistant physicists or chemists, each at an annual salary of $2,200; one laboratory assistant, at an annual salary of $1,400; one laboratory assistant, at an annual salary of |1,200; one secretary, at an annual salary of $2,000; one clerk, at an annual salary of 11,200; one messenger, at an annual salary of $720; one engineer, at an annual salary of $1,500; one mechanician, at an annual salary of $1,400; one watchman, at an annual salary of $720; and one laborer, at an annual salary of $600. Sec. 5. That the director shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. He shall have the general supervision of the bureau, its equipment, and the exercise of its functions. He shall make an annual report to the Secretary of the Treasury, including an abstract of the work done during the year and a financial statement. He may issue, when necessary, bulletins for public distribu- tion, containing such information as may be of value to the public or facilitate the bureau in the exercise of its functions. Sec. 6. That the officers and employees provided for by this Act, except the director, shall be appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury, at such time as their respective services may become necessary. 542 .. ■ APPENDIX C Sec. 7. That the following sums of money are hereby appropriated: For the payment of salaries provided for by this Act, the sum of $27,140, or so much thereof as may be necessary; toward the erection of a suitable laboratory, of fireproof construction, for the use and occupation of said bureau, including all permanent fixtures, such as plumb- ing, piping, wiring, heating, lighting, and ventilation, the entire cost of which shall not exceed the sum of $250,000, $100,000; for equipment of said laboratory, the sum of $10,000; for a site for said laboratory, to be approved by the visiting committee herein- after provided for and purchased by the Secretary of the Treasury, the sum of $25,000, or so mi.ch thereof as may be necessaiy ; for the payment of the general expenses of said bureau, including books and periodicals, furniture, office expenses, stationery and printing, heating and lighting, expenses of the visiting committee, and contingencies of all kinds, the sum of $5,000, or so much thereof as may be necessary, to be expended under the supervision of the Secretary of the Treasury. Sei:. 8. That for all comparisons, calibrations, tests, or investigations, except those performed for the Government of the United States or State governments within the United States, a reasonable fee shall be charged, according to a schedule submitted by the director and approved by the Secretary of the Treasury. Sec. 9. That the Secretary of the Treasury shall, from time to time, make regula- tions regarding the payment of fees, the limits of tolerance to be attained in standards submitted for verification, the sealing of standards, the disbursement and receipt of moneys, and such other matters as he may deem necessary for carrying this Act into effect. Sec. 10. That there shall be a visiting committee of five members, to be appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury, to consist of men prominent in the various interests involved, and not in the employ of the Government. This committee shall visit the bureau at least once a year, and report to the Secretary of the Treasury upon the efficiency of its scientific work and the condition of its equipment. The members of this committee shall serve without compensation, but shall be paid the actual expenses incurred in attending its meetings. The period of service of the members of the original committee shall be so arranged that one member shall retire each year, and the appoint- ments thereafter to be for a period of five years. Appointments made to fill vacancies occurring other than in the regular manner are to be made for the remainder of the period in which the vacancy exists. Approved, March 3, 1901. 31 Stat. Ch. 872, p. 1449 Act of 14 February 1903 (32 Stat. 825)— An Act to establish the Department of Commerce and Labor [as modified by Act of 4 March 1913]. Be it enacted . . ., That there shall be at the seat of government an executive department to be known as the Department of Commerce and Labor, and a Secretary of Commerce and Labor, who shall be the head thereof. . . . .Sec 4. That the following named . . . bureaus ... of the public service, now and heretofore under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Treasury, and all that pertains to the same, known as . . . the National Bureau of Standards . . ., be, and the same hereby are, transferred from the Department of the Treasury to the Department of Commerce and Labor, and the same shall hereafter remain under the jurisdiction and supervision of the last-named Department. ... APPENDIX C 543 Act of 4 March 1909 (35 Stat. 904) — An Act making appropriations for the legislative, executive, and judicial expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1910, and for other purposes. [Beginning of special appropriations to the Bureau.] Bureau of Standards: For the investigation of the Pentane, Hefner, and other flame standards used in the measurement of the illuminating power of gas, and determining the accuracy practically obtainable in such measurements; also for the determination of the heat of combustion of certain gases which occur in illuminating gas, which are used as a basis for com- puting the heat value of the gas, and for the determination of the heat combustion of materials employed by engineers in the standardization of industrial calorimeters. . . . To enable the bureau to collect information relative to the weights and measures used in trade and to aid State sealers and other officers in adopting standard practice as to the establishment of tolerances, methods of inspection and sealing, and other technical details necessary to insure correct weights and measures in commerce and trade. . . . Sundry Civil Appropriations Act of 25 June 191-0 (36 Stat. 743) — [Repealed Act of 16 May 1910 (36 Stat. 369), which transferred the work of investigating structural materials for the use of the United States from the Geological Survey to the Bureau of Mines. The work was transferred, instead, in the regular appropriations act, to the Bureau of Standards, with the suim of $50,000 to continue the investigation.] Act of 4 March 1911 (36 Stat. 1354) — An Act To amend sections thirty- five hundred and forty-eight and thirty-five hundred and forty-nine of the Revised Statutes of the United States, relative to the standards for coinage. Be it enacted . . ., That section thirty-five hundred and forty-eight of the Revised Statutes of the United States be, and the same is hereby, amended so as to read as follows : "Sec. 3548. For the purpose of securing a due conformity in weight of the coins of the United States to the provisions of the laws relating to coinage, the standard troy pound of the Bureau of Standards of the United States shall be the standard troy pound of the Mint of the United States conformably to which the coinage therof shall be regulated." Sec. 2. That section thirty-five hundred and forty-nine of the Revised Statutes of the United States be, and the same is hereby, amended so as to read as follows: "Sec. 3549. It shall be the duty of the Director of the Mint to procure for each mint and assay office, to be kept safely thereat, a series of standard weights corresponding to the standard troy pound of the Bureau of Standards of the United States, consisting of a one-pound weight and the requisite subdivisions and multiples thereof, from the hundredths part of a grain to twenty-five pounds. The troy weight ordinarily employed in the transactions of such mints and assay offices shall be regulated according to the above standards at least once in every year, under the inspection of the superintendent 544 APPENDIX C and assayer; and the accuracy of those used at the Mint at Philadelphia shall be tested annually, in the presence of the assay commissioner, at the time of the annual examination and test of coins." Act of 4 March 1913 (37 Stat. 736)— An Act To create a Department of Labor. Be it enacted . . ., That . . . the Department of Commerce and Labor shall here- after be called the Department of Commerce, and the Secretary thereof shall be called the Secretary of Commerce, and the Act creating the said Department of Commerce and Labor is hereby amended accordingly. Act of 4 March 1913 (37 Stat. 945)— An Act Making appropriations to provide for the expenses of the government of the District of Columbia for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1914, and for other purposes. [This act, by inference, recognized the testing of materials for the Federal Govern- ment, not specified in the Organic Act of the Bureau or elsewhere, as a function of the Bureau.] . . . Hereafter materials for fireproof buildings, other structural materials, and all materials, other than materials for paving and for fuel, purchased for and to be used by the government of the District of Columbia, when necessary in the judgment of the commissioners to be tested, shall be tested by the Bureau of Standards under the same conditions as similar testing is required to be done for the United States Government. Act of 29 July 1914, 38 Stat. 573 (Public Law 155, 63 Congress) — [Transfer of miscellaneous testing laboratory in Bureau of Chemistry, De- partment of Agriculture, to NBS] The salaries of employees of the Department of Agriculture transferred to the Department of Commerce for the purpose of testing miscellaneous materials, including the supplies for the Government departments and independent establishments, may be paid from July first, nineteen hundred and fourteen, from the appropriation of $20,000 in the legislative, executive, and judicial appropriation Act for the fiscal year nineteen hundred and fifteen, made for testing miscellaneous materials under the Bureau of Standards. Act of 3 March 1915, 38 Stat. 930 (Public Law 271, 63 Congress) — An Act Making appropriations for the naval service. . . . [NBS representation on National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics] An Advisory Committee for Aeronautics is hereby established, and the President is authorized to appoint not to exceed twelve members, to consist of two members from the War Department, from the office in charge of military aeronautics; two members from the Navy Department, from the office in charge of naval aeronautics, a represent- ative each of the Smithsonian Institution, of the United States Weather Bureau, and of the United States Bureau of Standards; together with not more than five additional persons who shall be acquainted with the needs of aeronautical science, either civil or military, or skilled in aeronautical engineering or its allied sciences: APPENDIX C 545 Provided, That the members of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, as such, shall serve without compensation: Provided further. That it shall be the duty of the Advisory Committee for Aero- nautics to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight, with a view to their practical solution, and to determine the problems which should be experi- mentsJly attacked, and to discuss their solution and their application to practical ques- tions. In the event of a laboratory or laboratories, either in whole or in part, being placed under the direction of the committee, the committee may direct and conduct research and experiment in such laboratory or laboratories: And provided further. That rules and regulations for the conduct of the work of the committee shall be formulated by the committee and approved by the President. That the sum of 15,000 a year, or so much thereof as may be necessary, for five years is hereby appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appro- priated, to be immediately available, for experimental work and investigations under- taken by the committee, clerical expenses and supplies, and necessary expenses of members of the committee in going to, returning from, and while attending meetings of the committee: Provided, That an annual report to the Congress shall be submitted through the President, including an itemized statement of expenditures. Urgent Deficiency Act of 15 June 1917 (40 Stat. 216) — [Beginning of NBS military research during World War I] ... To enable the Bureau of Standards to cooperate with the War and Navy Departments by providing the scientific assistance necessary in the development of instruments, devices, and materials, and the standardization and testing of supplies . . ., $250,000. ... To provide by cooperation of the Bureau of Standards the War Department, the Navy Department, and the Council of National Defense, for the standardization and testing of the standard gauges, screw threads, and standards required in manufacturing throughout the United States, and to calibrate and test such standard gauges, screw threads, and standards . . ., 1150,000. . . . Act of 18 July 1918 (40 Stat. 912) — An Act To provide for the appoint- ment of a commission to standardize screw threads [as amended by Act of 3 Mar 1919 (40 Stat. 1291)]. Be it enacted . . ., That a commission is hereby created, to be known as the Com- mission for the Standardization of Screw Threads, hereinafter referred to as the com- mission, which shall be composed of nine commissioners, one of whom shall be the Director of the Bureau of Standards, who shall be chairman of the commission ; two commissioned officers of the Army, to be appointed by the Secretary of War; two com- missioned officers of the Navy, to be appointed by the Secretary of the Navy; and four to be appointed by the Secretary of Commerce, two of whom shall be chosen from nominations made by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and two from nominations made by the Society of Automotive Engineers. Sec. 2. That it shall be the duty of said commission to ascertain and establish standards for screw threads, which shall be submitted to the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of Commerce for their acceptance and approval. Such standards, when thus accepted and approved, shall be adopted and used in the 546 APPENDIX C several manufacturing plants under the control of the War and Navy Departments, and, so far as practicable, in all specifications for screw threads in proposals for manu- factured articles, parts, or inaterials to be used under the direction of these departments. Sec. 3. That the Secretary of Commerce shall promulgate such standards for use by the public and cause the same to be published as a public document. Sec. 4. That the commission shall service without compensation but nothing herein shall be held to affect the pay of the commissioners appointed from the Army and Navy or of the Director of the Bureau of Standards. Sec. 5. That the commission may adopt rules and regulations in regard to its pro- cedure and the conduct of its business. Sec. 6. That the commission shall cease and terminate at the end of one year and six months from the date of its original appointment. [The term of the National Screw Thread Commission was extended for two years from 21 Mar 1920 by Joint Resolution of 23 Mar 1920 (41 Stat. 536), and for five years from 21 Mar 1922 by Joint Resolution of 21 Mar 1922 (42 Stat. 469) .] Appropriation. Act of 20 May 1920 (41 Stat. 683) — [Beginning of transferred funds to NBS] Department of Commerce ' : Bureau of Standards During the fiscal year 1921, the head of any department or independent establishment of the Government having funds available for scientific investigations and requiring co- operative work by the Bureau of Standards on scientific investigations within the scope of the functions of that Bureau, and which it is unable to perform within the limits of its appropriations, may, with the approval of the Secretary of Commerce, transfer to the Bureau of Standards such sums as may be necessary to carry on such investigations. The Secretary of the Treasury shall transfer on the books of the Treasury Department any sums which may be authorized hereunder and such amounts shall be placed to the credit of the Bureau of Standards for the performance of work for the department or establishment from which the transfer is made. Act of 27 February 1925 (43 Stat. 1019)— An Act Making appropria- tions for the Departments of State and Justice and for the Judiciary, and for the Departments of Commerce and Labor, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1926, and for other purposes. International Obligations. International Bureau of Weights and Measures. For contribution to the maintenance of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, in conformity with the terms of the convention of May 20, 1875, the same to be paid, under the direction of the Secretary of State, to said bureau on its certificate of apportionment, $3,000. APPENDIX C 547 Economy Act of 30 June 1932 (47 Stat. 410)— [Amendment to Section 8 of the Act establishing the National Bureau of Standards, authorizing payment of fees, except for other Federal agencies, for NBS tests and calibrations] Sec. 312. Section 8 of the Act entitled "An Act to establish the National Bureau of Standards," approved March 3, 1901, as amended and supplemented [U.S.C., title 15, sec. 276], is amended to read as follows: "Sec. 8. For all comparisons, calibrations, tests, or investigations, performed by the National Bureau of Standards under the provisions of this Act, as amended and supplemented, except those performed for the Government of the United States or State governments within the United States, a fee sufficient in each case to compensate the National Bureau of Standards for the entire cost of the services rendered shall be charged, according to a schedule prepared by the Director of the National Bureau of Standards and approved by the Secretary of Commerce. All moneys received from such sources shall be paid into the Treasury to the credit of miscellaneous receipts." Act of 30 June 1932, 47 Stat. 417 (Public Law 212, 72 Congress) — [Restatement of policy of transferring funds, making the policy general throughout the Federal Government] Title VI — ^Interdepartmental Work. Sec. 601. Section 7 of the Act entitled "An Act making appropriations for for- tifications and other works of defense, for the armament thereof, and for the procure- ment of heavy ordnance for trial and service, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1921, and for other purposes," approved May 21, 1920 [U.S.C., title 31, sec. 686], is amended to read as follows: "Sec. 7(a). Any executive department or independent establishment of the Gov- ernment, or any bureau or office thereof, if funds are available therefor and if it is determined by the head of such executive department, establishment, bureau, or office to be in the interest of the Government so to do, may place orders with any other such department, establishment, bureau, or office for materials, supplies, equipment, work, or services of any kind that such requisitioned Federal agency may be in a position to supply or equipped to render, and shall pay promptly by check to such Federal agency as may be requisitioned, upon its written request, either in advance or upon the furnish- ing or performance thereof, all or part of the estimated or actual cost thereof, as determined by such department, establishment, bureau, or office as may be requisitioned. . . .: Provided, however. That if such work or services can be as conveniently or more cheaply performed by private agencies such work shall be let by competitive bids to such private agencies. . . . Executive Order 10096, 23 January 1950 — Providing for a uniform patent policy for the Government with respect to inventions made by Govern- ment employees and for the administration of such policy. Whereas inventive advances in scientific and technological fields frequently result from governmental activities carried on by Government employees; and 548 APPENDIX C Whereas the Government of the United States is expending large sums of money annually for the conduct of these activities; and Whereas these advances constitute a vast national resource; and Whereas it is fitting and proper that the inventive product of functions of the Government, carried out by Government employees, should be available to the Govern- ment; and Whereas the rights of Government employees in their inventions should be recog- nized in appropriate instances; and Whereas the carrying out of the policy of this order requires appropriate adminis- trative arrangements: NOW, THEREFORE, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and statutes, and as President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, in the interest of the establishment and operation of a uniform patent policy for the Government with respect to inventions made by Govern- ment employees, it is hereby ordered as follows: 1. The following basic policy is established for all Government agencies with respect to inventions hereafter made by any Government employee: (a) The Government shall obtain the entire right, title and interest in and to cdl inventions made by any Government employee (1) during working hours, or (2) with a contribution by the Government of facilities, equipment, materials, funds, or information, or of time or services of other Government employees on official duty, or (3) which bears a direct relation to or are made in consequence of the official duties of the inventor. (b) In any case where the contribution of the Government, as measured by any one or more of the criteria set forth in paragraph (a) last above, to the invention is insufficient equitably to justify a requirement of assignment to the Government of the entire right, title and interest to such invention, or in any case where the Government has insufficient interest in an invention to obtain entire right, title and interest therein (although the Government could obtain same under para- graph (a), above), the Government agency concerned, subject to the approval of the Chairman of the Government Patents Board . . . shall leave title to such in- vention in the employee, subject, however, to the reservation to the Government of a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license in the invention with power to grant licenses for all governmental purposes, such reservation, in the terms thereof, to appear, where practicable, in any patent, domestic or foreign, which may issue on such invention. . . . Act of 29 June 1950, 64 Stat. 279 (Public Law 583. 81 Congress) — An Act Making appropriations to supply deficiencies in certain appropria- tions for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1950, and for other purposes. Chapter III Department of Commerce ■ . National Bureau of Standards WoTking Capital Fund ■ . . APPENDIX C 549 For the establishment of a working capital fund, to be available without fiscal year limitation, for expenses necessary for the maintenance and operation of the National Bureau of Standards, including the furnishing of facilities and services to other Govern- ment agencies, not to exceed 13,000,000. Said funds shall be established as a special deposit account and shall be reimbursed from applicable appropriations of said Bureau for the work of said Bureau, and from funds of other Government agencies for facili- ties and services furnished to such agencies pursuant to law. Reimbursements so made shall include handling and related charges; reserves for depreciation of equipment and accrued leave; and building construction and alterations directly related to the work for which reimbursement is made. Act of 21 July 1950, 64 Stat. 369 (Public Law 617, 81 Congress) — An Act To redefine the units and establish the standards of electrical and photometric measurements. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That from and after the date this Act is approved, the legal units of electrical and photometric measurements in the United States of America shall be those defined and established as provided in the following sections. Sec. 2. The unit of electrical resistance shall be the ohm, which is equal to one thousand million units of resistance of the centimeter-gram-second system of electro- magnetic units. Sec. 3. The unit of electric current shall be the ampere, which is one-tenth of the unit of current of the centimeter-gram-second system of electromagnetic units. Sec. 4. The unit of electromotive force and of electric potential shall be the volt, which is the electromotive force that, steadily applied to a conductor whose resistance is one ohm, will produce a current of one ampere. Sec 5. The unit of electric quantity shall be the coulomb, which is the quantity of electricity transferred by a current of one ampere in one second. Sec 6. The unit of electrical capacitance shall be the farad, which is the capacitance of a capacitor that is charged to a potential of one volt by one coulomb of electricity. Sec 7. The unit of electrical inductance shall be the henry, which is the inductance in a circuit such that an electromotive force of one volt is induced in the circuit by variation of an inducing current at the rate of one ampere per second. Sec 8. The unit of power shall be the watt, which is equal to ten million units of power in the centimeter-gram-second system, and which is the power required to cause an unvarying current of one ampere to flow between points differing in potential by one volt. Sec. 9. The units of energy shall be (a) the joule, which is equivalent to the energy supplied by a power of one watt operating for one second, and (b) the kilowatt-hour, which is equivalent to the energy supplied by a power of one thousand watts operating for one hour. Sec 10. The unit of intensity of light shall be the candle, which is one-sixtieth of the intensity of one square centimeter of a perfect radiator, known as a "black body," when operated at the temperature of freezing platinum. Sec 11. The unit of flux light shall be the lumen, which is the flux in a unit of solid angle from a source of which the intensity is one candle. Sec 12. It shall be the duty of the Secretary of Commerce to establish the values of the primary electric and photometric units in absolute measure, and the legal values 550 APPENDIX C for these units shall be those represented by, or derived from, national reference standards maintained by the Department of Commerce. Sec. 13. The Act of July 12, 1894 (Public Law 105, Fifty-third Congress), entitled "An Act to define and establish the units of electrical measure," is hereby repealed. Act of 21 July 1950, 64 Stat. 370 (Public Law 618, 81 Congress) — An Act To provide authority for certain functions and activities in the De- partment of Commerce, and for other purposes. [Authorization for the initial planning leading to the move of the Bureau from Washington, D.C. to Gaithersburg, Md.] Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That .... Sec. 2. Within the limits of funtls which may be appropriated therefor, the Secre- tary of Commerce is authorized to make improvements to existing buildings, grounds, and other plant facilities, including construction of minor buildings and other facilities of the National Bureau of Standards in the District of Columbia and in the field to house special apparatus or material which must be isolated from other activities: Provided, That no improvement shall be made nor shall any building be constructed under this authority at a cost in excess of $25,000, unless specific provision is made therefor in the appropriation concerned. Act of 22 July 1950, 64 Stat. 371 (Public Law 619, 81 Congress) — An Act To amend section 2 of the Act of March 3, 1901 (31 Stat. 1449), to provide basic authority for the performance of certain functions and ac- tivities of the Department of Commerce, and for other purposes. [First complete restatement of Bureau functions since 1901] Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That section 2 of the Act of March 3, 1901 (31 Stat. 1449), as amended, be, and the same hereby is, furtiiter amended so as to read in full as follows: Sec. 2. The Secretary of Commerce (hereinafter referred to as the "Secretary") is authorized to undertake the following functions: (a) The custody, maintenance, and development of the national standards of measurement, and the provision of means and methods for making measurement consistent with those standards, including the comparison of standards used in scientific investigations, engineering, manufacturing, commerce, and educational institutions with the standards adopted or recognized by the Government. (b) The determination of physical constants and properties of materials when such data are of great importance to scientific or manufacturing interests and are not to be obtained of sufficient accuracy elsewhere. (c) The development of methods for testing materials, mechanisms, and struc- tures, and the testing of materials, supplies, and equipment, including items pur- chased for use of Government departments and independent establishments. (d) Cooperation with other Government agencies and with private organizations in the establishment of standard practices, incorporated in codes and specifications. (e) Advisory service to Government agencies on scientific and technical problems. APPENDIX C 551 (f) Invention and development of devices to serve special needs of the Govern- ment. In carrying out the functions enumerattu lu .jus section, the Secretary is authorized to undertake the following activities and similar ones for which need may arise in the operations of Government agencies, scientific institutions, and industrial enterprises: ( 1 ) the construction of physical standards ; (2) the testing, calibration, and certification of standards and standard measur- ing apparatus; (3) the study and improvement of instruments and methods of measurements; (4) the investigation and testing of railroad track scales, elevator scales, and other scales used in weighing commodities for interstate shipment; (5) cooperation with the States in securing uniformity in weights and measures laws and methods of inspection ; (6) the preparation and distribution of standard samples such as those used in checking chemical analyses, temperature, color, viscosity, heat of combustion, and other basic properties of materieJs; also the preparation and sale or other distribution of standard instruments, apparatus and materials for calibration of measuring equipment; (7) the development of methods of chemical analysis and synthesis of materials, and the investigation of the properties of rare substanies: (8) the study of methods of producing and of measuring high and low temper- atures; and the behavior of materials at high and at low temperatures; (9) the investigation of radiation, radioactive substances, and x-rays, their uses, and means of protection of persons from their harmful effects; (10) the study of the atomic and molecular structure of the chemical elements, with particular reference to the characteristics of the spectra emitted, the use of spectral observations in determining chemical composition of materials, and the relation of molecular structure to the practical usefulness of materials; (11 ) the broadcasting of radio signals of standard frequency; (12) the investigation of the conditions which affect the transmission of radio waves from their source to a receiver; (13) the compilation and distribution of information on such transmission of radio waves as a basis for choice of frequencies to be used in radio operations; ( 14) the study of new technical processes and methods of fabrication of materials in which the Government has a special interest; also the study of methods of measurement and technical processes used in the manufacture of optical glass and pottery, brick, tile, terra cotta, and other clay products; (15) the determination of properties of building materials and structural ele- ments, and encouragement of their standardization and most effective use, including investigation of fire-resisting properties of building materials and conditions under which they may be most efficiently used, and the standarization of types of appliances for fire prevention ; (16) metallurgical research, including study of alloy steels and light metal alloys; investigation of foundry practice, casting, rolling, and forging; prevention of corrosion of metals and alloys; behavior of bearing metals; and development of standards for metals and sands; (17) the operation of a laboratory of applied mathematics; (18) the prosecution of such research in engineering, mathematics, and the physical sciences as may be necessary to obtain basic data pertinent to the functions specified herein; and 786-167 O — 66 37 552 APPENDIX C (19) the compilation and publication of general scientific and technical data resulting from the performance of the function specified herein or from other sources when such data are of importance to scientific or manufacturing interests or to the general public, and are not available elsewhere, including demonstration of the results of the Bureau's work by exhibits or otherwise as may be deemed most effective. Sec. 3. The Bureau shall exercise its functions for the Government of the United States; for any State or municipal government within the United States; or for any scientific society, educational institution, firm, corporation, or individual within the United States engaged in manufacturing or other pursuits requiring the use of standards or standard measuring instruments. All requests for the services of the Bureau shall be made in accordance with the rules and regulations herein established. Sec. 4. (Salaries of officers and employees. This section superseded by Classifica- tion Act.) Sec. 5. The Director shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. He shall have the general supervision of the Bureau, its equipment, and the exercise of its functions. He shall make an annual report to the Secretary of Commerce, including an abstract of the work done during the year and a financial statement. He may issue, when necessary, bulletins for public distribution, containing such information as may be of value to the public or facilitate the Bureau in the exercise of its functions. Sec. 6. The officers and employees of the Bureau, except the Director, shall be appointed by the Secretary of Commerce at such time as their respective services may become necessary. Sec. 7. The Secretary shall charge for services performed under the authority of Section 3 of this Act, except in cases where he determines that the interest of the Government would be best served by waiving the charge. Such charges may be based upon fixed prices or cost. The appropriation or fund bearing the cost of the services may be reimbursed, or the Secretary may require advance payment subject to such adjustment on completion of the work as may be agreed upon. Sec. 8. In the absence of specific agreement to the contrary, additional facilities, including equipment, purchased pursuant to the performance of services authorized by Section 3 of this Act shall become the property of the Department of Commerce. Sec. 9. The Secretary of Commerce shall, from time to time, make regulations regard- ing the payment of fees, the limits of tolerance to be attained in standards submitted for verification, the sealing of standards, the disbursement and receipt of moneys, and such other matters as he may deem necessary for carrying this Act into effect. Sec. 10. There shall be a visiting committee of five members to be appointed by the Secretary of Commerce, to consist of men prominent in the various interests involved, and not in the employ of the Government. This committee shall visit the Bureau at least once a year, and report to the Secretary of Commerce upon the efficiency of its scientific work and the condition of its equipment. The members of this committee shall serve without compensation, but shall be paid the actual expenses incurred in attending its meetings. The period of service of the members of the committee shall be so arranged that one member shall retire each year, and the appointments to be for a period of five years. Appointments made to fill vacancies occurring other than in the regular manner are to be made for the remainder of the period in which the vacancy exists. Sec. 11. (a) The Secretary of Commerce is authorized to accept and utilize gifts or bequests of real or personal property for the purpose of aiding and facilitating the work authorized therein. APPENDIX C 553 (b) For the purpose of Federal income, estate, and gift taxes, gifts and bequests accepted by the Secretary of Commerce under the authority of this Act shall be deemed to be gifts and bequests to or for the use of the United States. Sec. 12. (a) The National Bureau of Standards is authorized to utilize in the per- formance of its functions the Working Capital Fund established by the Act of June 29, 1950 (64 Stat. 275), and additional amounts as from time to time may be required for the purposes of said Fund are hereby authorized to be appropriated. ( b ) The working capital of the Fund shall be available for obligation and pay- ment for any activities authorized by the Act of March 3, 1901 (31 Stat. 1449), as amended, and for any activities for which provision is made in the appropriations which reimburse the Fund. (c) In the performance of authorized activities, the Working Capital Fund shall be available and may be reimbursed for expenses of hire of automobile, hire of con- sultants, and travel to meetings, to the extent that such expenses are authorized for the appropriations of the Department of Commerce. (d) The Fund may be credited with advances and reimbursements, including receipts from non-federal sources, for services performed under the authority of Sec- tion 3 of this Act. (e) As used in this Act the term cost shall be construed to include directly related expenses and appropriate charges for indirect and administrative expenses. (f) The amount of any earned net income resulting from the operation of the Fund at the close of each fiscal year shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury; provided, that such earned net income may be applied first to restore any prior impair- ment of the Fund. Sec. 13. To the extent that funds are specifically appropriated therefore, the Sec- retary of Commerce is authorized to acquire land for such field sites as are necessary for the proper and efficient conduct of the activities authorized herein. Sec. 14. Within the limits of funds which are appropriated for the National Bureau of Standards, the Secretary of Commerce is authorized to undertake such construction of buildings and other facilities and to make such improvements to existing buildings, grounds, and other facilities occupied or used by the National Bureau of Standards as are necessary for the proper and efficient conduct of the activities authorized herein: PROVIDED, That no improvement shall be made nor shall any building be constructed under this authority at a cost in excess of .140,000 unless specific provision is made therefor in the appropriation concerned. Sec. 15. In the performance of the functions of the National Bureau of Standards the Secretary of Commerce is authorized to undertake the following activities: (a) The: purchase, repair, and cleaning of uniforms for guards; (b) the repair and alteration of buildings and other plant facilities; (c) the rental of field sites and laboratory, office, and warehouse space; (d) the purchase of reprints from technical journals or other periodicals and the payment of page charges for the publication of research papers and reports in such journals; (e) the furnishing of food and shelter without repayment therefor to employees of the Government at Arctic and Antarctic stations; (f) for the conduct of observations on radio propagation phenomena in the Arctic or Antarctic regions, the appointment of employees at base rates established by the Sec- retary of Commerce which shall not exceed such Maximum rates as may be specified from time to time in the appropriation concerned, and without regard to the civil service and classification laws and titles 11 and III of the Federal Employees Pay Act of 1945; and (g) the erection on leased property of specialized facilities and working and living quarters when the Secretary of Commerce determines that this will best serve the interests of the Government. 554 APPENDIX C Act of 20 June 1956, 70 Stat. 321 (Public Law 604)— An Act Making appropriations for the Department of Commerce and related agencies for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1957, and for other purposes. [Formal ap- proval for the construction of a new Bureau plant at Gaithersburg.] Be it enacted . . . That the following sums are appropriated ... for the Depart- ment of Commerce . . . namely: Title I — Department of Commerce National Bureau of Standards Construction of facilities: For acquisition of necessary land and to initiate the design of the facilities to be constructed thereon for the National Bureau of Standards outside of the District of Columbia to remain available until expended, $930,000, to be transferred to the General Services Administration. APPENDIX D THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS IN THE FEDERAL ADMINISTRATION UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT NBS PRESIDEN rS SECRETARIES DIRECTORS William McKinley 1897-1901 Lyman J, Gage Secretary of Treasury 1897-1901 Leslie M. Shaw 1901 I Theodore Roosevelt 1901-9 William Howard Taft 1909-13 George B Cortelyou Secretary of Commerce and Ubor, 1903-4 Victor H. Metcalf >- 1904-6 Oscar S. Straus 1906-9 Charles Nagel 1909-13 ^ Samuel W, Stratton •^ 1901-22 Woodrow Wilson 1913-21 William C. Redfield Secretary of Commerce 1913-19 Joshua W. Alexander 1919-21 Warren G. Harding 1921-23 Calvin Coolidge 1923-29 Herbert C. Hoover 1929-33 Herbert C Hoover 1921-28 ' William F. Whiting 1928-29 Robert P. Lament 1929-32 George K. Burgess 1922-32 iE ifll 1 Ifl |l||lllfil| |llll|f|llll| p ^ ^mmmmmmmmmmm Roy 0. Chapin ^^^HiB 1932-33 '^HHHUIHiH Daniel C. Roper ^^^H^^ ■■ M Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933-39 wi 1933-45 Harry L. Hopkins Lyman J. Briggs ■ 1939-40 1932-46 M Jesse Jones Edward U. Condon 9 *• 1940-45 *" 1946-51 Ml Henry A. Wallace m^^U Harry S. Truman 1945-46 ^^H^l 1945-53 W. Averell Hartiman 1947-48 Charles W. Sawyer 1948-52 1 Dwight 0. Eisenhower Sinclair Weeks 1953-61 1952-58 Lewis L. Strauss 1958-59 John F. Kennedy Frederick H. Mueller 1959-61 Allen V. Astin 1951- 1961-63 Luther H. Hodges 1961-65 Lyndon B, Jc'^nson John T. Connor 1963- 1965- i ^ ^ APPENDIX E MEMBERS OF THE VISITING COMMITTEE of the Secretary of Cominerce to the National Bureau of Standards ^ Term ALBERT LADD COLBY 1901-07 Consulting engineer in metallurgy. South Bethlehem, Pa., and secretary, Association of American Steel Manufacturers. DR. ELIHU THOMSON 1901-18 Electrical engineer. General Electric Co., Lynn, Mass. DR. IRA REMSEN 1901-09 Director of Chemical Laboratory and president, Johns Hopkins University. DR. HENRY S. PRITCHETT 1901-10 President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; later president, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. PROF. EDWARD L. NICHOLS 1901-11 Professor of physics, Cornell University. ,- DR. ROBERT S. WOODWARD 1908-12 President, Carnegie Institution of Washington. PROF. HENRY M. HOWE 1909-14 Professor of metallurgy, Columbia University. PROF. ARTHUR G. WEBSTER 1910-15 Director, Physics Laboratory, Clark University. PROF. JOHN F. HAYFORD , 1912-21 Director, College of Engineering, Northwestern University. PROF. ARTHUR E. KENNELLY 1912-17 Professor of electrical engineering, Harvard University. JOHN R. FREEMAN 1915-24, 1926-31 Consulting engineer, Providence, R.l. PROF. WILLIAM A. NOYES 1915-20 Director, Chemical Laboratory, University of Illinois. PROF. JOSEPH S. AMES 1917-22 Director, Physical Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University. PROF. FRED W. McNAIR 1921-23 President, Michigan College of Mines, Houghton, Mich. PROF. WILDER D. BANCROFT 1920-25 Professor of physical chemistry, Cornell University. DR. AMBROSE SWASEY 1921-26 Chairman of the Board, Warner & Swasey Co., Cleveland, Ohio. DR. SAMUEL W. STRATTON 1923-31 President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 'Sources: NARG 167, NBS Box 296; NARG 40, files of Secretary of Commerce, 67009/5; current files, Office of the Director, NBS. 557 558 APPENDIX E Term GANG DUNN /. .■ 1923-48 President, J. G. White Engineering Corp., New York. PROF. WILLIAM F. DURAND . . 1924-29 Professor of mechanical engineering, Leland Stanford University. DR. WILLIS R. WHITNEY 1925-30 Director, General Electric Research Laboratory, Schenectady, N.Y. DR. CHARLES F. KETTERING 1929-34, 1947-52 Director of research and vice president, General Motors Corp. DR. CHARLES L. REESE 1930-35 Consulting chemist to E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. MORRIS E. LEEDS 1931-41 President, Leeds & Northrup Co., Philadelphia, Pa. DR. KARL T. COMPTON 1931-47 President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. DR. WILLIAM D. COOLIDGE 1935^9 Vice president and director of research. General Electric Co. DR. FRANK B. JEWETT 1935-45 Vice president in charge of research and development, American Telephone & Telegraph Co. ; president. National Academy of Sciences. DR. VANNEVAR BUSH 1942-46 President, Carnegie Institution of Washington; director, Office of Scientific Research and Development. DR. HAROLD C. UREY : . , . . 1945-50 Research professor of chemistry. University of Chicago. DR. EUGENE P. WIGNER 1946-51 Metallurgical Laboratory, University of Chicago; director of research, Clinton Laboratories, Oak Ridge, Tenn. DR. ROBERT F. MEHL 1948-53 Director, Metals Research Laboratory, Carnegie Institute of Technology. DR. DONALD H. MENZEL 1949-54 Chairman, Department of Astronomy, Harvard University; associate director. Harvard Observatory. DR. DETLEV W. BRONK 1950-€0 President, Johns Hopkins University. PROF. JOHN H. VAN VLECK 1951-56 Dean, Division of Applied Science, Harvard University. DR. MERVIN J. KELLY 1952-62 President, Bell Telephone Laboratories. . , DR. CLYDE E. WILLIAMS . . . ; ...... . , . . . . 1953-58 Director, Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, Ohio. DR. CRAWFORD H. GREENEWALT 1954-64 President, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. PROF. FREDERICK SEITZ 1956-61 Chairman, Department of Physics, University of Illinois. DR. LLOYD V. BERKNER 1957-62 Scientific research administrator; chairman. Space Science Board, National Academy of Sciences. PROF. CHARLES H. TOWNES 1960-65 Department of Physics, Columbia University, consultant, Brookhaven National Laboratories. , r - _ .■ 1 'r- ly Ur yo b !- JhsoAKAM '•.,-0 r; iiiv, "JS::vt ikjZf^ 558 APPENDIX E Term GANG DUNN 1923-48 President, J. G. White Engineering Corp., New York. PROF. WILLIAM F. DURAND 1924-29 Professor of mechanical engineering, Leland Stanford University. DR. WILLIS R. WHITNEY 1925-30 Director, General Electric Research Laboratory, Schenectady, N.Y. DR. CHARLES F. KETTERING 1929-34, 1947-52 Director of research and vice president, General Motors Corp. DR. CHARLES L. REESE 1930-35 Consulting chemist to E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. MORRIS E. LEEDS 1931-41 President, Leeds & Northrup Co., Philadelphia, Pa. DR. KARL T. COMPTON 1931-47 President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. DR. WILLIAM D. COOLIDGE 1935^9 Vice president and director of research, General Electric Co. DR. FRANK B. JEWETT 1935-45 Vice president in charge of research and development, American Telephone & Telegraph Co. ; president. National Academy of Sciences. DR. VANNEVAR BUSH 1942-46 President, Carnegie Institution of Washington; director. Office of Scientific Research and Development. DR. HAROLD C. UREY 1945-50 Research professor of chemistry. University of Chicago. DR. EUGENE P. WIGNER 1946-51 Metallurgical Laboratory, University of Chicago ; director of research, Clinton Laboratories, Oak Ridge, Tenn. DR. ROBERT F. MEHL . . . f 1948-53 Director, Metals Research Laboratory, Carnegie Institute of Technology. DR. DONALD H. MENZEL 1949-54 Chairman, Department of Astronomy, Harvard University; associate director, Harvard Observatory. DR. DETLEV W. BRONK 1950-60 President, Johns Hopkins University. PROF. JOHN H. VAN VLECK 1951-56 Dean, Division of Applied Science, Harvard University. DR. MERVIN J. KELLY 1952-62 President, Bell Telephone Laboratories. DR. CLYDE E. WILLIAMS 1953-58 Director, Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, Ohio. DR. CRAWFORD H. GREENEWALT 1954-64 President, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. PROF. FREDERICK SEITZ 1956-61 Chairman, Department of Physics, University of Illinois. DR. LLOYD V. BERKNER 1957-62 Scientific research administrator; chairman. Space Science Board, National Academy of Sciences. PROF. CHARLES H. TOWNES 1960-65 Department of Physics, Columbia University, consultant, Brookhaven National Laboratories. NBS Appropriations and other Supporting Funds, 1902-1955 1925 1930 FISCAL YEARS 1950 1955 )13-1945 I9J9-I9S3 supplied b, NBS BUDGET and MANAGEMENT DIVISION a.R si^iTflDH«iu3 ^.. u^i^id^ii m^"^' "'■'' eil^i i ii 'M— - lOf -!8 o i^^ A. ! •J C; Li. i X f a 1 9^ £^ iv-; d€ oe o Q. O -- Sf --jtr -•■It ■ NBS SPECIAL APPROPRIATIONS, 1910-1935 APPENDIX G 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 Weights and measures ($10,000)* ,Gas light standards ($10,000) I Electrolysis investigation ($15,000) 1 Testing structural ijiaterials ($50,000 -'$333,200) ! Testing structural materials for U.S. Govt. ($15,000 -$23,350) Testing machines ($30,000 -$54,700) | | Refrigeration constants ($15,000) High-voltage investigation ($15,000) jTesting railroad scales ($25,000 -$62,000) ! Fire-resisting properties ($25,000 -$34,000) | Testing miscellaneous materials ($20,000 -$51, 163) j Railway materials ($15,000) Public utility standards ($25,000-$114,159) | Radio research ($12,253 -$85,700) I Color standardization ($10,000 - $15,8(1}) ! Clay products ($10,000- $49,000) I i Physical constants ($5,000) j Standardizing mechanical appliances ($10,000 -$51,321) I Optical glass ($10,000 -$84,388) j Military research ($577,176) .[ |. Gage standardization ($226, 138 -$433,000) j National Security & Defense Funds ($1,395,000) iStandard materials ($4,000 $10,000) i Jextile investigation ($10,000 -$60,900) I I Sugar technology ($21,350- $100,000). [ [ j Storage batteries ($20,000) i Mine scales and cars ($15,000) i | iPublic utility investigation ($53,522)1 Metallurgical research ($30,040 $61,000) j High-temperature investigation ($10,000) j Industrial research ($362,881 -$437,000) | Sound investigation ($7,237-$ll,260) J Industrial safety standards ($25,000) i j Testing Government materials ($100,000) Standardization of equipment ($52,292 -$258,600) Platinum and rare metals ($15,000) \ Radioactive substances and x rays ($10,000 $31,741) iRope investigation ($20,000) Automotive engine research ($10,000 -$60,000) Utilization of waste products ($50,000' Dental materials ($5,000 -$10,000) Furnaces and shelter ($22,000) Hydraulic research ($36,880 -$44,270) I I I I I I I I I 1910 1915 1920 1925 Ml! 1930 1935 Figures represent initial and maximum appropriations. Note: Special appropriations continued after 1935 in special annual appropriations for Standards lor commerce (1936-1946), investigation of building materials (1938-1942), and Radio propagation and standards (1950-1955). PUBLICATIONS BY THE STAFF OF THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS ^MM-t l»*' '« "!>» t '' «* !l" <8;'°°'*''*'*'*"^-'IV'*W Total Publicatio =5. 'QnmmT^-^O UAiMUB JAi^.. ■..< APPENDIX I 567 PUBLICATIONS OF THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS NOTES The Annual Reports of the Bureau, 1901-1960, are the source for the basic data of this publications chart. Dash lines on the chart span years when the Annual Report omitted publication data. In some instances of omission the number of publications was determined by actual count in NBS C460, which lists all formal Bureau publications issued by the Government Printing Office from 1901 to 1947, and in Supplements to C460 for publications since 1947. Not represented on the chart are revisions, reprints, and new editions of Bureau publi- cations (as many as 50 to 90 annually by 1915) ; publicity releases and general articles in the periodical literature on the work of the Bureau; nor calibration and test reports prepared by the staff. NBS RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS include the early Scientific Papers (1904^1928) and Technologic Papers (1910-1928), combined in 1928 in a single Journal of Research as Research Papers until the reorganization of NBS publications in 1959, noted below. MISCELLANEOUS NBS PUBLICATIONS in the chart comprise: Circulars, the compilations of information related to NBS scientific, technologic, and engineering activities, published from 1903 to 1959. They include the extensive NBS and U.S. Government Specifications series in the years 1912-1937. Miscellaneous Publications (1905 to date), which include the NBS Annual Reports, Weights and Measures Conference Reports, the Standards Yearbook from 1927 through 1933, and charts, directories, and administrative reports. Handbooks (1921 to date). Building and Housing Publications (1922-1932). Simplified Practice Recommendations (1923 to date) . Technical News Bulletin, published monthly (1924 to date). Letter Circulars, in mimeograph form ( 1924 to date) . Commercial Standards (1929 to date). Building Materials and Structures Reports ( 1930-1939 ) . Mathematical Tables (1941-1945). Applied Mathematics Series (1948 to date) . Basic Radio Propagation Predictions, published monthly (1952-1959); Central Radio Propagation Laboratory Ionospheric Predictions (1960 to date). NON-NBS PUBLICATIONS, first recorded in 1925, comprise articles by members of the staff appearing in the journals of professional and scientific societies. NBS REPORTS, on research conducted under transferred funds and formalized in 1951 (estimated in 1952 as more than a thousand reports), actually began before World War II as nonpublished reports to NACA on special research for that agency, and later as reports to NDRC, OSRD and other wartime agencies. They continue to com- prise classified and unclassified reports to other Government agencies on projects supported by transferred funds. 568 APPENDIX I Reorganization of NBS Publications: In 1959 the Journal of Research was reorganized into four separately published sections: A. Physics and Chemistry; B. Mathematics and Mathematical Physics; C. Engineering and Instrumentation; D. Radio Propagation. Two nonperiodicals, Monographs (papers too long for the Journal) and Technical Notes (scientific data of limited or transient interest) were established that same year. Continuing nonperiodicals included the Applied Mathematics Series, Handbooks, and Miscellaneous Publications. Commercial Standards and Simplified Practice Recom- mendations, discontinued as NBS publications from 1951 to 1%3, were resumed as Bureau publications. Continuing monthly periodicals included the Technical News Bulletin and CRPL Ionospheric Predictions (former Basic Radio Propagation Predictions). APPENDIX J Almost certainly the first official NBS payroll and roster, these half-monthly payments, according to the paybook cover, were made on July 15. The appearance of Miss Slineys name on the roll cannot be explained. She may have been a temporary appointment before Dr. Stratton look over. Her name does not appear on subsequent payrolls or on staff rosters. 569 APPENDIX J DIVISION AND SECTION CHIEFS OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL STAFF NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS as of July 1, 1905* DIRECTOR Stratton, Dr Samuel W. 1901-22 WEIGHTS AND MEASURES Comparison of Capacities Weights and Measures Assistant HEAT AND THERMOMETRY Low Temperature Investigations High Temperature Investigations Comparison of Thermometers Heat and Thermometry Assistant LIGHT AND OPTICAL INSTRU- MENTS Spectroscopy Magneto-optics Computer ENGINEERING INSTRUMENTS AND MATERIALS Engineering Instruments and Materials Assistants ELECTRICITY - Inductance and Capacity Fischer, Louis A. 1901-21 Femer, Roy Y. 1903-18 Pienkowsky, Arthur T. 1905-44 Waidner, Dr Charles W. 1901-22 Waidner, Dr Charles W. Burgess, Dr George K. 1903-32 Dickinson, Dr Hobart C. 1903-45 Mueller, Eugene F. 1905-44 Stratton, Dr Samuel W. Nutting, Dr Parley G. 1903-12 Bates, Frederick J. 1903-47 Coblentz, Dr William W. 1905-44 *Sponsler, 'Charles F. 1902-13 *Merrill, Albert S. 1903-06 *Lange, Oscar G. 1902-37 Rosa, Dr Edward B. 1901-21 Rosa, Dr Edward B. *Grover, Dr Frederick W. 1903-11 *This 1905 roster is based on information in MS, N. Ernest Dorsey, "Some mem- ories of the early days of the NBS," Oct. 28, 1943 (NBS Historical File). The names preceded by an asterisk are staff members who left the Bureau before the next roster. Their subsequent employment or other reason for separation is noted below. The dates on the right both mark the first appearance of a staff member in these rosters and his inclusive dates of association with the Bureau. *Sponsler, resigned Mar. 22, 1913. *Merrill, resigned May 3, 1906; returned briefly Mar.-July 1920. *Lange, retired Nov. 30, 1937. *Grover, to Colby College, 1911-20; to Department of Electrical Engineering, Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., 1920. 786-167 O — 66 571 572 APPENDIX J ELECTRICITY— Continued Magnetism and Absolute Measurement of Current Electrical Measuring Instruments Photometry Electrical Resistance and Electromotive Force Electricity Assistants Naval Radio Research Laboratory Army Signal Service Radio Laboratory CHEMISTRY - Chemistry Assistants *Guthe, Dr Kan E. Brooks, Herbert B. *Lloyd, Dr Morton G. Reid, Clarence E. *Hyde, Dr Edward P. Wolff, Dr Frank A. *Middlekauff, Dr George W. *Cady, Francis E. Durston, Franklin S. *Dorsey, Dr N. Ernest *Shoemaker, Maynard P. *Austin, Dr Louis W. *Cranim, E. R. ♦Noyes, Dr William A. *Stokes, Dr Henry N. Cain, Dr John R. Waters, Campbell E. 1903-06 1903-39, 1942-45 1902-10, 1917-41 1903-05 1903-08 1901-41 1903-17 1903-20 1903-17 1903-20, 1928-43 1905-36 1903-08 1903-09 1905-21, 1936-45 1904-42 *Guthe, to State University of Iowa as chairman. Physics Department, 1906. *Lloyd, to "Electrical Review and Western Electrician," Chicago, as technical editor, 1910-17. *Hyde, to NELA Research Laboratory, General Electric, 1908. *Middlekauff, resigned 1917. *Cady, to National Lamp Works, Nela Park, 1920. *Dorsey, private consultant and consultant in physics to NBS, 1920-28; independent research worker at NBS, 1928-43; died July 6, 1959. *Shoemaker, retired 1936. *Austin, died June 27, 1932. *Cramm, no data available. *Noyes, to Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois, as chairman, 1908. *Stokes, to "Library Critic," as editor, 1909. CHIEFS OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL STAFF as of September 1, 1910* DIRECTOR Stratton, Dr Samuel W. ELECTRICITY Inductance and Capacity Precision Resistance Measurement Electrical Measuring Instruments Magnetism Electrical Testing Photometry Electrolysis Electromotive Force and Resistance Electricity Assistants II. WEIGHTS AND MEASURES Length and Expansion Measure- ments Capacity Measurements Mass Density Time Trade Weights and Measures Weights and Measures Assistant III. THERMOMETRY, PYROMETRY AND HEAT MEASURE- MENT Thermometry Calorimetry Pyrometry Low Temperature Investigations Rosa, Dr Edward B. Curtis, Dr Harvey L. 1907-46 Wenner, Dr Frank 1907-43 Brooks, Herbert B. Burrows, Dr Charles W. 1906-18 Vinal, Dr George W. 1904-50 Crittenden, Dr. Eugene 1909-50 C. McCoUum, Burton 1909-26 Wolff, Dr Frank A. *Agnew, Dr Paul G. 1906-20 Taylor, Dr A. Hadley 1909-21 McBride, Russell S. 1909-20 Grover, Dr. Frederick W. Fischer, Louis A. Gray, Dr. Arthur W. 1909-16 Femer, Roy Y. Pienkowsky, Arthur T. (Vacant) Ferner, Roy Y. Holbrook, Fay S. 1909-40 Bearce, Henry W. 1908-45 Waidner, Dr Charles W. Dickinson, Dr Hobart C. Mueller, Dr Eugene F. Burgess, Dr George K. Kanolt, Clarence W. 1909-25 *rhis and subsequent rosters are based on NBS personnel records, NBS telephone directories, archival materials, and interviews with present and past staff members. In some instances available records were incomplete; in others, the Federal Records Center at St. Louis, Mo., reported "no records found." *Agnew, to American Engineering Standards Committee as executive secretary, 1920. 573 574 APPENDIX J III. THERMOMETRY, PYROMETRY AND HEAT MEASURE- MENT— Continued Thermometry, Pyrometry and Heat Assistant IV. OPTICS Radiometry Polarimetry Spectroscopy and Applied Optics Interferometry V. CHEMISTRY ; . Electrochemistry Oils, Rubber, Paper, Textiles Metals, Cement, Bituminous Mate- rials Buckingham, Dr Edgar Stratton, Dr Samuel W. Coblentz, Dr William W. Bates, Frederick J. Priest, Irwin G. *Nutting, Dr Perley G. Hillebrand, Dr William F. Blum, Dr William Waters, Campbell E. Voorhees, Samuel S. ENGINEERING INSTRUMENTS Hersey, Dr Mayo D. STRUCTURAL, ENGINEERING AND MISCELLANEOUS MA- TERIALS Structural Materials Cement Lime Metals , Protective Coatings Paper and Textiles PITTSBURGH LABORATORY Wormeley, Philip L. *Howard, James E. Pearson, Joseph C. (Not known) (Not known) (Not known) *Clark, Dr Frederick C. Bleininger, Dr Albert V. Emley, Warren E. Bates, Phaon H. NORTHAMPTON LABORATORY *Humphrey, Richard L. ATLANTIC CITY LABORATORY Wig, Rudolph J. 1906-37 1907-32 1908-25 1909-52 1910-21 1910-20, 1927-31 1910-47 1910-14 1910-24 1910-19 1910-23 1910-43 1910-45 1910-10 1910-14 *Nutting, to research laboratory of Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester, N.Y., 1912; to Westinghouse Electric Co. as research director, 1916. *Howard, transferred to Interstate Commerce Commission, 1914. *Clark, to American Writing Paper Co., Holyoke, Mass., 1919. *Huinphrey, NBS member Aug. 5-10, 1910; no further record. CHIEFS OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL STAFF as of July 1, 1915 DIRECTOR Stratton, Dr Samuel W. I. ELECTRICITY Inductance and Capacity Precision Resistance Measure- ment Electrical Measuring Instruments Magnetic Measurements Electrochemistry Photometry Electrolysis Radio Measurements Radio Engineering Electromotive Force and Resist- ance Electrical Service Standards Electricity Assistants II. WEIGHTS AND MEASURES Mass Density and Capacity Trade Weights and Measures In- vestigations Time and Length Rosa, Dr Edward B. Curtis, Dr Harvey L. Wenner, Dr Frank Brooks, Dr Herbert B. Burrows, Dr Charles W. Vinal, Dr George W. Crittenden, Dr Eugene C. McCollum, Burton Dellinger, Dr J. Howard 1907-48 Kolster, Frederick A. 1911-21 Wolff, Dr Frank A. Meyer, Dr J. Franklin 1913-41 Agnew, Dr. Paul G. Silshee, Dr Francis B. 1911-59 Fischer, Louis A. Pienkowsky, Dr Arthur T. Peffer, Ehner L. 1913-48 Holbrook, Fay S. *Femer, Roy Y. III. THERMOMETRY, PYROME- Waidner, Dr Charles W. TRY, AND HEAT MEAS- UREMENT Thermometry Pyrometry Calorimetry Low Temperature Investigations Fire Resistance IV. OPTICS Radiometry Polarimetry Spectroscopy Colorimetry Interferometry Dispersoids Dickinson, Dr Hobart C. Foote, Dr Paul D Mueller, Eugene F. Kanolt, Clarence W. Ingberg, Simon H. Stratton, Dr Samuel W. Coblentz, Dr William W. Bates, Frederick J. Meggers, Dr. WilUam F. Priest, Irwin G. Peters, Chauncey G. Wells. Dr Philip V. 1911-27 1914-47 1914-58 1913-49 1913-23 *Femer, to go into private business, 1918. 575 576 APPENDIX J V. CHEMISTRY , , Electrochemistry Metals, Cement, Bituminous Materials Gas Chemistry Reagents and Apparatus Paint, Varnish, Soap, etc. VI. ENGINEERING RESEARCH AND TESTING Engineering Instruments and Mechanical Appliances Aviation Instruments VII. METALLURGY Foundry and Mechanical Plant Microscopy of Metals Working of Metals HiUebrand, Dr William F. Blum, Dr William Voorhees, Samuel S. Weaver, Elmer R. Smither, Frederick W. Walker, Dr Percy H. Stratton, Dr Samuel W. Stutz, Walter F. Hersey, Dr Mayo D. Burgess, Dr George K. Karr, Carydon P. Rawdon, Dr Henry S. *Woodward, Dr Raymond W. *Merica, Dr Paul D. VIII. STRUCTURAL, ENGINEERING Bates, Phaon H. AND MISCELLANEOUS MATERIALS Clay Lubricating Oils Cement, Sand, Stone Rubber, Leather, Textiles PITTSBURGH LABORATORY Optical Glass Lime, Gypsum, Sand, Brick Bates, Phaon H. Herschel, Dr Winslow H. Pearson, Joseph C. Wormeley, Philip L. Bleininger, Dr Albert V. Bleininger, Dr Albert V. Emley, Warren E. 1912-57 1914-46 1914-37 1912-47 1913-25 1912-45 1914^21 1914-19 1913-43 *Woodward, to Whitney Manufacturing Co., Hartford, Conn., as chief metallurgist, 1921. *Merica, to International Nickel Co., Bayonne, N.J., 1919. WARTIME PROJECTS OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL STAFF as of September 1918* DIRECTOR Technical Assistant to the Director Stratton, Dr Samuel W. *Schlink, Frederick J. 1913-19 ELECTRICAL DIVISION Technical Assistants Standards of Resistance Airplane gun control and other problems High frequency sound waves in water Centrifugal gim and other problems Inductance and Capacity Ballistics of large caliber guns Exterior ballistics of large caliber guns Interior ballistics of large caliber guns Subterranean sound investigations Machine gun synchronization Jump and whip of gun at time of firing Electrical Measuring Instruments Fire-control apparatus Ignition Electric trucks and tractors Rosa, Dr Edward B. Agnew, Dr Paul G. Crittenden, Dr Eugene C. Wenner, Dr Frank Macaulay, D. L. *Wright, Winthrop R. 1917-19 *Purington, Ellison S. 1915-19 Curtis, Dr Harvey L. *Duncan, Robert C. 1917-21 Richards, Horace C. *Moore, Harry H. 1915-23 Kester, Frederick E. Hufford, Mason E. Wood, Capt. H. O. Crane, 1st Lt. E. C. *Morgan, Raymond 1917-42 Mertz, Pierre Brooks, Dr Herbert B. *Stannard, Winfield H. 1909-19 Silsbee, Dr Francis B. *Dempsey, James B. 1916-39 *Gorton, William S. 1917-19 Farmer, T. O. *Source: Letter, Director NBS to Technical Information Section, Bureau of Air- craft Production, WD, for the General Staff, Sept. 20, 1918 (NBS Box 10, IG). *Schlink, to instrument control department, Firestone Tire and Rubber Co., 1919; assistant secretary, AESC, 1922; technical director and president. Consumers' Research, Inc., 1929. *Wright, returned to teaching, 1919. *Purington, to Hammond Radio Laboratory, Gloucester, Mass., 1919. *Duncan, to Bureau of Ordnance, Navy Department, 1921. * Moore, to Navy Department, 1923. *Morgan, to Department of Physics, University of Maryland, 1942. *Stannard, to Central Scientific Co., Chicago, 1919. *Demp8ey, retired. May 11, 1939. *Gorton, to Western Electric Co., New York, 1919. 577 578 APPENDIX J Magnetic Measurement Supervision of section; magnetic mines Sanford, Raymond L. Magnetic testing of metals for rifle barrels *Kou wenhoven. Prof. William B. Magnetic testing of airplane tie wires *Fisher, Melvin F. Airplane and marine comipasses Dawson, Leo H. Magnetic testing of welded ship plates Becker, James A. Photometry and Illuminating Engineering Special illuminating equipment Properties of incandescent lamps Methods of photometric measurement Field searchlights Radio Communications Section Vacuum tube measurements Radio measurements Radio design Radio development Taylor, Dr A. Hadley *Commery, Eugene W. *Skogland, James F. *Morse, Marie L. T. Karrer, Enoch *Willis, Benjamin S. Zahn, E. T. Beltz, H. H. Grover, Dr Frederick W. *Freeman, Herbert M. *Breit, Gregory Harmon, H. W. Merriman, A. G. Montgomery, N. Snow, H. A. Werden, E. T. Buckley, J. P. Dellinger, Dr J. Howard *Dunmore, Francis W. *Hull, Lewis M. Hillebrand, L. E. Kolster, Frederick A. *Lowell, Percival D. *McDowell, Louise S. *Miller, John M. Ould, Richard S. *Preston, J. L. 1913-43 1917-19 1908-31 1918-31 1917-24 1917-19 1918-19 1918-49 1913-24, 1941-62 1907-19 1918-23 *Kouwenhoven, returned to Johns Hopkins University staff. *Fisher, died Dec. 23, 1943. *Commery, to National Lamp Works, Nela Park, Cleveland, Ohio. *Skogland, died Feb. 10, 1931. *Morse, resigned, illness 1931. *Willis, to Iowa State College, 1919. *Freeman, to Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co., Pittsburgh, Pa., 1919. *Breit, to University of Leiden, Holland, on National Research Fellowship, 1919, and then to Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C. *Dunniore, retired, 1949. *Hull, L. M. to Radio Frequency Laboratory, Boonton, N.J. *Lowell, retired, 1962 (now consultant). *McDowell, to Wellesley College, Mass. *Miller, to Atwater Keiit Radio Corp., 1919. *Preston, to Bureau of Lighthouses. APPENDIX J 579 Radio Communications Section — Continued Radio development — Continued Electrolysis Prevention Sound ranging Electrolysis mitigation Standards of electric railway service Electrical Safety Engineering Public utility standards Industrial safety standards Electrical safety standards Wind pressure on wires Gas Engineering Coke ovens, toluol, gas standards Hydrogen gas plant operation *Southworth, George C. 1917-18 *Whittemore, Laurens E. 1917-24 Wade, W. G. *Willoughby, John A. 1916-22 McCollum, Burton Eckhardt, Dr Englehardt A. *Weibel, Dr Ernest E. *Karcher, Dr J. C. *Peters, Orville S. 1910-29 *Fisher, J. Carl Melton, E. R. Goren, David *Snyder, Carl F. 1909-60 *Shepard, Edgar R. 1914-33 Logan, Kirk H. Bailer, M. J. Monroe, W. P. Lloyd, Dr Morton G. *Oakes, Charles E. 1917-21 Sahm, Paul A. B. 1916-NRF ♦Waldschmidt, Albert Congdon, W. E. Dahm, P. E. McBride, Russell S. *Reinecker, Charles E. 1916-23 Lausley, J. W. *Berry, Walter M. 1916-23 *Southworth, to Yale University, 1918; American Telephone & Telegraph Co., New York, 1923. *Whittemore, to Bureau of Navigation, Department of Commerce, 1920; to Ameri- can Telephone & Telegraph Co., New York, 1925. *Willoughby, to the Naval Research Laboratory, 1922. *Weibel, killed in France, August 1918. *Karcher, to Western Electric, Chicago, 1923; later to Amerada Oil Co. *Peters, resigned to become consultant engineer, 1929. *Fisher, to Consolidated Gas and Electric Co., Baltimore, Md. *Snyder, retired 1960. *Shepard, to Department of Agriculture, 1933. *Oakes, to Pennsylvania Power and Light Co., Allentown, Pa. *Waldschmidt, to Patent Office, Department of Commerce, 1920. *Reinecker, to United Gas Improvement Co., Philadelphia, Pa. *Berry, to CaUfornia Gas Research Council, Los Angeles, Calif. 580 APPENDIX J Gas Engineering — Continued Natural gas, economic problems, standards Assistants in gas engineering Electrical Service Standards Electric light and power service Jurisdiction of state public service commissions Telephone Service Standards Supervision of telephone investi- gations Telephone traffic investigations Telephone equipment investigations Methods of measurement Assistant to Dr Taylor Standard cell and microphone inves- tigations The audion and its applications Transmission investigations Microphone investigations Electrochemistry Battery research and testing Chemistry of primary and storage batteries Development of galvanic piles Dry cell and small storage batteries Storage batteries Radioactivity and X— Ray Measurements Properties, use, and measure of lumi- nous materials X-ray apparatus and materials Self-luminous materials Morgan, C. S. Frankel, M. J. Gray, G. A. *Eiseman, John H. Meyer, J. Franklin Crawford, J. P. Wolff, Dr Frank A. Macomber, G. S. Brown, W. E. *Taylor, Dr Hawley O. Pike, C. E. *Shoemaker, Maynard P. Beltz, H. H. *Sasuly, Max Godfrey, C. M. Vinal, Dr George W. ♦Holler, Dr H. D. Sefton, Miss L. B. Schott, R. C. Roller, L. R. Cole, T. S. 1916-57 1905-36 1913-24 Assistant observer in investigations Application of self-luminous materials X-ray protective materials Dorsey, Dr N. Ernest Huff, Dr W. B. ♦Brown, Prof. T. B. Richmond, J. E. Taylor, M. D. McCrea, W. D. Yung-Kwai, Elizabeth Alderton, Nina M. ♦Eiseman, retired Dec. 31, 1957. *Taylor, H. O., to the Franklin Union, Boston, Mass., as director of the electrical department, 1921. ♦Shoemaker, to the Treasury Department, 1936. *Sasuly, reduction in force, 1924. ♦Holler, to Geology Department, Vassar College. ♦Brown, to George Washington University. APPENDIX J 581 WEIGHTS AND MEASURES Length, Time, and Capacity Section Calibration of scales, haemacytom- eters Stop watches (Ordnance), clocks (Shipping Board) Gas measuring devices, aviation in- struments Packaging of materials for oversea shipment Laws, Weights, and Measures Density and thermal expansion of liquids Dilution pipettes (haemacytometers) Gas Measuring Instruments Aircraft inclinometers, telephone transmitters, gas measuring, photog- raphy Thermal Expansivity Thermal expansion of airplane alloys, spark plug insulators, etc., silicon Mil scale study for Signal and Navy; rulings for Ordnance Gage Research Supervision of gage research Miscellaneous gages; weighing HEAT AND THERMOMETRY Thermometry Thermometer testing; airplane ther- mometry Thermal properties of methane Pyrometry Chief of high temperature investiga- . tions Optical and radiation pyrometry Optical glass Fischer, Louis A. Judson, Dr Lewis V. Maslin, M. Beal, Arthur F. Stillman, Marcus H. Roeser, Harry W. Peffer, Elmer L. Hill, E. E. Stillman, Marcus H. Souder, Dr Wilmer Hidnert, Dr Peter Eisinger, J. O. Souder, Dr Wilmer *Van Keuren, Harold L. *Briggs, Clarence A. Gordon, E. D. Fullmer, Irwin H. *Haigh, Joseph A. Bean, Howard S. Waidner, Dr Charles W. Wilhelm, Robert M. Martin, Frank W. Finkelstein, Joseph L. Foote, Dr Paul D. Fairchild, Charles O. Tool, A. Q. Valasek, Joseph 1914-34 1914-19 1910-24 1917-44 1908-20 *Van Keuren, to Wilton Tool Co., 1919. *Briggs, to Department of Agriculture, 1924. *Haigh, retired, Aug. 17, 1944 (disability). 582 APPENDIX J Pyrometry — Continued Gas explosions; spark plugs for air- planes Optical pyrometry and ionization Thermocouple testing; specific heats Melting points of refractories Coke ovens and optical glass (Signal Corps) Heat Measurements Heat measurement problems Thermal conductivity; balloon prob- lems Thermal properties of methane at low temperatures Torpedo investigations Thermodynamics Technical thermodynamics Low Temperature Operation of liquid air plant Low temperature testing Fire Resistance Fire tests of building columns Fire tests of reinforced concrete col- umns Fire resistance of structural mate- rials; methane Fire resistance and aspects of city building codes Airplane Power Plant Supervisor of airplane engine re- search Assistant to supervisor Aeronautic engine performance Mohler, Dr Fred L. Rognley, O. *Harrison, Thomas R. 1915-20 Dana, Leo L Christie, Pvt. J. L. Mueller, Eugene F. VanDusen, Dr Milton S. *Osborne, Nathan S. 1903-39 Stimson, Dr Harold F. 1916-60 *Sligh, Thomas S. Jr. 1916-26 Cragoe, Carl S. 1918-50 Jessup, Ralph S. Meyers, Cyril H. DuPriest, J. R. Buckingham, Dr Edgar Ford, Thomas B. ■ Cook, J. Williamson Ingberg, Simon H. , ♦Griffin, Harry K. 1908-21 *Hull, W. A. Fulton, W. C. Kanolt, Clarence W. *Glading, Frank W. 1914-19 Dickinson, Dr Hobart C. *James, William S. 1911-24 Anderson, G. V. Boreman, R. W. Brinkerhoff, V. W. Lapp, Sgt. C. J. Lee, T. E. *Harrison, resigned, 1920. ~ *08borne, retired 1939. ','.-,■'•:.. .r , *Sligh, to Studebaker Corp., 1926. . . ■ *Griffin, to Barnett Co., 1921. *Hull, to Terra Cotta Service, Chicago, 111., 1924. *Glading, to Baldwin Locomotive Works as industrial engineer. *James resigned, 1924. APPENDIX J 583 Airplane Power Plant — Continued Aeronautic engine performance — Continued Spark plugs Lubrication Carburetion Physical properties of carburetor air Radiators Indicators LIGHT AND OPTICAL INSTRUMENTS Long, A. R. McKenzie, D. Sparrow, Stanwood W. Stern, A. G. Scholz, W. P. Thomson, Malcolm Walden, C. O. Wetherill, Frederic V. Arnold, S. B. Bradshaw, G. R. Fonseca, Edward L. Honaman, R. Karl Johnson, G. M. Sawyer, L. G. Bingham, F. C. Grosklaus, O. Markle, F. H. Menzies, W. C. Schulze, J. E. Willey, B. Blackwell Brewer, R. E. Stanton, W. F. Tice, P. S. *Hoxton, Dr Llewelyn G. Brown, William B. Castleman, Robert A. Jr. *Harper, Dr D. Roberts Jr. Harvey, A. R. Haydoch, E. Kleinschmidt, Robert V. Parsons, S. R. Van de Water, Jean Voorhees, L. E. Newell, F. B. 1901-04, 1917-18 1909-25 Spectroscopy Infra-red spectroscopy and photog- raphy Color sensitive photographic emul- sions Meggers, Dr William F. *Burn8, Dr Keivin Kiess, Carl C. ♦Merrill, Dr Paul W. Ellis, J. H. * Walters, Francis M. 1913-19 1917- 1916-19 *Hoxton, returned to Physics Department, University of Virginia. *Harper, to engineering laboratory of General Electric Co., Schenectady, N.Y., Sept. 30, 1925. *Burns, to Allegheny Observatory, Pittsburgh, Pa. ♦Merrill, to Mt. Wilson Observatory. ♦Walters, to Carnegie Institute of Technology. 584 APPENDIX J Spectroscopy — Continued Photographic lens design Glass weathering, spectroscopic anal- ysis Polarimetry Magneto optics; sugar technology Physical chemistry of carbohydrates Physics relating to sugar testing Interferometry and Colorimetry Color standards; spectrophotometry; chromatic camouflage Dyes Lens Testing Effect of striae on optical glass Glass for goggles Camera designing for the Navy Optical designing for the Navy Lens design Radiometry Radiometers; photoelectric signaling Assistant Sound Transmission of sound in airplane ranging CHEMISTRY Physical Chemistry Physical constants and purification of methane; standard samples Analysis of gasolines *Mellor, Lewis L. *Burka, Samuel M. Bates, Frederick J. * Jackson, Dr Richard F. 1907-43 Phelps, Francis P. Priest, Irwin G. Gibson, Dr Kasson S. *Tyndall, E. P. T. McNicholas, Harry J. Mathewson, Capt. W. E. *Bennett, A. H. Smith, Thomas T. Wensel, Dr Henry T. Curtis, Dr Heber D. *Michelson, Albert A. Eckel, Arthur F. Schultz, Harry I. 1913-NRF White, H. S. Coblentz, Dr William W. Kahler, H. Jones, A. T. Hillebrand, Dr William F. *McKelvy, Ernest C. 1907-19 Taylor, Dr Cyril S. *Isaac8, Aaron 1913-34 *Yurow, Louis 1913-19 Simpson, D. H. Ruderman, A. *Mellor, to Bell & Howell. *Burka, to Optical Division, Patterson Airfield, Dayton, Ohio. *Jackson, died June 1, 1943. *Tyndall, to Iowa State University. *Bennett, to American Optical Co. *Michelson, returned to Physics Department, University of Chicago. *McKelvy, accidental death, Nov. 29, 1919. *Isaacs, resigned, 1934. *Yurow, resigned, 1919. • APPENDIX J 585 Electrochemistry Electrodeposition Commercial electroplating Analytical methods for plating Physical-chemical methods for plating Special plating problems Gas Chemistry Balloon fabrics: life tests, perme- ability Automatic gas analysis: nitrate plant; submarines Balloon gases Balloon temperatures Gas engine exhaust analysis Reagents and Apparatus Chemistry of the platinum metals Methods of testing chemical reagents Analytical Methods and Standard Samples Blum, Dr William Hogaboom, G. B. Liscomb, F. J. Slattery, T. J. Jencks, E. Z. Ritchie, LeMarr Ham, L. B. Bell, A. D. Madsen, C. P. *Edwards, Junius D. Moore, Irwin L. Pickering, S. F. Schoch, H. K. Saper, P. G. *Franklin, Dr E. C. Frantz, H. W. Gordon, B. D. Mackenzie, J. D. Palmer, P. E. Crump, C. C. Weaver, Elmer R. Young, S. W. *Bliss, Dr W. J. A. Ledig, P. G. Long, Maurice B. MacPherson, Dr Archibald T. Smither, Frederick W. Wichers, Dr Edward Gilchrist, Dr Raleigh A. Sive, Benjamin E. 1913-19 Tungsten, molybdenum, zirconium analysis Methods of iron and steel analysis Determination of zirconium in ores Determination of tungsten in ores Lundell, Dr Gustave E. F. *Witmer, Luther F. Hoffman, James I. Silwinski, A. A. *Knowles, Howard B. Rennie, W. E. 1918- 1917-63 1918-62 1917-48 1909-20 1918-62 1913-50 *Edwards, resigned, 1919. *Franklin, returned to Chemistry Department, Stanford University. *Bliss, returned to Chemistry Department, Johns Hopkins University. *Witmer, resigned, 1920. *Knowle8, retired, June 29, 1950. 586 APPENDIX J Oils, Rubber, Paper, Textiles, Ink, Glue Lubricants Waters, Campbell E. Airplane dopes and related subjects Smith, W. Harold Jacobson, I. M. Leather Whiti..ore, Lester M. Dyestuffs Mathewson, W. E. : ' Clark, Edgar R. Textile dyeing Sleeper, R. R. Rubber analysis Epstein, Samuel W. Printing inks Basseches, J. L. Metals, Cement, and Bituminous Materials Cement, alloys, and bituminous ma- Voorhees, Sanuiel S. terials Corrosion of metals Toluol benzol Paint, Varnish, and Soap Paint, varnish, detergents Varnish, drying oils, enamels Preservative materials Bright, Harry A. *Fitch, Roy O. *Scherrer, John A. Burger, E. N. Finn, Alfred N. Washburn, Frederic McL. Walker, Dr Percy H. *Bower, John H. McNeil, Hiram C. *Schmidt, George C. *Lewis, A. J. Demovsky, A. Cooke, Sgt. G. W. *Wertz, Franklin A. Prince, Lt. K. P. ENGINEERING INSTRUMENTS Mei'hanical Appliances and Engineering Instruments Mechanical applicances Theory and design of measuring in struments Engineering instruments Wormeley, Philip L. Schlink, Frederick J. Aviation Instruments Altimeters, elasticity, viscosity Ground speed indicators Gyroscopic stabilizers and bomb sights Vibrations in airplanes Stutz, Walter F. Hodge, Orlando J. Raster, F. S. Hersey, Dr Mayo D. Hunt, Dr Franklin L. Franklin, Dr W. S. *Nusbaum, Dr Christian 1910-57 1913-60 1913-18 1910-40 1911-42 1918-37 1914-48 1914^22 1914-20 1913-18 1917-24 *Fitch. died Oct. 13, 1918. *Scherrer, retired, Dec. 31, 1940. *Bower, retired, June 30, 1948. *Schmidt, resigned 1922. *Lewis, to H. H. Franklin Manufacturing Co., Syracuse, 1920. *Wertz, resigned, 1918. *Nusbaum, returned to Case School of Applied Science, Cleveland, Ohio. APPENDIX J 587 Aviation Instruments — Continued Tachometers Elastic properties of diaphragms Rate of climb indicators Oxygen control apparatus Air speed indicators Inclinometers Bimetallic strips Aviation Physics Aerodynamical laboratory investiga- tions Wind tunnel investigations Scientific instrument design Construction of research apparatus ENGINEERING, STRUCTURAL, AND MISCELLANEOUS MATERIALS Metals Metal airplane construction Airplane instruments Calibration testing machines Strength of welded ship plates Strength of reinforced concretes Impact strength of steel Impact strength of wood Causes of failure in steel rails Strength of full-length airplane beams Strength of military construction materials Cement, Concrete, Stone, Gravel, Sand Reversal of stress on concrete beams Concrete investigations Washburn, George E. Sylvander, Roy C. Rawlins, C. H. Nelms, W. S. Mears, Atherton H. Hoffman, Leslie A. Smith, B. A. Keat, W. G. Stearns, Howard O. Stillman, Marcus H. Peterson, J. B. Briggs, Dr Lyman J. Heald, Roy H. Upton, Frederick E. McMurdie, Alex M. Cook, Robert Simpson, W. S. Blackwood, W. J. Dolmar, M. Oser, O. Voorhees, Dr Samuel S. Whittemore, Dr. Herbert L. Johnston, R. S. *McNair, Dr F. W. Templin, Richard L. Moore, H. F. Hoffman, Charles P. Curts, H. L. Larson, L. J. Gushing, B. L. Robbins, L. L. Anderson, H. A. Sorey, T. L. Wise, F. J. Rynders, G. W. Smith, George A. Kessler, Daniel W. 1916-26 *McNair, to presidency of Michigan School of Mines. *Smith, resigned, 1926. 786-167 O- 588 APPENDIX J Cement, Concrete, Stone, Gravel, Sand — Continued Concrete ship construction problems Design of reinforced concrete Effect of alkali and sea water on con- crete Volume change in concrete Miscellaneous Materials Section chief Lubricants Leather Rubber Textiles Airplane fabrics Cotton fabrics Wool fabrics and felt General military fabrics Textile microscopy Ceramics (Pittsburgh Laboratory) Chemistry of cements, clay, glass Maconi, G. V. Davis, Watson Slater, W. A. *Wimams, Guy M. Laubly, Charles S. Wormeley, Philip L. Herschel Dr Winslow H. Hart, Reeves W. Cheney, Walter L. Bowker, Roy C. Wallin, F. W. *Patrick, Erwin C. Collier, S. Morgan, W. F. Linscott, R. F. Bond, E. R. *Walen, Ernest D. Fisher, Russell T. Dickson, E. E. Bauldry, C. E. Perkins, J. H. Webster, P. Spicer, E. McGavan, F. R. Duman, R. W. ,, Philpot, I. Wackman, C. F. Basche, H. 1911-23 Sleeker, H. C. Royal, H. F. Maag, O. L. Structural Materials (Pittsburgh Laboratoi-y) Physical properties of portland and *Par8ons, Walter E. sorel cements Greenwald, A. H. Properties of cements and concretes Bates, Phaon H. Fire Resisting Materials (Pittsburgh Laboratory) Fire-resisting qualities of structural *Hull, Walter A. materials. Fulton, W. C. Gunning, R. T. 1912-20 1914r-19 1916-20 1914-23 * Williams, resigned, 1923. *Patrick, to Mason Tire and Rubber Co., Kent, Ohio, as chief chemist and engineer, 1920. *Walen, to manager. Textile Research Co., Boston, 1919. *Parsons, reduction in force, 1920. *Hull, W. A., to Northwestern Terra Cotta Co., Chicago, 111., 1923. APPENDIX J 589 Steel, Concrete, Cement (Pittsburgh Laboratory) Steel columns, building tile Hathcock, Bernard D. Griffith, John H. Virgin, W. H. Earth resistance of cement and con- crete Cement, concrete, wire rope, manila rope Paper Section chief Wall board, adhesives, test methods *Conley, Albert D. Paper for gas masks and airplane fab- Durgin, Albert G. *Newell, Palmer F. Clark, Dr Frederick C. Operation of paper machine for gas masks Microphotography of balloon fabrics Optical methods for testing gas mask paper Paper samples from military agencies METALLURGY DIVISION Microscopy of Metals Microscopy studies; corrosion of non- ferrous alloys Microstructure of ordnance steels, brass Harding, R. H. Houston, P. L. Bicking, G. W. Loftan, R. E. Curtis, Cpl. Frederick A. Mendel, Pvt. J. P. Burgess, Dr George K. Rawdon, Dr Henry S. Nauss, George M. Heat Treatment and Thermal Analysis Heat treatment of steels; rust proofing Heat treatment of metallic alloys Grossmann, Marcus A. Freeman, John R. Jr. *Scott, Howard Physical Properties and Miscellaneous Light aluminum alloys; electric weld- ing Bearing metals; tin conservation Tin conservation; solders Electric welding Merica, Dr Paul D. *Waltenberg, Romaine G. France, R. Oesterle, Pvt. J. F. *Woodward, Dr Raymond W. Gurevich, Louis J. Hurvitz, B. I916-NRF 1911-NRF 1913-NRF 1916-NRF 1912-25 1912-21 1914-21 *Hathcock, resigned, 1919. *Griffith, resigned, 1919. *Newell, resigned, 1919. *Conley, resigned, 1919. *Scott, resigned, 1925. *Waltenburg, resigned, 1921. *Woodward, to Whitney Manufacturing Co., Hartford, Conn., as chief metallurgist. 590 APPENDIX J Chemical Metallurgy Preparation of alloys Methods for determining gases in steel, iron General metallurgical research Foundry and Mechanical Plant Aluminum alloys for airplane work Foundry work in aluminum alloy re- search Molding sands; vitreous enamels for metals CLAY PRODUCTS Ceramics Special spark plugs, optical glass, light clay aggregates for concrete ships, graphite crucibles, porcelain studies Spark plugs for airplanes Containers for firing airplane spark plugs Optical Glass Optical glass research Lime Lime and gypsum products Jordan, Louis Owens, A. W. Wetmore, A. S. Cain, Dr John R. Karr, Carydon P. Flegel, A. Staley, Prof. Homer F. Bleininger, Dr Albert V. Bleininger, Dr Albert V. Riddle, F. H. Wright, Joseph W. Fuller, D. E. McDaniel, W. W. *Cutler, Charles H. Geiger, C. F. Hornung, M. R. Gregory, M. C. Rand, C. C. Payne, A. R. Dodd, L. E. Roberts, George C. McKee, A. P. Zimmer, Casper Williams, W. S. Noyes, M. P. Kirkpatrick, Frank A. Orange, William B. ,- Householder, F. F. 1914-31 *Cutler, retired, Nov. 30, 1931. CHIEFS OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL STAFF as of January 1, 1920 DIRECTOR *Stratton, Dr Samuel W. Technical Assistant to the Director Brown, Dr Fay C. 1919-27 I. ELECTRICAL *Rosa, Dr Edward B. 1. Standards of Resistance Wenner, Dr Frank 2. Inductance and Capacity Curtis, Dr Harvey L. 3. Electrical Measurings Instru- Brooks, Dr Herbert B. ments 4. Magnetic Measurements Sanford, Raymond L. 1910-54 5. Photometry and Illuminating *Taylor, Dr A. Hadley Engineering 6a. Radio Research and Testing Dellinger, Dr J. Howard 6b. Radio Development *KoIster, Frederick A. ^ 7. Electrolysis Prevention McCoUum, Burton 8. Safety Engineering Lloyd, Dr Morton G. 9. Gas Engineering *McBride, Russell S. 10. Electrical Service Standards Meyer, Dr J. Franklin 11. Telephone Service Standards Wolff, Dr Frank A. 12. Electrochemistry Vinal, Dr George W. 13. Radioactivity and X-ray Dorsey, Dr N. Ernest Measurements I. WEIGHTS AND MEASURES *Fischer, Louis A. 1. Length Judson, Dr Lewis V. 1917-65 2. Mass Pienkowsky, Dr Arthur T. 3. Time *Beal, Arthur F. 1917-23 4. Capacity and Density Peffer, Elmer L. 5. Gas Measuring Instruments *StilIman, Marcus H. 1910-20 6. Thermal Expansivity Souder, Dr Wilmer 1910-13, 1917-54 ♦Stratton, to M.I.T. as president, Jan. 1, 1923; died Oct. 18, 1931. *Rosa, died May 17, 1921. ♦Taylor, A. Hadley, to Nela Park, Cleveland, 1921. *Kol8ter, resigned to join Federal Telegraph Co., 1921. *McBride, to McGraw-Hill, 1920, later private consulting chemical engineer. ♦Fischer, died July 25, 1921. *Beal, to Census Bureau, 1923. *Stillman, to Fairbanks Scale Co., 1920. 591 592 APPENDIX J II. WEIGHTS AND MEASURES — Continued Holbrook, Fay S. 7. Weights and Measures Laws and Administration 8. Investigation, Testing of Scales 9. Gages III. HEAT AND THERMOMETRY 1. Thermometry 2. Pyrometry 3. Heat Measurements 4. Thermodynamics 5. Cryogenic Laboratory 6. Fire Resistance 7. Airplane and Automotive Power Plant IV. LIGHT AND OPTICAL INSTRU- MENTS 1. Spectroscopy 2. Polarimetry 3. Colorimetry 4. Refractometry and Optical Instruments Holbrook, Fay S. Bearce, Henry W. 1908-45 *Waidner, Dr Charles W. *Wilhelm, Robert M. Foote, Dr Paul D. Mueller, Eugene F. *Buckingham, Dr Edgar Kanolt, Clarence W. Ingberg, Simon H. Dickinson, Dr Hobart C. Skinner, Dr Clarence A. 1919-41 Meggers, Dr William F. Bates, Frederick J. Priest, Irwin G. *Schultz, Harry I. 1913-20 5. Radiometry Coblentz, Dr WilUam W. 6. Dispersoids *Well8, Dr Philip V. 7. Photographic Technology (Planned) 8. Interferometry Peters, Chauncey G. 9. Searchlight Investigations *Karrer, Enoch 1918-22 V. CHEMISTRY HiUebrand, Dr William F. 1. Physical Chemistry *Taylor, Dr Cyril S. 1913-20 2. Electrochemistry Blum," Dr William 3. Metallurgical Chemistry *Cain, Dr John R. 4. Gas Chemistry "Weaver, Elmer R. 5. Reagents and Apparatus Smither, Frederick W. 6. Analytical Methods, Standard Lundell, Dr Gustave Samples E. F. 7. Oils, Rubber, Paper, etc. Waters, Campbell E. 8. Metals, Cement, Bituminous *Voorhee8, Samuel S. Materials 9. Paint, Varnish, Soap Walker, Dr Percy H. *Waidner, died Mar. 11, 1922. *Wilhelm, to C. J. Tagliabue Manufacturing Co., Aug. 31, 1920. *Buckingham, consultant to engineering physics division, NBS, 1923-37; retired 1937; died Apr. 29, 1940. *SchuItz, resigned to set up private business, 1920. *Wells, to E. I. duPont (Redpath Laboratories), Parlin, N.J., 1923. *Karrer, to General Electric, 1922. *Taylor, to Aluminum Company of America, in research laboratory, 1920. *Cain, NBS Research Associate, 1921-36; member of NBS, 1936 until retirement May 31, 1945. *Voorhee8, died Sept. 21, 1921. APPENDIX J 593 VI. ENGINEERING PHYSICS 1. Mechanical Appliances 2. Engineering Instruments 3. Aviation Instruments 4. Aviation Physics 5. Special Investigations (Sound) VII. ENGINEERING, STRUCTURAL, AND MISCELLANEOUS MA- TERIALS 1. Metal Structures 2. Cement, Sand, Stone, etc. 3. Rubber, Leather, etc.- 4. Textiles 5. Paper 6. Lubricating Oils 7. Lime, Gypsum, Sand, Brick VIII. METALLURGY 1. Microscopy of Metals 2. Heat Treatment and Thermal Analysis 3. Physical Properties of Metals 4. Chemical Metallurgy 5. Foundry and Mechanical Plant IX. CERAMICS 1. Clay Products 2. Optical Glass 3. Refractories 4. Enameled Metal Products MISCELLANEOUS Sound Stratton, Dr Samuel W. Wormeley, Philip L. Stutz, Walter F. *Hersey, Dr Mayo D. Briggs, Dr Lyman J. *Hayford, John F. Stratton, Dr Samuel W. Whittemore, Herbert L. *Pear8on, Joseph C. Wormeley, Philip L. *McGowan, Frank R. *Curti8, Frederick A. *Herschel, Dr Winslow H. Emley, Warren E. Burgess, Dr George K. Rawdon, Dr Henry S. French, Herbert J. Burgess, Dr George K. Cain, Dr John R. *Karr, Carydon P. *Bleininger, Dr Albert V. Bleininger, Dr Albert V. *Taylor, William H. *Staley, Homer F. Staley, Homer F. Eckhardt, Dr Englehardt A. 1917-46 1917-21 1917-46 1918-25 1918-24 1919-29 1918-25 1918-20 1917-25 *Hersey, NBS consultant, 1921-22; in physics laboratory of U.S. Bureau of Mines, 1922-26; retuined to Bureau 1926. *Hayford, completed investigation, June 30, 1921. *Pearson, to Lehigh Portland Cement Co., AUentown, Pa., 1924. *McGowan, to Cotton Textile Institute, New York, as director, Jan. 30, 1925; continued as consultant to NBS. *Curtis, to American Writing Paper Co., Holyoke, Mass., 1924. *Herschel, section discontinued; continued research until retirement, Aug. 31, 1943. *Karr, died June 10, 1925. *Bleininger, to Homer Laughlin China Co., West Virginia, 1923. *Taylor, W. Hadley, to Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., 1925. *Staley, former professor in department of ceramic engineering, Iowa State College; resigned to enter commercial work, Dec. 31, 1920. CHIEFS OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL STAFF as of February 1, 1925 DIRECTOR Assistant to the Director I. ELECTRICAL 1. Resistance Measurements 2. Inductance and Capacitance 3. Electrical Measuring Instru- ments 4. Magnetic Measurements 5. Photometry and Illuminating Engineering 6. Radio Communication 7. Electrolysis Prevention 8. Safety Engineering 9. Electrochemistry 10. Telephone Standards II. WEIGHTS AND MEASURES L Length 2. Mass 3. Time 4. Capacity and Density 5. Gas Measuring Instruments 6. Thermal Expansivity 7. Weights and Measures Laws Administration 8. Investigation and Testing of Scales 9. Gages III. HEAT AND POWER 1. Thermometry 2. Pyrometry Burgess, Dr George K. *BrowTi, Dr Fay C. Crittenden, Dr Eugene C. Wenner, Dr Frank Curtis, Dr Harvey L. Brooks, Dr Herbert B. Sanford, Raymond L. Meyer, Dr J. Franklin Dellinger, Dr J. Howard *McCollum, Burton Lloyd, Dr Morton G. Vinal, Dr George W. Wolff, Dr Frank A. Holbrook, Fay S., and Bearce, Henry W. Judson, Dr Lewis V. Pienkowsky, Dr Arthur T. Gould, Ralph E. Peffer, Elmer L. Bean, Howard S. Souder, Dr Wilmer Smith, Ralph W. *Roe8er, Harry W. Miller, David R. Dickinson, Dr Hobart C. Mueller, Eugene F. *Fairchild, Charles O. 1918-50 1917-58 1920-50 1908-52 1915-26 *Brown, to Museum of the Peace Arts (later renamed New York Museum of Science and Industry) as director, 1927. *McCollum, to McCoUum Geological Exploration Inc., as technical director, 1926. . *Roeser, separated in reduction in force, June 30, 1934; contract employee from 1944 to death in 1950. *Fairchild, to Tagliabue Manufacturing Co., Brooklyn, N.Y., 1926. 594 APPENDIX J 595 III. HEAT AND POWER— Continued 3. Heat Measurements 4. Heat Transfer 5. Cryogenic Laboratory 6. Fire Resistance 7. Automotive Power Plant IV. OPTICS 1. Spectroscopy 2. Polar inietry 3. Colorimetry 4. Optical Instruments 5. Radiometry 6. Atomic Physics, Radium, X- Ray 7. Photographic Technology 8. Interferometry V. CHEMISTRY 1. Paints, Varnishes, Bituminous Materials 2. Detergents, Cement, Corrosion 3. Rubber, Lubricants, Textiles, Inks 4. Metal and Ore Analysis and Standard Samples 5. Reagents 6. Electrochemistry 7. Gas Chemistry VI. MECHANICS AND SOUND 1. Engineering Instruments and Mechanical Appliances 2. Sound Mueller, Eugene F. (Vacant) *Kanolt, Clarence W. Ingberg, Simon H. *Sparrow, Stanwood W. Skinner, Dr Clarence A. Meggers, Dr William F. Bates, Frederick J. Priest, Irwin G. Gardner, Dr Ii-vine C. Coblentz, Dr William W. *Foote, Dr Paul D. Davis, Raymond Peters, Chauncey G. ♦Hillebrand, Dr William F. Walker, Dr Percy H. Smither, Frederick W. Waters, Campbell E. Lundell, Dr Gustave E. F. Wichers, Dr Edward Blum, Dr William Weaver, Elmer R. Briggs, Dr Lyman J. Stutz, Walter F. *Eckhardt, Dr Englehardt A. 1918-26 1921-59 1911-58 3. Aeronautic Instruments Eaton, Herbert A. 1918-53 4. Aerodynamical Physics Dryden, Dr Hugh L. 1918-47 5. Engineering Mechanics Whittemore, Herbert L. VII. STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING Bates, Phaon H. AND MISCELLANEOUS MA- TERIALS 1. Structural and Engineering (Vacant) Materials *Kanolt, to Cryogenic Laboratory, Bureau of Mines, 1925; later to Farrand Optical Co., N.Y. *Sparrow, to Studebaker Corp. as director of research, 1926. *Foote, to Gulf Research and Development Co., Pittsburgh, as director of research, Aug. 1, 1927; returned through National Academy of Sciences in 1960 as Executive Secretary of NAS-NRC Technical Advisory Panels to NBS *Hillebrand, died Feb. 7, 1925. *Eckhardt, to Gulf Research and Development Co. as geophysicist, 1925; to Marian Refining Co., Oklahoma, as assistant chief of research, 1927. 596 APPENDIX J VII. STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING AND MISCELLANEOUS MA- TERIALS— Continued 2. Cement, Sand, Stone 3. Rubber, Leather, etc. 4. Textiles 5. Paper 6. Lime, Gypsum, etc. VIII. METALLURGY 1. Optical Metallurgy 2. Thermal Metallurgy 3. Mechanical Metallurgy 4. Chemical Metallurgy 5. Experimental Foundry IX. CERAMICS L Pottery 2. Optical Glass 3. Refractories 4. Enameled Metals BUILDING AND HOUSING SIMPLIFIED PRACTICE STANDARDIZATION OF SPECI- FICATIONS Federal Specifications Industrial Specifications ♦Hitchcock, Frank A. 1918-26 Wormeley, Philip L. (Vacant) Scribner, Bourdon W. 1923-52 ♦Porter, John M. 1921-28 *Gillett, Dr Horace W. 1924-29 Rawdon, Dr Henry S. ♦French, Herbert J. ♦Freeman, John R. Jr. 1918-29 Jordan, Louis 1917-36 Saeger, Charles M. Jr. 1918-45 Bates, Phaon H. ♦Wadleigh, Walter H. 1918-34 Finn, Alfred N. 1911-42 Geller, Roman F. 1918-55 ♦Wolfram, Harold G. 1923-26 ♦Gries, Dr John M. 1921-28 ♦Hudson, Ray M. " 1922-29 Burgess, Dr George K. (Chairman, Federal Specifications Board) ♦Harriman, Norman F. 1921-33 McAlUster, Dr Addams 1923-45 S. ♦Hitchcock, to George Washington University, 1926. ♦Porter, to American Cyanamid Co., 1928. ♦Gillett, to Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, Ohio, as director, 1929. ♦French, to research laboratory. International Nickel Co. of New Jersey, 1929 (died 1955). ♦Freeman, to American Brass Co., Waterbury, Conn., 1929. ♦Wadleigh, reduction in force, June 30, 1934. ♦Wolfram, to Porcelain Enamel Manufacturing Co., Baltimore, Md., 1926. ♦Gries, to Division of Public Construction, Department of Commerce, 1928. ♦Hudson, to New England Council, Boston, as technical advisor, 1929. ♦Harriman, to Treasury Department, 1933. ADMINISTRATIVE, SCIENTIFIC, AND TECHNICAL STAFF CHIEFS as of April 1, 1930 DIRECTOR Assistant Director for Research and Testing Assistant Director for Commercial Standardization I. ELECTRICAL 1. Resistance Measurements 2. Inductance and Capacitance 3. Electrical Instruments 4. Magnetic Measurements 5. Photometry 6. Radio 7. Underground Corrosion 8. Safety Standards 9. Electrochemistry 10. Telephone Standards II. WEIGHTS AND MEASURES 1. Length 2. Mass 3. Time 4. Capacity and Density 5. Gas Measuring Instruments 6. Thermal Expansivity 7. Weights and Measures Laws and Administration 8. Railroad Scales and Test Cars 9. Gages III. HEAT AND POWER 1. Thermometry 2. Pyrometry 3. Heat Measurements 4. Heat Transfer 5. Cryogenic Laboratory 6. Fire Resistance "Burgess, Dr George K. Briggs, Dr Lyman J. McAllister, Dr Addams S. Crittenden, Dr Eugene C. Wenner, Dr Frank Curtis, Dr Harvey L. Brooks, Dr Herbert B. Sanford, Raymond L. Meyer, Dr J. Franklin Dellinger, Dr J. Howard Logan, Kirk H. Lloyd, Dr Morton G. Vinal, Dr George W. Wolff, Dr Frank A. Holbrook, Fay S., and Bearce, Henry W. Judson, Dr Lewis V. Pienkowsky, Dr Arthur T. Gould, Ralph E. Peffer, Elmer L. Bean, Howard S. Souder, Dr Wilmer Smith, Ralph W. Holbrook, Fay S. Miller, David R. 1911-44 Dickinson, Dr Hobart C. Busse, Miss Johanna 1918-49 Wensel, Dr Henry T. 1917-46 Mueller, Eugene F. VanDusen, Dr Milton S. 1913-46 Brickwedde, Dr Ferdi- 1925-57 nand G. Ingberg, Simon H. *Burges8, died July 2, 1932. 597 598 APPENDIX J III. HEAT AND POWER— Continued 7. Automotive Power Plant 8. Friction and Lubrication IV. VI. Cummings, Herbert K. 1922-53 *Hersey, Dr Mayo D. Skinner, Dr Clarence A. Meggers, Dr William F. Bates, Frederick J. *Priest, Irwin G. Gardner, Dr Irvine C. Coblentz, Dr William W. Mohler, Dr Fred L. 1917-60 Davis, Raymond Peters, Chauncey G. *Washburn, Dr Edward W. 1926-34 Washburn, Dr Edward W. Walker, Dr Percy H. Smither, Frederick W. Waters, Campbell E. Lundell, Dr Gustave E. F. Wichers, Dr Edward Blum, Dr William Weaver, Elmer R. Briggs, Dr Lyman J. Stutz, Walter F. Heyl, Dr Paul R. 1920-42 Brombacher, Dr William 1927-54 G. Dryden, Dr Hugh L. Whittemore, Herbert L. Eaton, Herbert N. MA- Emley, Warren E. Wormeley, Philip L. Appel, William D. 1922-59 Scribner, Bourdon W. Bowker, Roy C. 1918-43 Rawdon, Dr Henry S. Rawdon, Dr Henry S. *Dowdell, Dr Ralph L. 1928-30 Swanger, William H. 1921-42 Jordan, Louis Saeger, Charles M. Jr. *Hersey, senior physicist, 1928-31; to Vacuum Oil Co., New Jersey, 1931. driest, died July 19, 1932. *Washburn, died Feb. 6, 1934. *Dowdell, to University of Minnesota, as Chairman, Department of Metallurgy, 1930. VII. VIII. OPTICS . u 1. Spectroscopy 2. Polarimetry 3. Colorimetry 4. Optical Instruments 5. Radiometry 6. Atomic Physics, Radium, X-rays 7. Photographic Technology 8. Interferometry CHEMISTRY 1. Physico-chemical Research 2. Paints, Varnish, Bituminous Materials 3. Detergents, Cement, Corrosion 4. Rubber, Lubricants, Textiles 5. Metal and Ore Analysis, Stand- ard Samples 6. Reagents and Platinum Metals 7. Electrochemistry 8. Gas Chemistry MECHANICS AND SOUND 1. Engineering Instruments and Mechanical Appliances 2. Sound 3. Aeronautic Instruments 4. Aerodynamical Physics 5. Engineering Mechanics 6. Hydraulic Laboratory ORGANIC AND FIBROUS TERIALS 1. Rubber 2. Textiles 3. Paper 4. Leather METALLURGY 1. Optical Metallurgy 2. Thermal Metallurgy 3. Mechanical Metallurgy 4. Chemical Metallurgy 5. Experimental Foundry APPENDIX J 599 IX. CLAY AND SILICATE PROD- UCTS 1. Whiteware 2. Glass 3. Refractories 4. Enamels 5. Heavy Clay Products 6. Cement and Concrete Mate- rials 7. Masonry Construction 8. Lime and Gypsum 9. Stone X. SIMPLIFIED PRACTICE 1. Stone, Clay and Glass 2. Wood, Textiles and Paper 3. Metal Products and Construc- tion Materials 4. Containers 5. Promotion and Adherence XI. BUILDING AND HOUSING 1. Building Codes ' ' - 2. Building Practice and Home- builders' Problemis 3. City Planning and Zoning 4. Construction Economics 5. Mechanics Liens XII. SPECIFICATIONS 1. Certification: Producer Con- tacts 2. Labeling: Consumer Contacts 3. Directory of Specifications 4. Encyclopedia of Specifications XIII. TRADE STANDARDS 1. Wood Products, Paper, Rub- ber, etc. 2. Metal Products 3. Textiles and Garments 4. Ceramic Products and Cement Bates, Phaon H. Geller, Roman F. Finn, Alfred N. Hemdl, Raymond A. 1923-55 , Harrison, WiUiam N. 1922-63 Stull, Ray T. 1927-44 Tucker, John Jr. 1916-17, 1926-49 Parsons, Douglas E. 1923-63 ♦Murray, James A. 1926-30 Kessler, Daniel W. 1914^52 Ely, Edwin W. 1923-47 *ColweU, Herbert R. 1921-31 Schuster, George *Dunn, Peter H. H. 1927-33 Braithwaite, William E. *Galt, Alexander B. 1924r-33 ♦Taylor, James S. 1921-34 Thompson, George N. 1923-55 Phelan, Vincent B. 1927-50 Taylor, James S. *Riggleman, Dr John R. 1929-33 ♦Wheeler, Daniel H. 1923-33 McAllister, Dr Addams S. ♦Martino, Robert A. 1923-33 McAllister, Dr Addams S. *Ingels, Clarence W. 1928-33 ♦Wardlaw, George A. 1930-33 Fairchild, Ihler J. 1922^5 ♦Steidle, Harry H. 1928-38 Fairchild, Ihler J. Fairchild, Ihler J. Wray, George W. ♦Murray, to Warner Co., Pittsburgh, as Director of Research, 1930; died 1960. ♦Colwell, to President's Emergency Committee for Employment, 1931. ♦Dunn, to Department of Interior, 1933. ♦Gait, resigned 1933. ♦Taylor, to Federal Housing Administration, 1934. ♦Riggleman, to National Recovery Administration, 1933. ♦Wheeler, to Federal Emergency Administration, 1933. ♦Martino, to National Recovery Administration, 1933; returned briefly to NBS in 1940. *Ingels, to Navy Department, 1933. ♦Wardlaw, to Navy Department, 1933 ♦Steidle, to private industry, 1938. ADMINISTRATIVE, SCIENTIFIC, AND TECHNICAL STAFF CHIEFS as of November 15, 1934 DIRECTOR Assistant to the Director Briggs, Dr Lyman J. Hubbard, Henry D. 1901-38 ASSISTANT DIRECTORS Assistant Director for Research and Crittenden, Dr Eugene C. Testing Assistant Director for Commercial McAllister, Dr Addams S. Standardization I. ELECTRICAL 1. Resistance Measurements 2. Inductance and Capacitance 3. Electrical Instruments 4. Magnetic Measurements 5. Photometry 6. Radio 7. Underground Corrosion 8. Electrochemistry 9. Telephone Standards II. WEIGHTS AND MEASURES 1. Length 2. Mass • , 3. Time 4. Capacity and Density 5. Gas Measuring Instruments 6. Thermal Expansivity, Dental Materials 7. Weights and Measures Laws and Administration 8. Railroad Scales and Test Cars 9. Gage Standardization III. HEAT AND POWER 1. Thermometry 2. Pyrometry 3. Heat Measurements Crittenden, Dr Eugene C. Wenner, Dr Frank Curtis, Dr Harvey L. *Brooks, Dr Herbert B. Sanford, Raymond L. Meyer, Dr J. Franklin Dellinger, Dr J. Howard Logan, Kirk H. Vinal, Dr George W. Wolff, Dr Frank A. *Holbrook, Fay S., and Bearce, Henry W. Judson, Dr Lewis V. Pienkowsky, Dr Arthur T. Gould, Ralph E. Peffer, Elmer L. Bean, Howard S. Souder, Dr Wilmer Smith, Ralph W. Holbrook, Fay S. Miller, David R. Dickinson, Dr Hobart C. Busse, Miss Johanna Wensel, Dr Henry T. Mueller, Eugene F. *Brooks retired Jan. 31, 1939. ♦Holbrook, died Feb. 4, 1940. 600 APPENDIX J 601 III. HEAT AND POWER— Continued 4. Heat Transfer 5. Cryogenic Laboratory 6. Fire Resistance 7. Automotive Power Plant 8. Lubrication and Liquid Fuels IV. OPTICS 1. Spectroscopy 2. Polarimetry 3. Colorimetry - 4. Optical Instruments 5. Radiometry 6. Atomic Physics, Radium, X-Ray 7. Photographic Technology 8. Interferometry V. CHEMISTRY 0. Physico-chemical Research 1. Paints, Varnishes, etc. 2. Detergents, Cement, etc. 3. Organic Chemistry 4. Metal and Ore Analysis, Standard Samples 5. Reagents and Platinum Metals 6. Electrochemistry (Plating) 7. Gas Chemistry VI. MECHANICS AND SOUND 1. Engineering Instruments and Mechanical Applicances VanDusen, Dr Milton S. Brickwedde, Dr Ferdinand G. Ingberg, Simon H. Cummings, Herbert K. Bridgeman, Dr Oscar C. Skinner, Dr Clarence A. Meggers, Dr William F. Bates, Frederick J. Gibson, Dr Kasson S. Gardner, Dr Irvine C. Coblentz, Dr William W. Mohler, Dr Fred L. Davis, Raymond Peters, Chauncey G. ♦Walker, Dr Percy H. Smith, Dr Edgar R. Hickson, Eugene F. Smither, Frederick W. Waters, Campbell E. Lundell, Dr Gustave E. I Wichers, Dr Edward Blum, Dr William Weaver, Elmer R. Briggs, Dr Lyman J. Stutz, Walter F. 1927-45 1916-55 1926-57 1918-50 2. Sound Heyl, Dr Paul R. 3. Aeronautical Instruments Brombacher, Dr William G 4. Aerodynamical Physics Dryden, Dr Hugh L. 5. Engineering Mechanics Whittemore, Herbert L. 6. Hydraulic Laboratory Eaton, Herbert N. VIL ORGANIC AND FIBROUS MA- Emley, Warren E. TERIALS 1. Rubber McPherson, Dr Archibald T. 2. Textiles Appel, William D. 3. Paper Scribner, Bourdon W. 4. Leather Bowker, Roy C. 5. Testing and Specifications Wormeley, Philip L. 6. Industrial Utilization of Farm Acree, Dr Solomon F. Wastes 1927-45 *Walker, retired, August 1937; consulting chemist to National Lead Co. subsidiary, 1937. 602 APPENDIX J VIII. METALLURGY 1. Optical Metallurgy 2. Thermal Metallurgy 3. Mechanical Metallurgy 4. Chemical Metallurgy 5. Experimental Foundry IX. CLAY AND SILICATE PROD- UCTS 1. Whiteware 2. Glass 3. Refractories 4. Enameled Metals 5. Heavy Clay Products 6. Cement and Concreting Ma- terials 7. Masonry Construction 8. Lime and Gypsum 9. Stone X. SIMPLIFIED PRACTICE L Wood, Textiles, Paper 2. Metal Products and Construc- tion Materials 3. Containers and Miscellaneous Products 4. Handling Equipment and Ce- Rawdon, Dr Herbert S. McAdam, Dr Dunlop, J. Jr. *Jordan, Louis Swanger, William IL Thompson, Dr John G. Saeger, Charles M., Jr. Bates, Phaon H. Geller, Roman F. Finn, Alfred N. Heindl, Raymond A. Harrison, William N. Stull, Ray T. Tucker, John Jr. Parsons, Douglas E. Wells, Dr Lansing S. Kessler, Daniel W. Ely, Edwin W. Schuster, George Schuster, George Braithwaite, William E. Ely, Edwin W. 1930-48 1921-24, 1930-56 1930-54 XL TRADE STANDARDS Fairchild, Ihler J. 1. Wood, Wood Products, Oils, Fairchild, Ihler J etc. 2. Metal Products 3. Textiles and Garments 4. Ceramic and Cement Products Fairchild, Ihler, J. Ehrman, H. A. Reynolds, Floyd W. 5. Chemical and Miscellaneous Products. Reynolds, Floyd W. XII. CODES AND SPECIFICATIONS McAllister, Dr Addams S. 1. Safety Codes 2. Building Codes 3. Building Practice and Specifi- cations 4. Producer Contacts and Certifi- cation 5. Consumer Contacts and Label- ing 1918-19, 1930-NRF Lloyd, Dr Morton G. Thompson, George N. Phelan, Vincent B. Wray, George W. McAllister, Dr Addams S. * Jordan, to American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering, Jan. 25, 1936. ADMINISTRATIVE, SCIENTIFIC, AND TECHNICAL STAFF CHIEFS as of May 1, 1940 DIRECTOR Assistant to the Director Briggs, Dr Lyman J. ♦Hubbard, Henry D. ASSISTANT DIRECTORS Assistant Director for Research and Crittenden, Dr Eugene C. Testing Assistant Director for Commercial Stand- *McAUister, Dr Addams S. ardization I. ELECTRICITY 1. Resistance Measurements 2. Inductance and Capacitance 3. Electrical Instruments 4. Magnetic Measurements 5. Photometry 6. Radio 7. Underground Corrosion 9. Electrochemistry 10. Telephone Standards II. WEIGHTS AND MEASURES 1. Length 2. Mass 3. Time 4. Capacity and Density 5. Gas Measuring Instruments 6. Thermal Expansion, Dental Re- search 7. Weights and Measures Admin- istration 8. Large -capacity Scales 9. Limit Gages Crittenden, Dr Eugene C. *Wenner, Dr Frank Curtis, Dr Harvey L. Silsbee, Dr Francis B. Sanford, Raymond L. ♦Meyer, Dr J. Franklin Dellinger, Dr J. Howard Logan, Kirk H. Vinal, Dr George W. ♦Wolff, Dr Frank A. Bearce, Henry W. Judson, Dr Lewis V. ♦Pienkowsky, Dr Arthur T. Gould, Ralph E. Peffer, Elmer L. Bean, Howard S. Souder, Dr Wilmer Smith, Ralph W. Smith, Ralph W. MUler, David R. ♦Hubbard, retired Sept. 1, 1938; died 1945. ♦McAllister, retired, Feb. 28, 1945. ♦Wenner, retired, 1943. ♦Meyer, retired, Jan. 31, 1941 (ill health). ♦Wolff, retired, Apr. 30, 1941. ♦Pienkowsky, retired, 1944, and joined staff of Torsion Balance Co.; died Dec. 31, 1960. 786-167 O — 66 603 604 APPENDIX J III. HEAT AND POWER 1. Thermometry 2. Pyrometry 3. Heat Measurements 4. Heat Transfer 5. Cryogenic Laboratory 6. Fire Resistance 7. Automotive Power Plants 8. Lubrication and Liquid Fuels 9. Aviation Engines and Acces- sories IV. OPTICS 1. Spectroscopy 2. Polarimetry 3. Colorimetry and Spectropho- tometry 4. Optical Instruments 5. Radiometry 6. Atomic Physics, Radium, X- Rays 7. Photographic Technology 8. Interferometry V. CHEMISTRY 1. Paints, Varnishes, etc. 2. Detergents, Cement, etc. 3. Organic Chemistry 4. Metal and Ore Analysis, Stand- ard Samples 5. Reagents and Platinum Metals 6. Electrochemistry (Plating) 7. Gas Chemistry 8. Physical Chemistry 9. Thermochemistry and Consti- tution of Petroleum VI. MECHANICS AND SOUND 1. Engineering Instruments 2. Sound 3. Aeronautical Instruments 4. Aerodynamics 5. Engineering Mechanics 6. Hydraulics Dickinson, Dr Hobart C. BuBse, Miss Johanna *Wen8el, Dr Henry T. *Mueller, Eugene F. VanDusen, Dr Milton S. Brickwedde, Dr Ferdinand G. Ingberg, Simon H. Cummings, Herbert K. Bridgeman, Dr Oscar C. ♦Peters, Melville F. 1922-43 *Skinner, Dr Clarence A. Meggers, Dr William F. Bates, Frederick J. Gibson, Dr Kasson S. Gardner, Dr Irvine C. ♦Coblentz, Dr William W. Mohler, Dr Fred L. Davis, Raymond Peters, Chauncey G. Lundell, Dr Gustave E. F. Hickson, Eugene F. Smither, Frederick W. *Waters, Campbell C. Bright, Harry A. 1913-60 Wichers, Dr Edward Blum, Dr William Weaver, Elmer R. Smith, Dr Edgar R. Rossini, Dr Frederick D. 1928-50 Dryden, Dr Hugh L. Stutz, Walter F. *Heyl, Dr Paul R. Brombacher, Dr William G. Dryden, Dr Hugh L. Whittemore, Herbert L. Eaton, Herbert N. *Wensel, to General Staff, USA (Manhattan Project) 1942; acting chief, heat and power division 1945; assistant to Director on atomic energy research, 1946. *Mueller, retired, 1944. *Peters, to Titeflex Metal Hose Co., 1943. *Skinner, retired, Jan. 31, 1941; died 1961. *Coblentz, retired Jan. 1, 1945; NBS consultant; died Sept. 15, 1962. ♦Waters, retired, 1942. *Heyl, retired, July 1, 1942; died 1961. IPPENDIX J VII. ORGANIC AND FIBROUS MA- *Emley, Warren E. TERIALS 1. Rubber McPherson, Dr Archibald T 2. Textiles Appel, William D. 3. Paper Scribner, Bourdon W. 4. Leather *Bowker, Roy C. 5. Testing and Specifications Wormeley, Philip L. 6. Fiber Structure Acree, Dr Solomon F. 7. Organic Plastics Kline, Dr Gordon M. 605 1929-63 VIII. METALLURGY 1. Optical Metallurgy 2. Thermal Metallurgy 3. Mechanical Metallurgy 4. Chemical Metallurgy 5. Experimental Foundry IX. CLAY AND SILICATE PROD- UCTS 1. White ware 2. Glass 3. Refractories 4. Enameled Metals 5. Heavy Clay Products 6. Cement and Concreting Ma- terials 7. Masonry Construction 8. Lime and Gypsum 9. Stone X. SIMPLIFIED PRACTICE 1. Wood, Textiles, Paper 2. Metal Products and Construc- tion Materials 3. Containers and Miscellaneous Products 4. Materials Handling Equipment and Ceramics XL TRADE STANDARDS 1. Wood, Wood Products, etc. 2. Metal Products 3. Textiles 4. Apparel 5. Petroleum, Chemicals, Rubber 6. Export Standards Rawdon, Dr Herbert S. Rawdon, Dr Herbert S. McAdam, Dr Dunlop J., Jr. *Swanger, William S. Thompson, Dr John G. *Saeger, Charles M., Jr. Bates, Phaon H. Geller, Roman F. ♦Finn, Alfred N. Heindl, Raymond A Harrison, William N. *Stull, Ray T. Tucker, John Jr. Parsons, Douglas E. Wells, Dr Lansing S. Kessler, Daniel W. Ely, Edwin W. Schuster, George Schuster, George Braithwaite, William E. Ely, Edwin W. Fairchild, Ihler J. Medley, James W. Fairchild, Ihler J. Ehrman, H. A. Gilbert, L. R. Reynolds, Floyd W. ♦Countryman, Milton E. 1938-NRF 1940-42 *Emley, retired, Oct. 1, 1943; to War Production Board, 1943. *Bowker, to OSRD, 1943. *Swanger, died Aug. 19, 1942. *Saeger, retired, June 27, 1945. *Finn, died Sept. 21, 1942. *Stull, died Jan. 5, 1944. ♦Countryman, to War Production Board, 1942. 606 APPENDIX J XII. CODES AND SPECIFICATIONS McAllister, Dr Addams S. 1. Safety Codes 2. Building Codes 3. Building Practices and Spec- ifications 4. Producer Contracts and Cer- tification 5. Consumer Contracts and Labeling FIELD STATIONS Allentown, Pa. (Cement and Con- crete Materials) Riverside, Calif. (Cement and Concrete Materials) San Francisco, Calif. (Cement and Concrete Materials) Denver, Colo. (Cement and Con- crete Materials) Seattle, Wash. (Cement and Con- crete Materials) Clearing, 111. (Large-capacity Scale Testing) San Jose, Calif. (Cement and Con- crete Materials) Beltsville, Md. (Radio Trans- mitting Station) Meadows, Md. (Radio Sending Station) *Lloyd, Dr Morton G. Thompson, George N. Phelan, Vincent B. Wray, George W. Martino, Robert A. Moyer, W. N. Evans, D. N. Furlong, I. Cox, O. H. Carlson, Elmer T. Richard, C. L. Foster, Bruce E. George, William D. *Kirby, Samuel S. 1928-NRF 1935-NRF 1929-63 1926-41 *Lloyd, died Apr. 26, 1941. *Kirby, died Jan. 26, 1941. ADMINISTRATIVE, SCIENTIFIC, AND TECHNICAL STAFF CHIEFS as of July 1, 1945 DIRECTOR ASSISTANT DIRECTOR T. ELECTRICITY 1. Resistance Measurements 2. Inductance and Capacitance 3. Electrical Instruments 4. Magnetic Measurements 5. Radio 7. Underground Corrosion 9. Electrochemistry II. WEIGHTS AND MEASURES 1. Length 2. Mass 3. Time 4. Capacity and Density 5. Gas Measuring Instruments 6. Thermal Expansion; Dental Research 7. Weights and Measures Admin- istration 8. Large-capacity Scales 9. Limit Gages III. HEAT AND POWER 1. Thermometry *Briggs, Dr Lyman J. Crittenden, Dr Eugene C. Crittenden, Dr Eugene C. Silsbee, Dr Francis B. (Assistant) Thomas, Dr James L. 1927- *Curtis, Dr Harvey L. Silsbee, Dr Francis B. Sanford, Raymond L. *Dellinger, Dr J. Howard *Logan, Kirk H. Vinal, Dr George W. *Bearce, Henry W. Souder, Dr Wilmer ~ - (Assistant) Judson, Dr Lewis V. McCurdy, Lloyd B. ♦Gould, Ralph E. *Peffer, Elmer L. Bean, Howard S. Souder, Dr Wilmer Smith, Ralph W. Russell, H. Haig 1919- Miller, David R. *Dickinson, Dr Hobart C. Cragoe, Carl S. (Assist- 1918-50 ant) *Busse, Miss Johanna *Briggs, retired, Nov. 5, 1945; died Mar. 25, 1963. *Curtis, to Ordnance Development Division, 1946; retired late that year. *Dellinger, retired, Apr. 30, 1948; NBS consultant. *Logan, to Cast Iron Pipe Research Association, 1944. *Bearce, retired Sept. 30, 1945. *Gould, retired, 1950. *Pe£fer, died July 1948. *Dickinson, retired Oct. 31, 1945; died Nov. 27, 1949. *Cragoe, resigned 1950. *Busse, Miss, retired, 1949. 607 608 APPENDIX J III. HEAT AND POWER— Continued 2. Pyrometry 3. Heat Measurements 4. Heat Transfer 5. Cryogenics 6. Fire Resistance 7. Automotive Power Plants 8. Lubricants and Liquid Fuels 9. Aircraft Engines IV. OPTICS 1. Spectroscopy 2. Polarimetry 3. Photometry and Colorimetry 4. Optical Instruments 5. Radiometry 6. Atomic Physics 7. Photographic Technology 8. Interferometry 9. Radioactivity 10. X-Rays V. CHEMISTRY 1. Paints, Varnishes, Bituminous Materials 2. Detergents, Cements, Miscel- laneous Materials 3. Organic Chemistry 4. Metal and Ore Analysis; Standard Samples 5. Reagents and Platinum Met- als 6. Electrochemistry (Plating) 7. Gas Chemistrv 8. Physical Chemistry 9. Thermochemistry 10. pH Standards *VanDusen, Dr Milton S. Cragoe, Carl S. Dill, Richard S. Brickwedde, Dr Ferdinand G. *Ingberg, Simon H. *Brook8, Donald B. *Bridgeman, Dr Oscar C. *Cummings, Herbert K. *Bates, Frederick J. Gibson, Dr Kasson S. (Assistant) Meggers, Dr William F. Bates, Frederick J. Gibson, Dr Kasson S. Gardner, Dr Irvine C. Humphreys, Dr Curtis J. Mohler, Dr Fred L. Davis, Raymond *Peters, Chauncey G. Curtiss, Dr Leon F. Taylor, Dr Lauriston S. *Lundell, Dr Gustave E. F. Wichers, Dr Edward (Asst.) Hickson, Eugene F. *Smither, FrederickW. Smith, W. Harold , Bright, Harry A. Gilchrist, Dr Raleigh Blum, Dr William Weaver, Elmer R. Smith, Dr Edgar R. Rossini, Dr Frederick D. *Acree, Dr Solomon F. 1928-57 1922-24, 1927-49 1928-53 1926-61 1927- 1918-62 *VanDusen, retired, 1946. *Ingberg, retired, July 1, 1947. *Brooks, retired, 1949. *Bridgeman, to Phillips Petroleum Co., 1945. *Cummings, section discontinued; NBS consultant, 1948- . *Bates, F. J., retired, Jan. 31, 1947. *Peters, retired, 1949; died 1955. *Lundell, retired, June 1948; NBS consultant, 1948-50; died June 8, 1950. *Smither, retired, August 1946; died Mar. 8, 1961. *Acree, retired, Dec. 31, 1945; died Oct. 23, 1957. APPENDIX J 609 VI. MECHANICS AND SOUND 1. Engineering Instruments 2. Sound 3. Aeronautical Instruments 4. Aerodynamics 5. Engineering Mechanics 6. Hydraulics 7. Special Projects *Dryden, Dr Hugh L. *Tuckerman, Dr Louis B. (Assistant) *Stutz, Walter F. Cook, Dr Richard K. Brombacher, Dr William G. Dryden, Dr Hugh L. *Whittemore, Herbert L. Eaton, Herbert N. Eaton, Herbert N. R( JANIC AND FIBROUS MA- McPherson, Dr Archibald TERIALS T. *Wormeley, Philip L. (Assistant) 1. Rubber Wood, Dr Lawrence A. 2. Textiles Appel, William D. 3. Paper Scribner, Bourdon W. 4. Leather Wallace, Everett L. 5. Testing and Specifications Wormeley, Philip L. 6. Organic Plastics Kline, Dr Gordon M. VIII. METALLURGY 1. Optical Metallurgy 2. Thermal Metallurgy 3. Mechanical Metallurgy 4. Chemical Metallurgy 5. Experimental Foundry *Rawdon, Dr Herbert S. Thompson, Dr John G. (Assistant) Rawdon, Dr Herbert S. *McAdam, Dr Dunlop J. Jr. Roeser, William F. Thompson, Dr John G. Krynitsky, Alexander I. IX. CLAY AND SILICATE PROD- *Bates, Phaon H. UCTS Parsons, Douglas E. (Asst 1. Whiteware Geller, Roman F. 2. Glass Hahner, Clarence H. 3. Refractories Heindl, Raymond A. 4. Enameled Metals Harrison, William N. 6. Cement and Concreting Mate- ♦Tucker, John Jr. rials. 1919-49 1935- 1935- 1920-64 1918-50 1929- *Dryden, assistant director, NBS, January 1946; associate director, NBS, June 1946; to National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics as director of research, Sep- tember 1947; deputy administrator. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, August 1958. *Tuckerman, retired, Sept. 30, 1949. *Stutz, retired, 1947. *Whittemore, retired, Oct. 31, 1946. *Wormeley, retired, Dec. 31, 1947. *Rawdon, retired, Oct. 31, 1945. *McAdam, retired, 1947; NBS consultant, 1948- *Baies, P. H., retired, Sept. 15, 1945. ♦Tucker, died, Nov. 20, 1949. 610 APPENDIX J IX. CLAY AND SILICATE PRODUCTS— Continued 7. Masonry Construction Parsons, Douglas E. 8. Lime and Gypsum Wells, Dr Lansing S. 9. Stone Kessler, Daniel W. X. SIMPLIFIED PRACTICE 1. Wood, Textiles, Paper, Rubber 2. Metal and Mechanical Prod- ucts. 3. Containers and Miscellaneous Products. 4. Materials Handling Equip- ment and Ceramics. 5. Electrical Products 6. Construction Materials 7. Metal and Wood Working Tools. XI. TRADE STANDARDS 1. Wood, Wood Products, Paper 2. Metal Products 3. Textiles 4. Apparel 5. Chemical and Miscellaneous Products 6. Export Standards 7. Petroleum and Rubber Prod- ucts Ely, Edwin W. Schuster, George (Asst.) Schuster, George Umhau, George E. Braithwaite, William E. Ely, Edwin W. *Tait, Andres C. *Poiesz, Clemens J. Umhau, George E. 1942-50 1942-49 *Fairchild, Ihler J. Reynolds, Foyd W. (Asst.) Medley, J. W. ♦Powell, Franklin E. 1943-50 Ehrman, H. A. Gilbert, L. R. Reynolds, Floyd W. Barrett, Edward C. 1942-56 *Gale, G. S. 1942-47 XII. CODES AND SPECIFICATIONS 1. Safety Codes 2. Building Codes 3. Building Practices and Speci- fications 4. Producer Contacts and Certifi- cation 5. Consumer Contacts and Label- ing Thompson, George N. ^Dickinson, John A. (Asst.) 1919-59 Dickinson, John A. Thompson, George N. *Phelan, Vincent B. ♦Booth, Sherman F. 1939-62 *Cooley, Paul A. 1943-47 *Tait, transferred to Treasury Department, 1950. *Poiesz, to Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1949. *Fairchild, retired, 1945; to Plumbing Fixtures Association. *Powell, transferred to Defense Department, 1950. *Gale, reduction in force, 1947. ♦Dickinson, J. A., retired, Sept. 30, 1959. ♦Phelan, retired, Aug. 31, 1950. ♦Booth, retired, 1962. *Cooley, to Commodity Standards Division, Department of Commerce, to Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, 1951. 1947; APPENDIX J 611 ORDNANCE DEVELOPMENT Assistant Chief Engineer 1. Proof Operations 2. Analysis and Recording 3. Electronic Engineering 4. Mechanical Engineering 5. Production Engineering 6. Control Testing 7. Basic Engineering 8. Special Projects FIELD STATIONS Beltsville, Md. (Radio Trans- mitting Station). Sterling, Va. (Radio Receiving Station). Clearing, 111. (Standardization of Test Weight Cars). Allentown, Pa. (Cement Testing and Inspection). San Jose, Calif. (Cement Testing and Inspection). Riverside, Calif. (Cement Testing and Inspection). Seattle, Wash. (Cement Testing and Inspection). Denver, Colo. (Cement and Con- crete Materials Testing). San Francisco, Calif. (Cement, Concrete and Miscellaneous Materials). Diamond, Harry 1927-48 Astin, Dr Allen V. 1932- Hinman, Wilbur S. Jr. 1928-53 Godfrey, Theodore B. 1928-53 ♦White, Dr Thomas N. 1942-46 Page, Dr Chester H. 1941- Rahinow, Jacob 1934-53 *Brunetti, Dr Cledo 1941-49 *Heilprin, Dr Laurence B. 1941-51 ♦Miller, Dr Bertrand J. 1943-48 Silsbee, Dr Francis B. George, William D. *Pineo, Victor C. 1942-57 Russell, H. Haig Moyer, W. N. Foster, Bruce E. Evans, D. N. Winblade, F. N. ■ ~- ■ Cox, 0. H. Bohn, Richard A. 1928-NRF ♦Diamond, died. Mar. 21, 1948. ♦White, to Strategic Air Command, 1946. ♦Brunetti, to Stanford Research Institute as associate director, 1949. ♦Heilprin, to Taut Engineering Co. as consultant physicist, 1951. ♦Miller, to Zenith Radio Corp., June 1948. ♦Pineo, to Lincoln Laboratory, M.I.T., 1957. ADMINISTRATIVE, SCIENTIFIC, AND TECHNICAL STAFF CHIEFS as of March 1, 1950 DIRECTOR Condon, Dr. Eugene U. 1945-51 ASSOCIATE DIRECTORS ASSISTANTS TO THE DIRECTOR OFFICE OF SCIENTIFIC PUBLI- CATIONS OFFICE OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES I. ELECTRICITY AND OPTICS 1. Resistance Measurements 2. Inductance and Capacitance 3. Electrical Instruments 4. Magnetic Measurements 5. Photometry and Colorimetry 6. Optical Instruments 7. Photographic Technology 8. Electrochemistry II. METROLOGY 1. Length 2. Mass *Crittenden, Dr Eugene C. *Brode, Dr Wallace R. Vinogradoff, Dmitri I. Golovin, Nicholas E. Odishaw, Hugh Odishaw, Hugh *Smith, Ralph W. Bussey, William S. (As- sistant) Silsbee, Dr Francis B. Gibson, Dr Kasson S. (Assistant) Thomas, Dr James L. *Moon, Dr Charles Defandorf, Dr Francis M. *Sanford, Raymond L. Gibson, Dr Kasson S. Gardner, Dr Irvine C. Davis, Raymond *Vinal, Dr George W. Souder, Dr Wilmer ♦Miller, David R. (As- sistant) Judson, Dr Lewis V. Macurdy, Lloyd B. 1923-28, 1947-58 1949-58 1946-59 1948- 1923-53 1916- *Crittenden, retired, Dec. 31, 1950; died Mar. 8, 1956. *Brode, at Ohio State University, professor of organic chemistry, 1928-47; guest worker 1958 to date. *Smith, retired, Nov. 1, 1950; NBS consultant, 1950 to date. *Moon, died Jan. 31, 1953. *Sanford, retired, 1954; NBS consultant, 1954 to date. *Vinal, retired, June 30, 1950. *Miller, retired, 1952. . . 612 APPENDIX J 613 II. METROLOGY— Continued 3. Time 4. Capacity, Density, Fluid Measures 6. Thermal Expansion 7. Dental Materials 8. Scales 9. Gages III. HEAT AND POWER 1. Temperature Measurements 2. Thermodynamics 3. Cryogenics 4. Engines and Lubrication 5. Engine Fuels 6. Combustion IV. ATOMIC AND RADIATION PHYSICS Assistant Consultant on Radioactivity Consultant on Stable Tracers AEC Coordinator *Bowman, Horace A. Bean, Howard S. *Hidnert, Dr Peter Schoonover, Dr Irl C. Russell, H. Haig Miller, David R. Brickwedde, Dr Ferdi- nand G. *Wil8on, Dr Raymond E. Brickwedde, Dr Ferdi- nand C. Scott, Russell B. *McKee, Samuel A. Howard, Dr Frank L. Fiock, Dr Ernest F. Huntoon, Dr Robert D. Taylor, Dr Lauriston S. Curtiss, Dr Leon F. Mohler, Dr Fred L. Huntoon, Dr Robert D. 1946- 1911-57 1928- 1947-53 1928- 1921-53 1937- 1926- 1941- Atomic Physics Laboratory 1. Spectroscopy 2. Radiometry 3. Mass Spectrometry 4. Physical Electronics 5. Electron Physics 6. Atomic Physics 7. Neutron Measurements Radiation Physics Laboratory 8. Nuclear Physics 9. Radioactivity 10. XRays 11. Betatron 12. Nucleonic Instrumentation 13. Radiological Equipment Huntoon, Dr Robert D. Meggers, Dr William F. *Humphrey8, Dr Curtis J. Mohler, Dr Fred L. *Bennett, Dr Willard H. Marton, Dr Ladislaus L. * Hippie, Dr John A. Curtiss, Dr Leon F. Taylor, Dr Lauriston S. Fano, Dr Ugo Taylor, Dr Lauriston S. Wyckoff, Dr Harold O. Koch, Dr Herman W. Wyckoff, Dr Harold O. Smith, Dr Scott W. 1946-50 1946- 1947-53 1946- 1941- 1949- 1947- *Bowman, attached to division 6, sec. 6, Mass and Scale, 1954. *Hidnert, transferred to OflSce of Weights and Measures, 1954; retired. Mar. 31, 1957; died June 10, 1964. *Wilson, to Emerson Research Laboratories as principal physicist, 1954. *McKee, retired, 1953. *Humphreys, transferred to Corona Laboratories, September 1951; to Naval Ordnance Laboratory, 1953. *Bennett, resigned, September 1950. *Hipple, to Mineral Industries Experiment Station, Pennsylvania State College as director, 1953. 614 APPENDIX J V. CHEMISTRY 1. Paint, Varnish, Lacquers 2. Surface Chemistry ' 3. Organic Chemistry 4. Analytical Chemistry 5. Platinum Metals and Pure Substances 6. Electrodeposition 7. Gas Chemistry and pH Stand- ards 8. Physical Chemistry 9. Thermochemistry and Hydro- carbons 10. Spectrochemistry VI. MECHANICS 1. Sound 2. Mechanical Instruments 3. Aerodynamics 4. Engineering Mechanics 5. Hydraulics VII. ORGANIC AND FIBROUS MATERIALS 1. Rubber 2. Textiles 3. Paper , ■ 4. Leather 5. Testing and Specifications 6. Organic Plastics VIII. METALLURGY 1. Optical Metallurgy 2. Thermal Metallurgy 3. Mechanical Metallurgy 4. Chemical Metallurgy Wichers, Dr Edward *Blum, Dr William (As- sistant) *Hick8on, Eugene F. Hoffman, Dr James I. 1918-62 Smith, W. Harold Bright, Harry A. Gilchrist, Dr Raleigh Blum, Dr William Weaver, Elmer R. Smith, Dr Edgar R. *Rossini, Dr Frederick D. Scribner, Bourdon F. 1927- Ramberg, Dr Walter 1931-59 Cook, Dr Richard K. *Brombacher, Dr Wil- liam G. Schubauer, Dr Galen B. 1936- Wilson, Bruce L. 1929- *Eaton, Herbert N. McPherson, Dr Archibald T. Kline, Dr Gordon M. (Assistant) *Simha, Dr Robert 1944-51 (Consultant) Wood, Dr Lawrence A. Appel, William D. *Scribner, Bourdon W. Wallace, Everett L. Stiehler, Dr Robert D. 1946- Kline, Dr Gordon M. Thompson, Dr John G. Roeser, William F. (Assistant) Ellinger, George A. 1929- Digges, Thomas G. 1920-62 Roeser, William F. ♦Cleaves, Harold E. 1912-15, 1930-53 *Blum, retired, Jan. 1, 1952. ' *Hickson, retired, 1950. *Rossini, to Chairman, Department of Chemistry, Carnegie Institute of Technology, 1950. *Bromoai;her, retired, 1954. *Eaton, retired, Jan. 31, 1953; NBS consulting engineer, 1953 to date. *Simha, to New York University, 1951; subsequently to University of Southern California. *Scribner, died Mar. 5, 1952. *Cleave8, retired, 1953. APPENDIX J 615 Vm. METALLURGY— Continued 5. Experimental Foundry 6. Undergroiuid Corrosion IX. MINERAL PRODUCTS 1. Porcelain and Pottery 2. Class 3. Refractories 4. Enameled Metals 5. Building Stone 6. Concreting Materials 7. Constitution and Microstruc- ture 8. Chemistry of Mineral Products X. BUILDING TECHNOLOGY 1. Structural Engeering 2. Fire Protection 3. Heating and Air Conditioning 4. Exterior and Interior Cover- ings 5. Codes and Specifications XI. APPLIED MATHEMATICS 1. Numerical Analysis 2. Computation Laboratory 3. Statistical Engineering 4. Machine Development XII. COMMODITY STANDARDS 1. Metal and Ceramic Products 2. Textiles and Apparel 3. Mechanical Equipment 4. Packaging 5. Chemical Products *Krynitsky, Alexander I. *Deni8on, Dr Irving A. 1929-53 Insley, Dr Herbert 1922-53 Geller, Roman F. Hahner, Clarence H. Heindl, Raymond A. Harrison, William N. *Kessler, Daniel W. Blaine, Raymond L. 1929- McMurdie, Howard F. 1928- *WeU8, Dr Lansing S. Parsons, Douglas E. Thompson, George N. (Assistant) Parsons, Douglas E. ♦Mitchell, Nolan D. 1922-52 Dill, Richard S. Snoke, Dr Hubert R. 1920-60 Thompson, George N. *Curtiss, Dr John H. 1946-53 Cannon, Dr Edward W. 1946- (Assistant) *Ro88er, Dr J. Barkley 1949-51 Alt, Dr Franz L. 1948- Eisenhart, Dr Churchill 1946- Cannon, Dr Edward W. *Ely, Edwin W. Reynolds, Floyd W. (Assistant) Schuster, George Ehrman, H. A. Medley, J. W. Braithwaite, William E. Reynolds, Floyd W. *Krynitsky, retired, 1950. *Denison, to Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratories, 1953. *Kessler, to Kessler Stone Research Laboratory as materials engineer, 1952; NBS consultant, 1952 to date. *Wells, died 1954. * Mitchell, retired, September 1952; NBS consultant, 1952 to date. *Curtiss, assistant to Director, April 1946; National Applied Mathematics Labo- ratories, 1947; to Institute of Mathematical Science and adjunct professor of math. New York University, 1953. *Rosser, to Army Ordnance, 1951. *Ely, NBS liaison with Commodity Standards Division, Department of Commerce, 1947-50; transferred with division to Office of Technical Services, Department of Commerce, 1950. 616 APPENDIX J XIII. ELECTRONICS AND ORD- NANCE Assistant Chief for Ordnance Assistant Chief for Aerophysics Electronics Consultant Electronics Consultant Electronics Standards Laboratory 1. Engineering Electronics 2. Electron Tubes 3. Electronic Computers Ordnance Development Labora- tory. 4. Ordnance Research 5. Ordnance Mechanics 6. Ordnance Electronics 7. Ordnance Engineering 8. Ordnance Tests Guidance Missile Laboratory 9. Missile Dynamics 10. Missile Intelligence 11. Missile Engineering 12. Missile Instrumentation 13. Technical Services XIV. CENTRAL RADIO PROPAGA- TION LABORATORY Assistant Chief Assistant Chief Microwave Research Consultant Ionospheric Research Laboratory 1. Upper Atmosphere Research 5. Ionospheric Research 7. Field Operations Systems Research Laboratory 3. Regular Propagation Services 4. Frequency Utilization Re- search 6. Tropospberic Propagation Re- search Measurements Standards Labora- tory 8. High Frequency Standards 9. Microwave Standards Astin, Dr Allen V. *Hinman, Wilbur S. Jr. Skramstad, Dr Harold K. 1935- Huntoon, Dr Robert D. Page, Dr Chester H. (Vacant) *Reid, J. Gilman Jr. 1937-54 White, Dr John E. 1946- Alexander, Samuel N. 1946- Hinman, Wilbur S. Jr. *Goldberg, Dr Harold 1947- *Rabinow, Jacob Guarino, P. Anthony 1948- Domsitz, M. G. 1942- *Godfrey, Theodore B. Lamm, Ralph A. 1947- Skramstad, Dr Harold K. Atchison, Dr F. Stanley 1942- Lamm, Ralph A. Wildhack, William A. 1935- McLean, J. D. *Smith, Dr Newbern 1935-54 McNish, Alvin G. 1946- Norton, Kenneth A. 1946- Carroll, T. J. McNish, Alvin G. Bateman, Ross Hutchison, H. P. Chadwick, Walter B. Norton, Kenneth A. Herbstreit, Jack W. George, William D. *Lyons, Dr Harold A. 1941-56 *IIinman, to Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratories, September 1953. *Reid, to private industry, January 1954. *Goldberg, and most of the Ordnance Development and Guidance Missile staffs, transferred to Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratories, 1953. *Rabinow, to Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratories, 1953. *Godfrey, to Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratories as division chief, 1953. *Smith, N., to full-time technical work, Aug. 29, 1953, Dr Brode replacing him as division chief; resigned 1954. *Lyons, resigned. May 1951. APPENDIX J 617 FIELD STATIONS Brookline, Mass. (Electricity and Optics — Lamp Inspection) Clearing, 111. (Metrology — Master Scale Depot) Allentown, Pa. (Mineral Products — Cement Testing and Inspection) Riverside, Calif. (Mineral Products — Cement Testing and Inspection) Permanente, Calif. (Mineral Products — Cement Testing and Inspection) Seattle, Wash. (Mineral Products — Cement Testing and Inspection) Denver, Colo. (Mineral Products — Cement and Concrete Materials) San Francisco, Calif. (Mineral Products — Materials Testing Station) Los Angeles, Calif. (Applied Mathematics — Institute for Numerical Analysis) LaPlata, Md. (Electronics — Blossom Point Proving Ground) Tuckerton, N.J. (Electronics — Warren Grove Test Field) Anchorage, Alaska (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory — Radio Prop- agation Field Station) Point Barrow, Alaska (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory — Radio Propagation Field Station) Guam Island (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory — Radio Propagation Field Station) Puunene Maui, Hawaii (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory — Radio Propagation Field Station) Honolulu, Hawaii (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory — Radio Propaga- tion Field Station) Puerto Rico (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory — Radio Propagation Field Station) Trinidad, British West Indies (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory — Radio Propagation Field Station) Las Cruces, N. Mex. (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory — Radio Prop- agation Field Station) Fort Belvoir, Va. (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory — Radio Propaga- tion Field Station) Sterling, Va. (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory — Radio Propagation Field Station) Beltsville, Md. (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory — Radio Propagation Field Station) ADMINISTRATIVE, SCIENTIFIC, AND TECHNICAL STAFF CHIEFS as of October 1, 1954 DIRECTOR Astin, Dr Allen V. Ass ociate Director for Chemistry Associate Director for Physics Ass ociate Director for Testing Associate Director for Administration Consultants to the Director OFFICE OF SCIENTIFIC PUBLICA- TIONS *Brode, Dr Wallace R. Huntoon, Dr Robert D. McPherson, Dr Archibald T. *Golovin, Nicholas E. Crittenden, Dr Eugene C Curtiss, Dr Leon F. Page, Dr Chester H. *Souder, Dr Wilmer McNish, Alvin G. Erode, Dr Wallace R. OFFICE OF WEIGHTS AND MEAS- Bussey, William S. URES Assistant Jensen, Malcolm W. Consultant Smith, Ralph W. OFFICE OF BASIC INSTRUMENTA- Wildhack, William A. TION L ELECTRICITY AND ELEC- *Silsbee, Dr Francis B. TRONICS L Resistance and Reactance 2. Electron Tubes 3. Electrical Instruments 4. Magnetic Measurements 5. Process Technology *Stansbury, Carroll (Assistant) Thomas, Dr James L. Marsden, Dr Charles P. Jr. Defandorf, Dr Francis M. Cooler, Irving L. *Tuckerman, Lucien P. 1951- 1948-59 1949- 1930- 1949-56 *Brode, Science Advisor to Secretary of State, 1958. *Golovin, to White Sands Proving Ground as Chief Scientist, 1958. *Souder, retired, 1954. *Silsbee, retired, July 31, 1959; NBS consultant. *Stansbury, retired for reasons of ill health, October 1958. *Tuckerman, transferred to Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratory, July 1, 1956. 618 APPENDIX J 619 I. ELECTRICITY AND ELECTRONICS— Continued 6. Engineering Electronics *Selgin, Dr Paul J. 7. Electronic Instrumentation Stansbury, Carroll 8. Electrochemistry II. OPTICS AND METROLOGY 1. Photometry and Colorimetry 2. Optical Instruments 3. Photographic Technology 4. Length 5. Engineering Metrology III. HEAT AND POWER 1. Temperature Measurements 2. Thermodynamics 3. Cryogenic Physics 4. Engines and Lubrication 5. Engine Fuels 6. Free Radicals Research (1956- 59) Hamer, Dr Walter J. *Gardner, Dr Irvine C. *Gibson, Dr Kasson S. (Assistant) Gibson, Dr Kasson S. Washer, Dr Francis E. *Davis, Raymond *Jud8on, Dr Lewis V. Fullmer, Irwin H. *Brickwedde, Dr Ferdinand G. Brickwedde, Dr Ferdinand G. Beckett, Dr Charles W. Hudson, Dr Ralph P. Swindells, James F. Howard, Dr Frank L. *Broida, Dr Herbert P. IV. ATOMIC AND RADIATION Taylor, Dr Lauriston S PHYSICS Atomic Physics Laboratory 1. Spectroscopy 2. Radiometry 3. Mass Spectroscopy 4. Solid State Physics 5. Electron Physics 6. Atomic Physics Radiation Physics Laboratory 8. Nuclear Physics 9. Radioactivity 10. X Rays 11. Betatron 12. Nucleonic Instrumentation (Vacant) *Meggers, Dr William F. Plyler, Dr Earle K. Mohler, Dr Fred L. *Breckenridge, Dr Robert G. Marten, Dr Ladislaus L. Branscomb, Dr Lewis M. Wyckoff, Dr Harold O. Fano, Dr Ugo Mann, Dr Wilfrid B. Wyckoff, Dr Harold O. Koch, Dr Herman W. Costrell, Louis 1947-55 1935- 1935- 1917- 1950- 1951- 1927- 1949-59 1945-63 1949-55 1951- 1946- *Selgin, resigned to take up private consultant work, continuing part-time work with NBS. *Gardner, retired, July 8, 1959. *Gibson, retired, January 1955. *Davi8, retired, April 1958; NBS consultant. *Judson, transferred to Office of Weights and Measures, Mar. 22, 1959. *Brickwedde, to Pennsylvania State University as dean of College of Chemistry and Physics, February 1957. *Broida, succeeded by Dr Arnold M. Bass, July 1, 1959; program terminated Oct. 1, 1959; returned as senior research fellow 1961-62. *Meggers, retired, July 31, 1958; NBS consultant. *Plyler, retired, Oct. 7, 1%3. *Breckenridge, resigned. May 1, 1955. 786-167 O— 66 620 APPENDIX J IV. ATOMIC AND RADIATION PHYSICS— Continued 13. Radiological Equipment Smith, Dr Scott W. 14. Radiation Instruments Branch, AEC Butenhoff, Robert L. V. CHEMISTRY Wichers, Dr Edward Hoffman, Dr James I. (Assistant) 1. Organic Coatings Howard, Paul T. 1922- 2. SurfaceChernistry Hoffman, Dr James I. 3. Organic Chemistry *Smith, W. Harold 4. Analytical Chemistry ♦Bright, Harry A. 5. Inorganic Chemistry Gilchrist, Dr Raleigh 6. Electrodeposition Brenner, Dr Abner 1930- 7. Gas Chemistry *Weaver, Elmer R. 8. Physical Chemistry *Sraith, Dr Edgar R 9. Thermochemistry Prosen, Edward J. 1936- 10. Spectrochemistry Scribner, Bourdon F. 11. Pure Substances Saylor, Dr Charles P. 1931- VI. MECHANICS *Ramberg, Dr Walter Souder, Dr Wilmer (Consultant) 1. Sound Cook, Dr Richard K. 2. Mechanical Instruments Lloyd, Edward C. 1954- 3. Fluid Mechanics Schubauer, Dr Galen B. 4. Engineering Mechanics Wilson, Bruce L. 6. Mass and Scale Tate, Douglas R. 7. Capacity, Density, and Fluid *Bean, Howard S. Meters 8. Combustion Controls *Fiock, Dr Ernest F. VII. ORGANIC AND FIBROUS MA- Kline, Dr Gordon M. TERIALS *Appel, William D. (Assistant) 1. Rubber Wood, Dr Lawrence A. 2. Textiles Appel, William D. 3. Paper Hobbs, Dr Robert B. 1930- 4. Leather ♦Wallace, Everett L. 5. Testing and Specifications Stiehler, Dr Robert D. 6. Polymer Structure Bekkedahl, Dr Norman P. 1931- ♦Smith, W. H., retired, Feb. 1, 1957; NBS consultant; died Apr. 14, 1959. ♦Bright, retired, Feb. 29, 1960; died May 22, 1961. ♦Weaver, retired. May 31, 1957. ♦Smith, E. R., retired, June 30, 1957. ♦Ramberg, to U.S. Embassy in Rome, Department of State, as scientific officer. Mar. 1, 1959. ♦Bean, retired, July 1, 1958. ♦Fiock, to Rocket Fuels Division, Phillips Petroleum Co., Texas, as technical director, March 1956. ♦Appel, retired, Jan. 31, 1959. ♦Wallace, retired, Jan. 1, 1955. APPENDIX J 621 VII. ORGANIC AND FIBROUS MATERIALS— Continued 7. Organic Plastics Keinhart, Frank W. 8. Dental Research Sweeney, William T. VIII. METALLURGY 1. Thermal Metallurgy 2. Chemical Metallurgy 3. Mechanical Metallurgy 4. Corrosion IX. MINERAL PRODUCTS 1. Porcelain and Pottery 2. Glass 3. Refractories 4. Enameled Metals 6. Concreting Materials 7. Constiiution and Microstruc- ture X. BUILDING TECHNOLOGY 1. Structural Engineering 2. Fire Protection 3. Heating and Air Conditioning 4. Floor, Roof, and Wall Cover- ings 5. Codes and Specifications XL APPLIED MATHEMATICS 1. Numerical Analysis 2. Computation Laboratory 3. Statistical Engineering 4. Mathematical Physics *Thomp8on, Dr John G. Digges, Thomas G. Wyman, Leroy L. Bennett, John A. Ellinger, George A. Schoonover, Dr Irl C. Hahner, Clarence H. (Assistant) *Geller, Roman F. Hahner, Clarence H. *Heindl, Raymond A. Harrison, William N. Blaine, Raymond L. McMurdie, Howard F. Parsons, Douglas E. *Thompson, George N. (Assistant) Roeser, William F. (Consultant) *McBurney, John W. (Consultant) Parsons, Douglas E. Robertson, Dr Alexander F. *Dill, Richard S. *Snoke, Dr Hubert R. Thompson, George N. Alt, Dr Franz L. Cannon, Dr Edward W. (Assistant) *Todd, John *Abramowitz, Dr Milton Eisenhart, Dr Churchill Cannon, Dr Edward W. 1937- 1922- 1953- 1936- 1935-56 1950- 1949-57 1942-58 *Thompson, J. G., retired, February 1956. *Geller, retired, December 1955; NBS consultant. *Heindl, retired, July 1955; NBS consultant. *Thompson, G. N., retired, June 30, 1955. *McBurney, retired. May 1956. *Dill, died 1957. *Snoke, retired, July 31, 1960. *Todd, to California Institute of Technology as professor of mathematics, September 1957. *Abramowitz. died July 5. 1958. 622 APPENDIX J XII. DATA PROCESSING SYSTEMS Alexander, Samuel N. 1. Components and Techniques 2. Digital Circuitry and Devices 3. Digital Systems 4. Analog Systems • . 80. BOULDER Director LABORATORIES 81. Cryogenic Engineering L Cryogenic Equipment 2. Cryogenic Processes 3. Properties of Materials 4. Gas Liquefaction 82. Radio Propagation Physics 1. Upper Atmosphere Research 2. Ionospheric Research 3. Regular Propagation Services 83. Radio Propagation Engineering 4. Frequency Utilization Research 6. Tropospheric Propagation Re- search 84. Radio Standards High Frequency Standards Branch 1. High Frequency Electrical Standards 2. Radio Broadcast Service 3. High Frequency Impedance Standard Microwave Standards Branch 6. Extreme High Frequency and Noise 7. Microwave Frequency and Spectroscopy 8. Microwave Circuit Standard Holt, A. W. Elbourn, Robert D. 1947- Leiner, A. L. Skramstad, Dr Harold K. Brown, Dr Frederick W. 1954- Scott, Russell B. Birmingham, Bascom 1951- W. VanderArend, Peter C. 1951- Reynolds, Martin M. Johnson, Victor J. 1950- Slutz, Dr Ralph J. 1949- Gautier, Thomas N. Jr. 1942- Bateman, Ross Chadwick, Walter B. Norton, Kenneth A. Norton, Kenneth A. Herbstreit, Jack W. 1946- *Thomas, Dr Harold A. 1947-56 *Lyon8, Dr Harold (Assistant) George, William D. Selby, Myron C. 1941- Morgan, Alvin H. 1946- (Vacant) Lyons, Dr Harold Kerns, Dr David M. 1946- Birnbaum, George 1946- Beatty, Robert W. 1944- FIELD STATIONS Brookline, Mass. (Optics and Metrology: Lamp Inspection) Areata, Calif. (Optics and Metrology: Visual Landing Aids) Clearing, 111. (Mechanics: NBS Master Tract Scale Depot) AUentown, Pa. (Mineral Products: Concreting Materials Section) Denver, Colo. (Mineral Products: Concreting Materials Section) San Francisco, Calif. (Mineral Products: Concreting Materials Section) *Thomas, to John Jay Hopkins Laboratory for Pure and Applied Science (San Diego),- General Dynamics Corporation, December 1956. *Lyons, to staff of Microwave Laboratory, Hughes Aircraft Co., July 1955. APPENDIX J 623 84. Radio Standards — Continued FIELD STATIONS— Continued Seattle, Wash. (Mineral Products: Concreting Materials Section) Kansas City, Mo. (Mineral Products: Concreting Materials Section) Anchorage, Alaska (Boulder: Radio Propagation Field Station) Point Barrow, Alaska (Boulder: Radio Propagation Field Station) Guam Island (Boulder: Radio Propagation Field Station) Puunene Maui, Hawaii (Boulder: Radio Propagation Field Station) Puerto Rico (Boulder: Radio Propagation Field Station) Bluie West-1, Greenland (Boulder: Radio Propagation Field Station) Panama Canal Zone (Boulder: Radio Propagation Field Station) Colorado Springs, Colo. (Boulder: Radio Propagation Field Station) Fort Belvoir, Va. (Boulder: Radio Propagation Field Station) Sterling, Va. (Boulder: Radio Propagation Laboratory) Beltsville, Md. (Boulder: Radio Transmitting Station) Front Royal, Va. (Boulder: Radio Noise Recording Station) ADMINISTRATIVE, SCIENTIFIC, AND TECHNICAL STAFF CHIEFS as of December 1, 1960 DIRECTOR Astin, Dr Allen V. Deputy Director Associate Director for Physics Associate Director for Engineering Associate Director for Chemistry Associate Director for Planning Associate Director for Administration Associate Director for Boulder Labora- tories NBS Reactor Program Special Research Assistant to Director Special Development Assistant to Director Consultant to the Director Huntoon, Dr Robert D. Huntoon, Dr Robert D. McPherson, Dr Archibald T. Wichers, Dr Edward Sender, Dr Wilmer (Consultant) Schoonover, Dr Irl C. Walleigh, Robert S. Brown, Dr Frederick W. Muehlhause, Dr Carl O. Fano, Dr Ugo Wildhack, William A. *Curtiss, Dr Leon F. Schuler, Dr Kurt E. Director Emeritus OFFICE OF WEIGHTS AND URES Assistant Consultant Briggs, Dr Lyman J. MEAS- Bussey, William A. Jensen, Malcolm W. Smith, Ralph W. OFFICE OF TECHNICAL INFORMA- TION Assistant I. ELECTRICITY 1. Resistance and Reactance 2. Electrochemistry 3. Electrical Instruments 4. Magnetic Measurements 5. Dielectrics II. METROLOGY 1. Photometry and Colorimetry 1955- Tilley, William R. 1946- Gautier, William K. 1947- Page, Dr Chester H. Thomas, Dr James L. Hamer, Dr Walter J. Defandorf, Dr Francis M. Cooter, Irving L. Hoffman, Dr John D. 1942- McNish, Alvin G. Judd, Dr Deane B. (Assist- 1927 ant) Barbrow, Louis E. 1927- *Curtis8, retired, June 30, 1961. 624 APPENDIX J 625 II. METROLOGY— Continued 2. Refractometry 3. Photographic Research 4. Length 5. Engineering Metrology 6. Mass and Scale 7. Volumetry and Densimetry III. HEAT 1. Temperature Physics 2. Heat Measurements 3. Cryogenic Physics 7. Equation of State 8. Statistical Physics IV. RADIATION PHYSICS Scientific Assistant AEC Coordinator 1. X Ray 2. Radioactivity 3. Radiation Theory 4. High Energy Radiation 5. Radiological Equipment 6. Nucleonic Instrumentation 7. Neutron Physics V. ANALYTICAL AND INORG AN- IC CHEMISTRY \. Pure Substances 2. Spectrochemistry 3. Solution Chemistry 4. Analytical Chemistry 5. Inorganic Chemistry VI. MECHANICS Washer, Dr Francis E. L Sound 2. Pressure and Vacuum 3. Fluid Mechanics McCamy, Calvin S. 1952- *Page, Benjamin L. 1918-61 Fullmer, Irwin H. Peiser, H. Steffen 1957- CoUett, Charles T. 1943- Herzfeld, Dr Charles M. 1955- Beckett, Dr Charles W. 1950- (Assistant) Swindells, James F. Ginnings, Dr Defoe C. 1929- Hudson, Dr Ralph P. Hilsenrath, Joseph 1948- Green, Dr Melville S. 1954- Taylor, Dr Lauriston S. Ney, Wilbert R. Taylor, Dr Lauriston S. Wyckoff, Dr Harold O. Mann, Dr Wilfrid B. Spencer, Dr Lewis V. Koch, Dr Herman W. Smith, Dr Scott W. Costrell, Louis . Caswell, Dr Randall S. 1952- Schoonover, Dr Irl C. Bates, Dr Roger G. 1939- (Assistant) Saylor, Dr Charles P. (Consultant) ♦Howard, Dr Frank L. 1937-63 Scribner, Bourdon F. Bates, Dr Roger G. Hague, John L. Gilchrist, Dr Raleigh Wilson, Bruce L. Brorabacher, Dr Wilham G. (Consultant) Frankland, Dr John M. (Consultant) Lloyd, Edward C. (Con- sultant) Cook, Dr Richard K. Johnson, Dr Daniel P. 1935- Schubauer, Dr Galen B. *Page, retired, 1961. *Howard, died Oct. 15, 1963. 626 APPENDIX J VI. MECHANICS— Continued 4. Engineering Mechanics 5. Rheology 8. Combustion Controls VII. ORGANIC AND FIBROUS MA- TERIALS 1. Rubber 2. Textiles 3. Paper 4. Leather 5. Testing and Specifications 6. Polymer Structure 7. Plastics 8. Dental Research VIII. METALLURGY 1. Thermal Metallurgy 2. Chemical Metallurgy 3. Mechanical Metallurgy 4. Corrosion 5. Metal Physics 6. Electrodeposition IX. MINERAL PRODUCTS 1. Engineering Ceramics 2. Glass 3. Refractories 5. Crystal Growth 7. Constitution and Microstruc- ture X. BUILDING RESEARCH 1. Structural Engineering 2. Fire Research 3. Mechanical Systems Irwin, Lafayette K. 1949- Marvin, Dr Robert S. 1949- Caldwell, Frank R. 1920- Kline, Dr Gordon M. Wood, Dr Lawrence A. Schiefer, Dr Herbert F. 1929- Hobbs, Dr Robert B. Kanagy, Dr Joseph R. 1930- Stiehler, Dr Robert D. Bekkedahl, Dr Norman P. Reinhart, Dr Frank W. Sweeney, William T. *Hoffman, Dr James I. *Digges, Thomas G. (Assistant) Digges, Thomas G. Wyman, Leroy L. Bennett, John A. Ellinger, George A. Kushner, Dr JQ48- Lawrence M. Brenner, Dr Abner Franklin, Dr Allan D. 1955- Hahner, Clarence H. (Assistant) Geller, Roman F. (Consultant) Lippincott, Dr Ellis R. (Consultant) Burdick, Milton D. 1931- Hahner, Clarence H. (Vacant) Ordway, Dr Frederick 1948- McMurdie, Howard F. Parsons, Douglas E. *Roeser, William F. (Consultant) Watstein, David 1930- Robertson, Dr Alexander F. Achenbach, Paul R. 1937- *Hoffman, retired, 1962. *Digges, retired, 1962. *Roeser, died June 17, 1964. APPENDIX J 627 X. BUILDING RESEARCH— Continued 4. Organic Building Materials 5. Codes and Safety Standards 6. Heat Transfer 7. Inorganic Building Materials 9. Metallic Building Materials XI. APPLIED MATHEMATICS 1. Numerical Analysis 2. Computation 3. Statistical Engineering 4. Mathematical Physics 5. Operations Research XII. PROCESSING SYSTEMS Walton, Dr William W. 1929- ♦Lloyd, Richard L. 1941-62 Robinson, Henry E. 1937- Blaine, Raymond L. Harrison, William N. Cannon, Dr Edward W. Alt, Dr Franz L. (Assistant) Youden, Dr William J. 1948- (Consultant) Davis, Dr Philip J. 1952- Mittleman, Dr Don I. 1951- Eisenhart, Dr Churchill Pell, Dr William H. 1956- Goldman, Dr Alan J. 1961- 1. Components and 2. Digital Circuitry 3. Digital Systems 4. Analog Systems Techniques 5. Applications Engineering XIII. ATOMIC PHYSICS 1. Spectroscopy 2. Radiometry 4. Solid State Physics 5. Electron Physics 6. Atomic Physics XIV. INSTRUMENTATION 1. Engineering Electronics 2. Electron Devices 3. Electronic Instrumentation 4. Mechanical Instruments 5. Basic Instrumentation XV. PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY 1. Thermochemistry 2. Surface Chemistry 3. Organic Chemistry Alexander, Samuel N. Skramstad, Dr Harold K. (Assistant) Rafferty, John F. (SEAC) Elbourn, Robert D. Greenwald, Sidney 1947— Alexander, Samuel N. Skramstad, Dr Harold K. Glaser, Ezra Branscomb, Dr Lewis M. *Mohler, Dr Fred L. (Consultant) Kessler, Dr Karl G. 1948- *Plyler, Dr Earte K. Frederikse, Dr 1953- Hans P. R. Marton, Dr Ladislaus L. Smith, Dr Stephen J. 1954- Montgomery, G. Franklin 1946- Shapiro, Gustave 1947- Marsden, Charles P. Montgomery, G. Franklin Wexler, Arnold 1941- Stem, Joshua 1951- Wallenstein, Dr Merrill B. 1953-55, 1959- Prosen, Edward J. (Vacant) Isbell. Dr Horace .S. 1927- *Lloyd, to Underwriters' Laboratories, New York, 1962. *Mohler, retired, 1960; NBS consultant. *Plyler, retired, Oct. 8, 1963- 628 XV. PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY— Continued 4. Molecular Spectroscopy 5. Molecular Kinetics 6. Mass Spectroscopy 7. Molecular Structure and Ra- diation Chemistry 80. BOULDER LABORATORIES— Director CRPL Liaison and Progress Development Mathematical-Analysis and Com- putation Facility Group Consultant in Mathematical Physics Consultant in Statistics Consultant in Astrophysics Consultant in Radio Wave Prop- agation 81. Cryogenic Engineering 1. Cryogenic Equipment 2. Cryogenic Processes 3. Properties of Materials 4. Gas Liquefaction APPENDIX J d Mann, Dr David E. 1951- Ferguson, Dr Robert E 1952- Dibeler, Dr Vernon H. 1942- Buckley, Floyd 1943- Brown, Dr Frederick W. Shapley, Alan H. 1947- Sopka, Dr John J. 1959- Brown, Edmund H. 1952- Crow, Dr Edwin L. Thomas, Dr Richard N. Wait, Dr James R. Scott, Russell B. Birmingham, Bascom W. (Assistant) Jacobs, Dr Robert B. 1951- Birmingham, Bascom W. Corruccini, Dr Robert J. 1944- Johnson, Victor J. CENTRAL RADIO PROPAGATION LABORATORY— BOULDER 82. Ionosphere Research and Prop- agation 1. LF and VLF Research 2. Ionosphere Research 3. Prediction Services 4. Sun -Earth Relationships 5. Field Engineering 6. Radio Warning Services 83. Radio Propagation Engineering 1. Data Reduction Instru- mentation 4. Radio Noise 5. Tropospheric Measure- ments 6. Tropospheric Analysis Smith, Dr Earnest K. Jr. 1951- Gautier, Thomas N. Jr. (Assistant) Bailey, Daiia K. (Consul- 1948- tant) Jean, Arthur G. Jr 1949- Davies, Dr Kenneth 1958- Chadwick, Walter B. Knecht, Robert W. 1949- Sellery, Harry G. 1946- Lincoln, J. Virginia 1942- Norton, Kenneth A. Herbstreit, Jack W. (Assistant) Florman, Edwin F. (Con- 1946- sultant) Johnson, Walter E. 1953- Crichlow, William Q. 1946- Peterson, Charles F. 1952- Rice, Philip L. 1949- APPENDIX J 629 83. Radio Propagation Engineering — Continued 7. Propagation-Terrain Ef- fects 8. Radio-Meteorology 9. Lower Atmosphere Physics 84. Radio Standards Laboratory Ass .tant Chief for Radio Frequencies Assistant Chief for Micro- wave Frequencies Assistant Chief for Tech- nical Planning and Coor- dination Consultant Consultant 1. High Frequency Elec- trical Standards 2. Radio Broadcast Service 3. Radio and Microwave Materials 4. Atomic Frequency and Time Interval Standards 5. Electronic Calibration Center 7. Millimeter -Wave Research 8. Microwave Circuit Stand- ards 85. Radio Systems 1. High Frequency and VHF Research 4. Modulation Research 5. Antenna Research 6. Navigation Systems 7. Space Telecommunications 87. Upper Atmosphere and Space Physics 1. Upper Atmosphere and Plasma Physics 5. Ionosphere and Exosphere Scatter Kirby, Robert S. 1947- Bean, Bradford R. 1950- Thompson, Dr Moody C. 1947- Jr. Richardson, Dr John M. 1952- George, William D. Kerns, Dr David M. 1946- Wolzien, Eldred C. Brown, W. W. Wacker, Dr Paul F. 1944^ Selby, Myron C. 1941- Morgan, Alvin H. 1946- Dalke, John L. 1947- Mockler, Dr Richard C. 1954- Lance, Harvey W. 1948- Culshaw, Dr William 1956- Beatty, Robert W. Kirby, Richard C. 1948- Patterson, Donald W. 1958- (Assistant) Haydon, George W. 1959- (Consultant) Silberstein, Richard 1941- Koch, J. Wesley 1957- Cottony, Herman V. 1941- Hefley, Gifford 1949- Coombs, William C. 1959- Little, Dr C. Gordon 1958- Gates, Dr David M. 1957- (Asst.) Slutz, Dr Ralph J. (Cons.) Bailey, Dana K. (Cons.) Gallet, Roger M. Bowles, Dr Kenneth L. 1955- 1955- 630 APPENDIX J 87. Upper Atmosphere and Space Physics — Continued 7. Airglow and Aurora Roach, Dr Franklin E. 1954r- 8. Ionospheric Radio Astron- Lawrence, Robert S. 1948- omy FIELD STATIONS, NBS Anchorage, Alaska (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory) Koloa, Kauai, Hawaii (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory) Antarctica and Kolb Stations, Boulder (Central Radio Propagation Labora- tory) Barrow, Alaska (Centra! Radio Propagation Laboratory) Lima, Peru (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory) Douglas, Wyo. (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory) Lafayette, Colo. (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory) Colorado Springs, Colo. (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory) Havana, 111. (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory) Fort Belvoir, Va. (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory) Puunene, Maui, Hawaii (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory) Rollinsville, Colo. (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory) Puerto Rico (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory) Front Royal, Va. (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory) Schickley, Nebr. (Central Radio Propagation Laboratory) Lanham, Md. (Radio Standards Laboratory) Puuenene, Maui, Hawaii (Radio Standards Laboratory) Brookline, Mass. (Metrology: Lamp Inspection) Areata, Calif. (Metrology: Visual Landing Aids Field Laboratory) Clearing, III. (Metrology: Master Railway Track Scale Depot) Allentown, Pa. (Building Technology: Concreting Materials Section) Denver, Colo. (Building Technology: Concreting Materials Section) San Francisco, Calif. (Building Technology: Concreting Materials Section) Seattle, Wash. (Building Technolop'y: Concreting Materials Section) APPENDIX K NBS Publications representing RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS EV SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 1901-1951 Abbreviations NBS PUBLICATIONS S Scientific Paper T Technologic Paper RP Research Paper C Circular H Handbook M Miscellaneous Publication BMS Building Materials and Structures Report LC Letter Circular TNB Technical News Bulletin NON-NBS PUBLICATIONS Am. Mach. ASTM Bull. Am. Soc. Testing Mater. Proc. Anal. Chem. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. Elec. Eng. Horological Inst. Am. J. Ind. Eng. Chem. J. Am. Dental Assoc. J. Am. Ceram. Soc. J. Appl. Phys. J. Dental. Res. J. Opt. Soc. Am. J. Wash. Acad. Sci. Mech. Eng. Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Note Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Rep. American Machinist American Society for Testing Materials Bulletin Proceedings of the American Society for Testing Materials Analytical Chemistry Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Electrical Engineering Horological Institute of America Journal Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Journal of the American Dental Association Journal of the American Ceramic Society Journal of Applied Physics Journal of Dental Research Journal of the Optical Society of America Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences Mechanical Engineering National Advisory Committee for Aeronau- tics Technical Note National Advisory Committee for Aeronau- tics Technical Report 631 632 APPENDIX K Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Rep. Phys. Rev. Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. Proc. IRE Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. Rev. Sci. Instr. Scripta Math. Trans. ASME Trans. AIEE Trans. Soc. Motion Picture Eng. National Advisory Committee for Aeronau- tics Report Physical Review Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engi- neers Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Review of Scientific Instruments Scripta Mathematica Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY— 1901-1910 1. ELECTRICITY 2. WEIGHTS & MEASURES 3. HEAT & THERMOMETRY Coffin, Construction and calculation of absolute standards of inductance (S29, 1906) Brooks, The deflection potentiometer: a new p. for the measurement of emf and current (S33, 1906) Austin, Detector for small alternating currents and elec- trical [radio] waves (S22, 1905) Rosa & Dorsey, A new determination of the ratio of the electromagnetic to the electrostatic unit of electricity (S65andS66, 1907) Wolff, The principles involved in the selection and defini- tion of the fundamental electrical units to be proposed for international adoption (S102, 1909) Burrows, A new permeameter for determination of mag- netic induction in straight bars (S117, 1909) Osborne & Veazey, New methods for testing glass volu- metric apparatus fS92, 1908) Standard density and volumetric tables (C19, 1909) Waidner & Burgess, Optical pyrometry (S8 and Sll, 1904) Burgess, Radiation from platinum at high temperatures (S24, 1905; S124, 1909) Burgess, Melting points of the iron-group elements by a new radiation method (S62, 1907) Wensel, Roeser, Barbrow & Caldwell, The Waidner- Burgess standard of light (Elec. World, 52, 625, 1908; RP325, 1931) Burgess, The estimation of the temperature of copper by means of optical pyrometers (S121, 1909) Buckingham, On the definition of the ideal gas (S136, 1910) APPENDIX K 4. OPTICS 5. CHEMISTRY 633 Nutting, Some new rectifying effects in conducting gases [Development with Sperling of the first neon sign tub- ing] (S6, 1904) Coblentz, A vacuum radiomicrometer [A new form of radiometer] (S46, 1906) Bates, A quartz compensating polariscope with adjusting sensibility (S86, 1908) Nutting, The resolving power of objectives (S122, 1909) Stokes & Cain, On the colorimetric determination of iron with special reference to chemical reagents (S53, 1907) Noyes, The atomic weight of hydrogen (S77, 1908) Douty, Bursting strength. The conditions which influence this test of paper considered (Paper Trade J. 50, 271, 1910) NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY— 1911-1916 1. ELECTRICITY 2. WEIGHTS & MEASURES 3. HEAT & THERMOMETRY Agnew, A study of the current transformer . . . [Pioneer analysis of the performance of current transformers] (S164, 1911) Bellinger, High-frequency ammeters [Measurement of high-frequency radio current] (S206, 1914) Vinal & Bates, Comparison of the silver and iodine voltam- eters and the determination of the value of the faraday [Precise determination of the faraday] (S218, 1914) Curtis, Insulating properties of solid dielectrics (S234, 1915) Rosa & McCollum, Electrolysis and its mitigation (T52, 1915; Logan, C450, 1945) Kolster, A direct-reading instrument for measuring the logarithmic decrement and wave length of electromag- netic waves [The Kolster decremeter] (S235, 1915) Brooks & Weaver, A variable self and mutual inductor (S290, 1917) Rosa & Vinal, Summary of experiments on the silver vol- tameter . . . and proposed specifications (S285, 1916) Gray, Hidnert & Souder, Development of precision micro- metric thermal expansion equipment (J. Wash. Acad. Sci. 2, 248, 1912; S219, 1914; S276, 1916; S410, 1922; S524, 1926) U.S. standard tables for petroleum oils (C57, 1916; C154, 1924; C410, 1936-37) Waidner & Burgess, On the constancy of the sulphur boil- ing point (S149, 1911) Buckingham & Dellinger, On the computation of the con- stant C2 of Planck's equation by an extension of Paschen's method of equal ordinates (S162, 1911) Harper, Thermometric lag (S185, 1912) Burgess, A micropyrometer (S198, 1913) Dickinson & Mueller, New calorimetric resistance ther- mometers (5200, 1913; Sligh, S407, 1922) 634 APPENDIX K 4. OPTICS 5. CHEMISTRY Dickinson, Harper & Osborne, Latent heat of fusion of ice (S209, 1914) Burgess & Crowe, Critical ranges A2 and A3 of pure iron (S213, 1914; Thompson & Cleaves, RP1226, 1939) Waidner & Mueller, Industrial gas calorimetry [First com- prehensive study of methods of measuring heating value of gases] (T36, 1914) Burgess & Foote, Characteristics of radiation pyrometers (S250, 1915) Buckingham, Model experiments and the forms of em- pirical equations [in fluid mechanics] (Trans. ASME, 37, 263, 1915) Dickinson, Combustion calorimetry and the heats of com- bustion of cane sugar, benzoic acid and naphthalene (S230, 1915) Waidner, Dickinson, et al., Wheatstone bridges for resist- ance thermometry {S241, 1915; S288, 1917) Foote & Fairchild, Luminosity of a black body and tem- perature (S270, 1916) Coblentz, Measurements on standards of radiation in abso- lute value [Standards of radiant flux and thermal radia- tion] (S227, 1915; Coblentz and Stair, RP578, 1933) Coblentz, A comparison of stellar radiometers and radio- metric measurements on 110 stars [Use of vacuum thermopiles with calcium "getter" bulb] (S244, 1915) Coblentz & Emerson, Studies of instruments for measuring radiant energy in absolute value: an absolute thermopile (S261, 1916) Coblentz, Present status of the determination of the con- stant of total radiation from a black body [Use of filters in combination with thermopiles] (S262, 1915) Bates & Jackson, Constants of the quartz-wedge saccharim- eter and the specific rotation of sucrose (8268, 1916) McBride, Weaver, et al.. Determination of sulphur in illuminating gas [Development of apparatus and meth- ods of gas analysis] (T20, 1913; TllO, 1918) Standards for gas service [First compilation of rules and regulations relating to standards for gas service of public utilities] (C32, 1912; 4th ed., 1920) Standard methods of gas testing [Fuel gas testing and performance testing of gas appliances] (C48, 1914; 2d ed., 1916) NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY— 1917-1919 1. ELECTRICITY Kolster, The radio direction finder and its application to navigation (1917; S428, 1922) Wenner, [Construction of a high precision bridge] . . . for the comparison of precision standard resistors ( 1918 ; RP1323, 1940) Silsbee, Note on electrical conduction in metals at low temperatures [The Silsbee hypothesis, relating critical current and critical magnetic field in superconductors] (S307, 1918) APPENDIX K 635 2. WEIGHTS & MEASURES 3. HEAT & THERMOMETRY 4. OPTICS 5. CHEMISTRY 8. METALLURGY 9. CLAY PRODUCTS Lowell & Willoughby, Underwater antenna for submerged submarines (NBS Radio Laboratory Report, Nov 1918) Ould, [Standard variable condenser for radio] (reported in C74, 2d ed., 1918) Stillman, A portable cubic-foot standard for gas (T114, 1918) Van Keuren, Manufacture of Hoke precision gages . . . (Mech. Eng. 41, 289, 1919; Am. Mach. 50, 625, 1919) Osborne & Van Dusen, The specific heat of liquid ammonia (S313, 1918) Mueller & Burgess, H. A., Standardization of the sulphur boiling point (S339, 1919) Jackson, The saccharimetric normal weight and specific rotation of dextrose (S293, 1917) Method for slip casting large refractory pots; war- time production of optical glass; design of new types of optical glass (1917-18; Gardner & Hahner, M194, 1949) Coblentz & Kahler, Some optical and photoelectric proper- ties of molybdenite (S338, 1918) Coblentz, The spectrophotoelectric sensitivity of thalofide [New infrared detection devices] (S380 and 5398, 1920) Gibson, Photoelectric spectrophotometry by the null method [First photoelectric spectrophotometer] (S349, 1919) Bates & Bearce, New Baume scale for sugar solutions (T115, 1918) Edwards, A specific gravity balance for gases [First com- mercial specific gravity balance for gases] (T89. 1917) Edwards, Effusion method of determining gas density [Instruments and method for determinating gas density] (T94, 1917) Weaver & Weibel, New forms of instruments for showing the presence and amount of combustible gas in the air (S334, 1919) Merica, Waltenberg & Scott, The heat treatment of dural- umin [First explanation of the phenomenon of age hardening of metals] (S347, 1919) Silsbee, Honaman, et al., [Development of a new type of porcelain for aviation spark plugs] (Natl. Adm. Comm. Aeron. Rep. 53, 1919) NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY— 1920-1930 1. ELECTRICITY Breit, High-frequency resistance of inductance coils (S430, 1922) Lowell, An electron-tube amplifier using sixty-cycle alter- nating current to supply power for the filaments and plates [First a.c. radio set] (S450, 1922) Dunmore & Engel, Directive radio transmission on a wave- length of 10 meters [First aural radio beacon] (S469, 1923) 786-167 O — 6&- -42 636 APPENDIX K WEIGHTS & MEASURES 3. HEAT & POWER 4. OPTICS Hund, Theory of determination of ultra-radio frequencies by standing waves on wires [Standard of wavelength] (S491, 1924) Standard frequency and time interval broadcasts (no publ., 1925-1937) Pratt & Diamond, Receiving sets for aircraft beacon and telephony [Development of stub antenna for aircraft] (RP19, 1928; Diamond & Davies RP313, 1931) Dunmore, Design of tuned reed course indicators for air- craft radio beacon (RP28, 1928) Wenner, A new seismometer . . . (RP66, 1929) Diamond and Kear, A 12-course radio range for guiding aircraft . . . (RP154, 1930) Diamond & Gardner, Engine ignition shielding for radio reception in aircraft (RP158, 1930) Thomas, A new design of precision resistance standard (RP201, 1930) Diamond & Dunmore, A radiobeacon and receiving system for blind landing of aircraft (RP238, 1930) Souder & Peters, An investigation of the physical proper- ties of dental materials [A new dental interferometer for measuring expansion of dental amalgams] (T157, 1920) Danielson & Souder, The causes and control of fish scaling of enamels for sheet iron and steel (J. Am. Ceram. Soc. 4, 620, 1921) Peters & Boyd, Interference methods for standardizing and testing precision gage blocks {S436, 1922) Testing sieves by projection methods (LC72 and LC74, 1922; LC584, 1940) Bearce, A fundamental basis for measurements of length (S535, 1926) Bean, Buckingham & Murphy, Discharge coefficients of square-edged orifices for measuring the flow of air (RP49, 1929) Bean, An apparatus and method for determining the com- pressibility of a gas and the correction for "supercom- pressibility" (RP170, 1930) Tables of thermodynamic properties of ammonia (C142, 1923) Osborne, Stimson, Sligh & Cragoe, Specific heat of super- heated ammonia vapor (S501, 1924) Kanolt, Nonflammable liquids for cryostats (S520, 1925) Burgess and Stimson, The International Temperature Scale (RP22, 1928; RP1962, 1948) Osborne, Stimson & Fiock, A calorimetric determination of thermal properties of saturated water and steam from 0° to 270° C. (RP209, 1930) Jackson & Silsbee, C. G., The solubility of dextrose in water (S437, 1922) Meggers, Kiess & Stimson, Practical spectographic anal- ysis (S444, 1922) Gibson & Tyndall, The visibility of radiant energy (S475, 1923) APPENDIX K 637 5. CHEMISTRY Judd, Contributions in colorimetry to the development of the ICI standard observer (1924; J. Opt. Sec. Am. 23, 359, 1933) Gardner & Bennett, A modified Hartman test based on interference (J. Opt. Soc. Am. 11, 441, 1925) Gardner & Case, Camera for photographing the interior of a rifle barrel (J. Opt. Soc. Am. 12, 159, 1926) Jackson, C. G. Silsbee & Proffitt, The preparation of levu- lose (S519, 1925) Peters & Phelps, Color [and color nomenclature] in the sugar industry (T338, 1926) Gardner, Application of the algebraic aberration equations to optical design (S550, 1926) Meggers & Burns, Hyperfine structures of lanthanum lines (J. Opt. Soc. Am. 14, 449, 1927) Davis & Walters, Sensitometry of photographic emulsions and a survey of the characteristics of plates and films of American manufacture (S439, 1922) Davis, A special camera for photographing cylindrical surfaces (S517, 1925) Davis, Artificial sunlight for photographic sensitometry (Trans. Soc. Motion Picture Eng. 12, 225, 1928) Taylor, Analysis of diaphragm system for the X-ray stand- ard ionization chamber (RP119, 1929; Taylor & Singer RP211, 1930) Taylor, The precise measurement of X-ray dosage [The first X-ray dosage standards] (RP56, 1929) Mohler, Relative production of negative and positive ions by electron collisions (Phys. Rev. 26, 614, 1926) Mohler & Boecker, Photo-ionization of caesium by line absorption (RP186, 1930) Holler, A method of studying electrode potentials and polarization ( (S504, 1924; Darnielle, RP1336, 1940) Palmer & Weaver, [First U.S. publication of] Thermal- conductivity method for the analysis of gases (T249, 1924) Weaver, Relation betvs'een the heating value of gas and its usefulness to the customer (T290, 1925) First industrial recording instrument based on thermal conductivity (constructed for Navy plant at Indian Head, Md., 1924 — no publ.) Weaver, Eiseman & Shawn, [First program based on] A method for testing gas appliances to determine their safety from producing carbon monoxide (T304, 1926) Swanger, [First analytical methods for] The analysis of dental gold alloys (S532, 1926) Souder et al., [First standards and certification system for dental materials] (J. Dental Res. 7, 173, 1927; C433, 1942) Coleman, Physical properties of dental materials [First accurate determination of casting shrinkage of dental inlay gold] (RP32, 1928) 638 APPENDIX K 6. ENGINEERING PHYSICS 7. ENGINEERING, STRUCTURAL & MISC. MATERIALS 8. METALLURGY Washburn, Bruun & Hicks, Apparatus and methods for the separation, identification, and determination of the chemical constituents of petroleum (RP45, 1929) Washburn, On the determination of the empirical formula of a hydrocarbon (RP236, 1930) Eckhardt, Karcher & Keiser, Electron tube drive for tuning forks (Phys. Rev. 17, 535, 1921) Heyl & Briggs, The earth inductor compass (Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. 61, 15, 1922) Tuckerman, [The Tuckerman optical strain gage] (Am. Soc. Testing Mater. Proc. 23, 602, 1923) Heck. Eckhardt & Chrisler, Radio-acoustic method of posi- tion finding in hydrographic surveys (no publ., 1924) Quayle, Spark photography and its application to some problems in ballistics [First spark shadow photographs of bullets in flight] (S508, 1924) Zobel & Carroll, A hot-wire anemometer for measuring air flow through engine radiators (T287, 1925) Briggs, Hull & Dryden, Aerodynamic characteristics of airfoils at high speeds (Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Rep. 207, 1924; Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Rep. 319, 1929; Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Rep. 365, 1930) Tuckerman, Keulegan & Eaton, A fabric tension meter for use on aircraft [for testing rigid airship envelopes] (T320, 1926) Buckingham, Theory and . . . experiments on the trans- mission of sound through partition walls (S506, 1925) Dryden, Heald, et al.. Investigations in turbulence in wind tunnels (Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Rep. 231, 1926; Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Rep. 342, 1930, et seq.) Whittemore, Petrenko, et al.. Proving rings for calibrating testing machines (patents, 1926; C454, 1946) Heyl, A redetermination of the constant of gravitation (RP256, 1930) Tuckerman, Whittemore & Petrenko, A new dead-weight testing machine of 100,000 pounds capacity (RP147, 1930) Dryden & Hill, [Studies of wind pressure on structures] (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., Nov 1930; RP301, 1931; RP545, 1933) Holt & Wormeley, Dynamometer [equipment and] tests of automobile tires (T240, 1923) Holt & Wormeley, [Equipment for] Endurance tests of tires (T318, 1926) Holt, Wormeley, et al.. The testing of rubber goods (C38, 5th ed., 1927) Kline & Acree, Consumption of nitric acid in the oxida- tion of xylose (Ind. Eng. Chem. 22, 975, 1930) Kline & Acree, A study of the method for titrating aldose sugars with standard iodine and alkali (RP247, 1930) Merica & Waltenberg, [Pioneer work on the] Mallea- bility and metallography of nickel (T281, 1925) French & Klopsch, Initial temperature and mass effects in quenching ,T295, 1925; French & Hamill, RP103, 1929) APPENDIX K 639 9. CERAMICS French & Tucker, Flow in a low-carbon steel at various temperatures [Pioneer work on creep of metals at elevated temperatures] (T296, 1925; Geil & Carwile, RP2329, 1952) Jordan & Eckman, Gases in metals [Pioneer work on the effects of oxygen and hydrogen on the properties and behavior of metals] (S514, 1925) Herschman, Air-hardening rivet steels (T358, 1927) Rawdon, [The prevention of corrosion in duralumin] Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Note 284, 1928) Saeger and Ash, [Practical methods of determining the quality of metals in the foundry] (LC252, 1928; RP399, 1932) Logan, Soil-corrosion studies [First explanation of the mechanism of corrosion in soils] (RP95, 1929) French & Digges, Turning with shallow cuts at high speeds [and method for testing high-speed tool steels] (RP120, 1929) Freeman, Scherer & Rosenberg, Reliability of fusible tin boiler plugs in service [Cause and remedy for their failure in marine boilers] (RP129, 1930; see also Burgess & Merica, T53, 1914) Finn, Making the glass disk for a 70-inch telescope reflec- tor [The first reflector this large made in the United States] (RP97, 1929) NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY— 1931-1940 1. ELECTRICAL Sanford, A method for the standardization of perme- ameters at high magnetizing forces (RP279, 1931) Kear & Wintermute, A simultaneous radiotelephone and visual range beacon for the airways (RP341, 1931) Diamond, The cause and elimination of night effects in radio range-beacon reception (RP513, 1933) Brooks, The standard-cell comparator [Design and con- struction of a specialized potentiometer for exact com- parison of standard cells] (RP586, 1933) Harris, A new cathode-ray oscillograph and its application to the study of power loss in dielectric materials (RP636, 1934) Dunmore, Unicontrol radio receiver for ultra high fre- quencies, using concentric lines as interstage couplers (RP856, 1935) Dellinger, Sudden disturbances of the ionosphere [Dis- covery of the Dellinger effect] (RP1016. 1937) Curtis, Moon & Sparks, An absolute determination of the ohm (RP857, 1936; RP1137, 1938) 640 APPENDIX K 2. WEIGHTS & MEASURES 3. HEAT & POWER 4. OPTICS Brooks, Defandorf & Silsbee, An absolute electrometer for the measurement of high alternating voltages (RP1078, 1938) Diamond, Hinman, Dunmore, et al., A method for the investigation of upper-air phenomena and its application to radio meteorography [The radiosonde] (RP1082, 1938; RP1329, 1940) Dunmore, An electric hygrometer and its application to radio meteorography (RP1102, 1938; RP1265, 1939) Astin, Measurement of relative and true power factors of air capacitors (RP1138, 1938) George, Production of accurate one-second time intervals (RP1136, 1938) Curtiss, Astin, et al.. An improved radio meteorograph on the Olland principle (RP1169, 1939) Design of flexible steel gages for control of mesh size of gill nets (LC372, 1933) Pefler, Device for testing haemacytometers and other pipettes of small capacity [The Peffer pipette tester] (RP1019, 1937) Knoop, Peters & Emerson, A sensitive pyramidal-diamond tool for indentation measurements [The Knoop hard- ness indenter] (RP1220, 1939) Roeser, Caldwell & Wensel, The freezing point of platinum (RP326, 1931) Van Dusen & Shelton, Apparatus for measuring thermal conductivity of metals up to 600° C (RP668, 1934) Wensel, Judd & Roeser, Establishment of a scale of color temperature (RP677, 1934) Wensel, International Temperature Scale and some re- lated physical constants (RP1189, 1939) Osborne, Stimson & Ginnings. Thermal properties of sat- urated water and steam (RP1229, 1939) Taylor, L. S., X-ray protection [The first X-ray protection code] (H15, 1931; H20, 1936, et seq.) Davis & Gibson, Filters for the reproduction of sunlight and daylight and the determination of color tempera- ture [International standards for converting artificial light to daylight quality and for determining color temperature] (M114, 1931) Taylor, International comparison of X-ray standards (RP397, 1932) Mohler, Collisions of the first and second kind in the positive column of a caesium discharge (RP485, 1932) Boeckner & Mohler, Scattering of electrons by ions and the mobility of electrons in a caesium discharge (RP535, 1933) Taylor, Radium protection [The first radium protection code] (H18, 1934; H23, 1938, et seq.) Tilton & J. K. Taylor, Refractive index and dispersion of normal and heavy water (RP703, 1934) Curtiss, Deflection of cosmic rays by a magnetic field (RP509, 1932) Hoffman & Scribner, Purification of gallium by fractional crystallization of the metal (RP823, 1935) APPENDIX K 641 5. CHEMISTRY Gardner, Design and construction of eclipse apparatus [Application of telephoto lenses to eclipse photography] (1936; reported in Nat. Geo. Soc. Solar Expedition Papers, No. 2, 1942, pp. 4, 95) Gardner & Case, Precision camera for testing lenses (RP984, 1937) Mohler, Cesium discharge under conditions of nearly com- plete ionization (RP1150, 1938) Gardner, Relation of camera error to photogrammetric mapping (RP1177, 1939) Saunders, Improved interferometric procedure with appli- cation to expansion measurements (RP1227, 1939) Gibson & Haupt, Standardization of the luminous-trans- mission scale used in the specification of railroad signal glasses (RP1209, 1939) Judd & Kelly, Method of designating colors [Development of the ISCC-NBS method of designating colors] (RP1239, 1939; C553, 1955) Washer & Gardner, Studies of the resolving povtrer of camera lenses (1939-1950; C428, 1940; RP1636, 1945; C533, 1953) Scribner, Spectrographic detection of rare earths in plants (Proc. 6th Summer Conf. on Spectroscopy, 1939, pp. 10-13) Curtiss, Astin, et al., Cosmic-ray observations in the stratosphere with high-speed counters (RP1254, 1939) Judd, Hue, saturation, and lightness of surface colors with chromatic illumination (RP1285, 1940) Carroll & Hubbard, The photographic emulsion . . . (RP340, 1931 . . . RP622, 1933) Smith, W. H., Saylor & Wing, The preparation and crystallization of pure ether-soluble rubber hydrocarbon (RP544, 1933) Washburn, Standard states for bomb calorimetry (RP546, 1933) Washburn, E. R. Smith & Frandsen, The isotopic frac- tionation of water (RP601, 1933) Gilchrist, Methods for the separation of platinum, pal- ladium, rhodium, and iridium [First systematic method of separating the platinum metals] (RP655, 1934) Washburn, E. R. Smith & F. A. Smith, Fractionation of the isotopes of hydrogen and of oxygen in a commerioal electrolyzer (RP729, 1934) HofiFman, Preparation of pure gallium (RP734, 1934) Brickwedde, Scott, & H. S. Taylor, The difference in vapor pressures of ortho- and paradeuterium (RP841, 1935) Brenner, Magnetic method for measuring the thickness of nickel coatings on non-magnetic base metals [The Mag- negage] (RP994, 1937) Knowlton & Rossini, Method and apparatus for the rapid conversion of deuterium oxide into deuterium (RP1050, 1937) 642 APPENDIX K 6. MECHANICS & SOUND 7. ORGANIC & FIBROUS MATERIALS Gilchrist. New procedure for the analysis of dental gold alloys (RP1103, 1938) Wildhack & Goerke, Formulas for diaphragm and dia- phragm capsules (Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Note 738, 1939; Natl. Adv. Comm. Aerori. Tech. Note 876, 1942) Thompson, Methods of measuring pH in alkaline cyanide plating baths tRP1291, 1940) Lyon, Whittemore, et al.. Strain measurement in reinforce- ment . . . [The Whittemore hand strain gage] (RP268, 1931) Snyder, An automatic reverberation meter for the measure- ment of sound absorption {RP457, 1932) Peterson & Womack [The aviation superheat meter] (Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Rep. 606, 1937) Cordero, A vibrometer for measuring amplitude in a single frequency (patent, 1934) Heald, [Ground effect tests and air forces on automobiles] (RP748 and RP749, 1934) Snyder. Recent sound-transmission measurements [Thresh- old standards for audiometry] (RP800, 1935) Wright, [Pioneer hydraulic model studies] (RP907, 1936: Keulegan, RP14S8, 1942) Heyl & Cook, The value of gravity at Washington (RP946, 1936) Briggs, [The flight performance of golf balls and base- balls] (TNB, No. 252, 1938; RP1624, 1945) Keulegan & Beij, Studies of turbulent flow in pipes and open channels ( RP965, 1937; RPlllO, 1938; RP115L 1938; RP1488, 1942) Golden & Hunter, Backflow prevention in over-rim water supplies [Cross-connection flow in plumbing systems] (BMS28, 1939) Greenspan, Approximation to a function of one variable from a set of its mean values [Method of measurement of strain at a point] (RP1235. 1939) Keulegan & Patterson, Mathematical theory of irrotational translation waves [Research on the theory of wave mo- tion] (RP1272, 1940; RP1544, 1943) Schiefer & Best, Carpet wear testing machine (RP315. 1931) Schiefer, The flexometer . . . for evaluating the flexural properties of cloth and similar materials (RP555. 1933) Schiefer, The compressometer . . . for evaluating the thickness . . . and compressional resilience of textiles and similar materials (RP561, 1933) Becker, Spectral reflectance of . . . abaca [manila rope] fiber (RP628, 1933) Schiefer & Appel, Hosiery testing machine (RP679 and LC466, 1934) Carson, A sensitive instrument for measuring the air perme- ability of paper and other sheet materials (RP681, 1934) Bekkedahl, [Volume dilatometer for studying phase changes in liquids and solids] (RP717, 1934; RP2016, 1949) I APPENDIX K 643 8. METALLURGY CLAY & SILICATE PRODUCTS Kline & Malmberg, Suitability of various plastics [esf>e- cially cellulose acetate butyrate] for use in airplane dopes (RP1098, 1938) Taylor, R. H., & Holt, Small inertia-type machine for testing brake lining (RP1297, 1940) Launer, Apparatus for the study of the photochemistry of sheet materials (RP1300, 1940) Rosenberg & Jordan, Influence of oxide films on the wear of steels (RP708, 1934) Buzzard & Wilson, Anodic coating of magnesium alloys [for aircraft use] (RP964, 1937) Krynitsky & Saeger, Elastic properties of cast iron [Optical method for measuring deflection of cast iron bars under pressure] (RP1176, 1939) Geller & Creamer, "Moisture expansion" of ceramic white ware [Discovery of effect of moisture expansion on crazing of glasses] (RP472, 1932) Kessler & Sligh, Physical properties and weathering characteristics of slate (RP477, 1932) Swenson, Wagner & Pigman, Effect of the granulometric composition of cement on the properties of pastes, mor- tars, and concretes [New method for determining fine- ness of Portland cement] (RP777, 1935) Theuer, Effect of temperature on the stress-deformation of concrete [Sonic methods for measurement of modules of elasticity of concrete] (RP970, 1937) Stull & Johnson, Relation between moisture content and flow-point pressure of plastic clay [First comprehensive study of cause of white-coat plaster failures] (RP1186, 1939) NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY— 1941-1945 1. ELECTRICITY [Development of workable perchloric and fluoboric acid batteries] (1941; TNB 30, 76, 1946) Astin, Radio reporters for proximity fuse testing [Tele- metering from missiles in flight] (Classified NDRC Rep. A-53, 1942) Hinman & Brunetti, Radio proximity fuze design (1941; RP1723, 1946) Silsbee, Static electricity [Nature, origins, and mitigation of static electricity in industrial processes] (C438, 1942) [Development of first guided missile, the BAT] (1944; TNB 31, 30, 1947) Code for protection against lightning (H40, 1945) Franklin, NBS casting resin for potting electronic cir- cuitry (1945; TNB 31, 78, 1947) 644 APPENDIX K WEIGHTS & MEASURES 4. OPTICS 5. CHEMISTRY 6. MECHANICS & SOUND Hidnert, Thermal expansion of electrolytic chromium [Ex- planation of cracking of chromium plating] (RP1361, 1941) Absolute collimeter for testing range and height finders (no publ., 1942) Schoonover & Dickson, [Development of mold lining ma- terial for processing resin dentures] (J. Am. Dental Assoc. 29, 1349, 1942) Schoonover, Souder & Beall, [First explanation of delayed] Excessive expansion of dental amalgam (J. Am. Dental Assoc. 29, 1825, 1942) [Development of] Elastic dental impression com- pounds with an alginate base (J. Am. Dental Assoc. 30, .565, 1943) Peters, Nefflen & Harris, Diamond cutting by an electric arc (RP1657, 1945) Scribner, Spark spectrographic analysis of commercial tin (RP1451, 1942) Coblentz & Stair, A daily record of ultraviolet solar and sky radiation in Washington, 1941 to 1943 (RP1593, 1944) Scribner & Mullin, Carrier-distillation method for spectro- graphic analysis and its application to the analysis of uranium-base materials (Manhattan Project Report A-2907, Sep 1945; RP1753, 1946) Washer, Region of usable imagery in airplane-camera lenses (RP1636, 1945) Gibson, Haupt & Keegan, Specification of railroad signal colors and glasses (RP1688, 1946) Meggers, Microscopy, past, present, and future (J. Opt. Soc. Am. 36, 431, 1946) Branham, Shepherd & Schuhmann, Critical study of the determination of carbon monoxide by combustion over platinum . . . [First sensitive colorimetric indicator for carbon monoxide] (RP1396, 1941) Mair, Glasgow & Rossini, Separation of hydrocarbons by azeotropic distillation (RP14{)2, 1941) Gilchrist, Analytical separations by means of controlled hydrolytic precipitation (RP1519, 1943) Flint, Clarke, et al.. Extraction of alumina from clays and high-silica bauxites (RP1691, 1945-46; Hoffman, Leslie, et al., RP1756, 1946) Hunter, Water-distributing systems for buildings (BMS79, 1941) Heyl & Chrzanowski, A new determination of the constant of gravitation (RP1480, 1942) Wildhack & Iberall, [Linear flowmeter for measuring oxy- gen regulator characteristics] (TNB 28, 68, 1944) Cordero, Waterproof and shockproof standby compass (no publ., 1943) Ramberg & Osgood, Description of stress-strain curves by three parameters (Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Note 902, 1943) APPENDIX K 645 7. ORGANIC & FIBROUS MATERIALS 8. METALLURGY 9. CLAY & SILICATE PRODUCTS McPherson, Adaptor for measuring principal strains with Tuckerman strain gage (Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Note 898, 1943) Keulegan, Laminar flow at the interface of two liquids [Research on density currents] {RP1591, 1944) Brueggman, Mayer & Miller, Devices for testing thin sheet metals in compression tests (Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Note 931, 1944; Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Note 1022, 1946) Tate, Solenoid compensating device for hardness testing machines (patent, 1944) Womack & Orbach, [Carbon monoxide indicators for air- craft] (1941; TNB 30, 73, 1946) Womack & Cordero, Yaw meter for aircraft (no pubL, 1945) Greenspan & Sweetman, A transfer strain gage for [meas- urement of] large strains (RP 1658, 1945) Cook & Chrzanowski, Absorption and scattering by sound- absorbent cylinders [Acoustic impedance of the human ear] (RP1709, 1946) Ramberg, Vacuum-tube acceleration pickup (RP1754, 1946) Womack & Cordero [A portable wind speed and direction indicator] (TNB 31, 97, 1947) Dreby, The planoflex ... for evaluating the pliability of fabrics (RP1434, 1941) Kline & Schiefer, An instrument for estimating tautness of doped fabrics on aircraft [Tautness meter] (Natl. Adv. Comm. Aeron. Tech. Note 729, 1942) Schiefer, Mizell & Mosedale, [Thermal transmission appa- ratus for testing textiles] (RP1528, 1943) Dreby, A friction meter for determining the coefficient of kinetic friction [in testing the smoothness] of fabrics (RP1562, 1943) Kanagy, Charles, et al., [Prevention of mildew of leather] (RP1713, 1946) Plastic housing for binoculars (TNB 28, 30, 1944) Schiefer, Machines and methods for testing cordage fibers (RP1611, 1944) Standard fading lamp (LC785, 1945) Ellinger, Bissell & Williams, [Development of] The tee- bend test to compare the welding quality of steels (RP1444, 1942) Geller, A resistor furnace . . . [Development of ceramic oxide resistors for high-temperature furnaces] (RP1443, 1941) Harrison & Moore, [Mechanism of] Weather resistance of porcelain-enameled iron structural units (RP1476, 1942) Hoffman, J. I., Leslie, et al.. Development of a hydrochloric acid process for the production of alumina from clay (RP1756, 1946) Harrison, Moore & Richmond, Ceramic coatings for high- temperature protection of steel (RP1773, 1947) 646 APPENDIX K NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY— 1946-1951 1. ELECTRICITY & OPTICS 2. METROLOGY 3. HEAT & POWER ATOMIC & RADIATION PHYSICS Washer & Scott, Influence of the atmosphere upon the pre- cision of telescope pointing (RP1829, 1947) Washer, Sources of error in and calibration of the f-number of photographic lenses (RP1927, 1948) Gardner & Hahner, Research and development in applied optics and optical glass at the NBS (M194, 1949) Washer & Case, Calibration of precision airplane mapping cameras (RP2108, 1950) Electrochemical constants: a symposium (C524, 1953) 1954) ■Optical image evaluation: a symposium (C526, Peters, Emerson, et al.. Electrical methods for diamond- die production (RP1787, 1947) Bowman, An automatic correction-computing chronograph [A method for making precision isochronism measure- ments] (Horological Inst. Am. J. 6, 13, 1951) Frequency-monitoring device for interval timers (TNB 33, 99, 1949) Gravity waves: a symposium (C521, 1952) Woolley, Scott & Brickwedde, Compilation of thermal prop- erties of hydrogen in its various isotopic and ortho-para modifications (RP1932, 1948) Scott, [New helium liquefier for studies in superconduc- tivity] (TNB 33, 13, 1949) Low-temperature physics: a symposium (C519, 1952) Mechanical properties of metals at low tempera- tures: a symposium (C520, 1952) •Energy transfer in hot gases: a symposium (C523, 1954) Singer, Braestrup & Wyckoff, Absorption measurements for broad beams of 1- and 2-million-volt X-rays [Use of concrete as a high-energy radiation shield] (RP1735, 1946) Meggers & Westfall, Lamps and wavelengths of mercury 198 [New standard of length, the Hgl98 lamp] (TNB 31, 133, 1947; Sci. Mo. 68, 3, 1949; RP2091, 1950) Marton & Belson, Tracer micrography [with radioactive isotopes] (Science, 106, 2742, 1947) A non-magnetic radio-frequency mass s{>ectrometer (TNB 32, 1, 1948) Marton & Lachenbruch, Electron optical observation of magnetic fields [The electron optical shadow method for field mapping] (RP2033, 1949) Curtiss & Carson, Reproducibility of photo-neutron stand- ards (Phys. Rev. 76, 1412, 1949) Hippie, Sommer & Thomas, A precise method of determin- ing the faraday by magnetic resonance [The omegatron] Phys. Rev. 76, 1877, 1949) APPENDIX K 647 5. CHEMISTRY 6. MECHANICS 7. ORGANIC & FIBROUS MATERIALS Thomas, Driscoll & Hippie, Measurement of the proton moment in absolute units (Phys. Rev. 75, 902, 1949; RP2104, 1950) Driscoll, Thomas & Hippie, The absolute value of the gyromagnetic ratio of the proton ( Phys. Rev. 78, 339, 1950) Huntoon & Fano, Atomic definition of primary standards (Nature, 166, 167, 1950) Electron physics: a symposium {C527, 1954) Mass spectroscopy in physics research: a sympo- sium (C522, 1953) Shepherd, Analysis of a standard sample . . . [First na- tion-wide effort to standardize gas analysis] (RP1704, 1946) Brenner & Riddell, Nickel plating on steel by chemical reduction (RP1725, 1946) Rossini, Pitzer, et al.. Tables of selected values of proper- ties of hydrocarbons (C461, 1947) Glasgow, Murphy, et al.. Purification, purity, and freezing points of 31 hydrocarbons of the API-NBS seriea (RP1734, 1946) Schwab & Wichers, [Benzoic acid cells as thermometric standard] (TNB 31, 116, 1947) Brenner, Couch & Williams, Electrodeposition of alloys of phosphorus with nickel or cobalt (RP2061, 1950) Scribner & Corliss, Emission spectrographic standards (Anal. Chem. 23, 1548, 1951) ^ Electrodeposition research: a symposium (C529, 1953) Carson & Worthington, Apparatus for determining water- vapor permeability of moisture barriers (C453, 1946) Wildhack & Goalwin, [Compact liquid-to-gas oxygen con- verter] (TNB 33, 65, 1949) Wexler, Divided flow, low-temperature humidity test appa- ratus [for radiosonde hygrometers] (TNB 32, 11, 1948; RP1894, 1948) Levy, A. E. McPherson & Hobbs, Calibration of accel- erometers [for aircraft] (RP1930, 1948) Cordero, Johnson & Womack [Development of the Pfund sky compass] (TNB 33, 53, 1949) Cordero, Stick-force indicator for aircraft (TNB 34, 6, 1950) French, Stack venting of plumbing fixtures (BMS118, 1950) Characteristics and application of resistance strain gages: a symposium (C528, 1954) Schiefer, et al., Solution of problem of producing uniform abrasion and its application to the testing of textiles (RP1807, 1947; RP1988, 1949) Holt, Knox & Roth, Strain test for rubber [Vulcanizates] (RP1907, 1948) Axilrod, Thiebeau & Brenner, Variable-span flexure test jig for plastic specimens (ASTM Bull. 148, 96, 1947) 6W APPENDIX K 8. METALLURGY 9. MINERAL PRODUCTS 11. APPLIED MATHEMATICS 13. ELECTRONICS & ORDNANCE DEVELOPMENT 14. CENTRAL RADIO PROPAGATION LABORATORY Hobbs, [Luggage testing and fatigue tester for luggage handles] (TNB 32, 134, 1948) Hanks & Weissberg [The osmometer] (194S; RP2377, 1952) Newman, Borysko & Swerdlow, Ultra-microtomy by a new method (RP2020, 1949) O'Leary, et al., Paper from glass fibers (TNB 35, 177, 1951; TNB 39, 82, 1955) Polymer degradation mechanism: a symposium (C525, 1953) Digges, Reinhart, et al., Influence of boron on some proper- ties of experimental and commercial steels [Substitution of boron for carbon in hardening steels] (RP1815, 1947; RP1938, 1948) Rosenberg & Darr, Stabilization of austenitic stainless steel [Prevention of corrosion in certain stainless steels] (RP1878, 1948) [Preparation of very thin] Ceramic dielectrics for electronic signal devices (TNB 33, 142. 1949) Harrison, Moore & Richmond, Ceramic coatings for high- temperature protection of steel (RP 1773, 1947) Lowan, The computation laboratory of the NBS [Mathe- matical tables program, 1930-1950] (Scripta Math. 15, 33, 1949) Brunetti & Curtis, NBS printed circuit techniques (TNB 31, 1946; C468, 1947) Rabinow, Magnetic fluid clutch (TNB 32, 54, 1948) Computer development at the NBS [SEAC, SWAC, and DYSEAC] (C551, 1955) Ionospheric radio propagation [Basic radio propa- gation predictions] (C462, 1947) Husten & Lyons, Microwave frequency [measurements and standards] (Elec. Eng. 67, 436, 1948) Kerns, Determination of efficiency of microwave bolometer mounts from impedance data (RP1995, 1949) Lyons, et al., The atomic clock : an atomic standard of frequency and time (TNB 33, 17, 1949) Lyons, Microwave spectroscopic frequency and time stand- ards [The atomic clock] (Elec. Eng. 68, 251, 1949) Birnbaum, A recording microwave refractometer (Rev. Sci. Instr. 21, 169, 1950) Greene & Solow, Development of very-high-frequency field- intensity standards (RP2100, 1950) Birnbaum, Kryder & Lyons, Microwave measurements of the dielectric properties of gases (J. Appl. Phys. 22, 95, 1951) Selby, Radio-frequency micropotentiometer [and measure- ment of accurate rf microvoltages] (TNB 35, 33, 1951; Trans. AIEE 72, 158, 1953) Huston, Improved NBS ammonia clock (Proc. IRE 39, 208, 1951) Lyons, Spectral lines as frequency standards [NBS Model III of the ammonia clock] (Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 55, 831. 1952) APPENDIX L LAND PURCHASES for the National Bureau of Standards U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE WASHINGTON, D.C. SCALE 400 FT. Source: PLANT DIVISION, NBS SCHEDULE OF PURCHASES 1 1901 7.46 ACRES $25,000 1913 8.76 ACRES 66,034 1918 10.80 ACRES 81,500 1918 1.47 ACRES 7,000 1920 6.60 ACRES 47,260 1925 7.95 ACRES 173,117 1930 15.01 ACRES 400.000 1941 12.52 ACRES 125,000 1942 .085 ACRES APPENDIX M SAMUEL WESLEY STRATTON Founder and First Director of the National Bureau of Standards ^ It is no exaggeration to say that Dr. Stratton's whole life was the National Bureau of Standards and that every formative influence in his early years was a preparation for his founding and direction of the Bureau. The Bureau is his monument, and the ideals of service that Stratton built into the edifice he raised in the age of commerce and industry survive intact into the present space age. The name "Stratton" goes back to 12th-century Scotland, the surname of families who dwelt in a walled village by a paved road. The first Stratton on record in this country came from England in 1628. Dr. Stratton himself is believed to have descended from a Thomas Stratton who received a patent of land in Pittsylvania County, Va., in 1764. Thomas's great grandson Robertson Stratton moved from Virginia to Kentucky, where his fifth child, the father of Samuel Wesley Stratton, was born in 1832. Upon the death of Robertson in 1832, his widow and children moved to Illinois. Dr. Stratton's father, Samuel, grew up in Litchfield, 111., went into stock farming and later lumbering, and married a widow, Mrs. Mary Webster Philips. It was on the farm just outside Litchfield that Samuel Wesley was born on July 18, 1861. Young Samuel Wesley grew up with little taste for farm life or for the stocks of Jersey cattle, Shetland ponies, Brahma chickens, and other new breeds of farm animals introduced into the State by his father as a result of periodic trips East and one voyage he made for new stock to England and the Channel Islands. Instead, he took an early interest in tinkering with the farm machinery, clocks, and other devices in the house, and in devising mechanical ways of taking the drudgery out of soapmaking, making apple butter, and similar farm chores. An annual treat was the stock show in St. Louis, 50 miles away, where his father exhibited his livestock and where young Samuel explored the exhibits of farm machinery, tools, and new mechanical inventions on display. Determined on more education than provided by the district school and the high school in Litchfield, 2 miles away, Stratton sold a colt he had raised and announced his intention of going for a year to the Illinois Industrial University at Urbana, the future University of Illinois. In 1880 land-grant Illinois Industrial was almost 12 years old, a citadel of learning offering courses in "such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, and military studies, without excluding other scientific and practical studies." The course Samuel Wesley set his heart on was that in "Machine shop practice," and he persuaded the registrar to let him take it in his freshman year. He was then 19, ' Except as otherwise noted, the present sketch is based on the manuscript fragment of a biography of Stratton written by Dr. Samuel C. Prescott of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1933-34 and on the materials collected for that biography that now comprise the Stratton Papers in the Archives Library at M.I.T. The biographical frag- ment and other documents in that collection used in this sketch have been reproduced for the NBS Historical File. 786-167 0^66 43 652 APPENDIX M Samuel W . Stratton at 21, probably early in his 3d year at Illinois Industrial University, about the time he entered the home of Dr. Peabody, presi- dent of the university. Stratton as brevet captain, "Co. C, I.I.U. Battalion, Champagne, III., 2/25-8Ji," as he wrote on the back of the picture. Fourteen years later, his fledgling moustache fully grown, he was in uniform again, serving under Commodore Remey during the Spanish- American War. a stockily built boy of slightly less than average height, with gray-blue eyes and light brown hair, his serious face concealing a shyness that, except in the company of close friends, was to last all his life. With little money from home, he found work in the college machine shops where he repaired farm machinery at 10 cents an hour. He also, with a wet-plate camera he had brought from home, took pictures of the buildings and classrooms for sale to students and visitors, and in the absence of satisfactory textbooks, began blueprinting the notes of professors at the university, at 2 cents a sheet. The notes, which he copied neatly from often illegible scrawls and then printed, sold well and enabled him to continue into his second year. That second year also he secured a room rent free in the chemical labora- tory building in exchange for serving as fireman and janitor. Stratton's last 2 years at the university were assured when the president and head of the. department of mechanical engineering, Dr. Delim H. Peabody, offered him room, board, and a small salary in exchange for tending the farm and grounds of the presi- APPENDIX M 653 dent's house and acting as a sort of personal secretary. He became, a daughter of Dr. Peabody later recalled, a member of the family, and the training he received in the bocial graces, in household management, and in meeting and entertaining visitors and guests of the university was to prove almost the most valuable part of his college education. It was about this time that he seems to have felt his youthful appearance belied his new responsibilities, for in his 22d year he began to grow the short, fidl mustache he wore the rest of his life. Beginning in his second year, young Stratton took "Military," as required in State- supported universities, and demonstrated marked skill as a drillmaster. Of his other studies a contemporary was to say that his scholarship was fair but not brilliant, but "in some matters he did excel — shop work, draughtsmanship, and work in the physics laboratory * * * his work a model of neatness and accuracy." Upon his graduation in 1884, Stratton received a completion certificate for his work in mathematics, physics, and mechanical engineering, his grades, according to the college record, consistently those expected of a "superior student"; a commission as brevet captain in the State military; and an invitation to return to the university as a member of the faculty. He presented his thesis, "The design of a heliostat," in 1886 and received his B.S. degree that year. In his only extant autobiographical fragment, a four-page note on his military and naval service, Stratton said he once asked President Peabody why he been selected to teach at the university. The president replied that he had observed Stratton at drill and was impressed with the fact that he seemed to know how to get along with men. "I enjoyed the systematic way of doing things," Stratton commented, "and that experience. especially the discipline, has been of great value to me in most of the things I have been called upon to do later." After a summer of engineering work in a Chicago factory, Stratton began in- structing in mathematics and physics in the preparatory department of the university. He continued in the rank of instructor until 1889, when he was made assistant professor of physics. Upon his organization of a course in electrical engineering a year later, he occupied the chair of professor of physics and electrical engineering. In 1892, through a member of the faculty who preceded him, Stratton was called to the new University of Chicago as assistant professor of physics." The Ryerson Physical Laboratory at Chicago was under construction and Prof. Albert A. Michelson, brought from Clark University to head the new department, spent most of that year at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures outside Paris. There he demonstrated the practicability of a wavelength (light wave) standard, which was destined to replace the standard meter bar as the standard of length. Stratton, as senior in Michelson's absence, therefore had the principal task of organizing the department and overseeing the construction and equipping of the new physics laboratory. He was then 26. Stratton's 7 years under Michelson served him well, for the highly irascible master of the spectroscope and interferometer was a stickler for perfection and champion of the sixth decimal point. Disciplined in the measurement method of science, Michelson did not foresee its replacement by mathematical and theoretical physics, and like many of his scientific colleagues he continued to believe that the future of physics was strictly a matter of further precision and improved instrumentation. ' Stratton's salary of $2,000 was $500 less than that of Amos Alonzo Stagg (1862-1965), brought to the university that same year as athletic director and given the rank of associate professor. Time, Mar. 26, 1965, p. 45. 654 APPENDIX M Sometime after settling into the routine of teaching and research with Michelson, Stratton was asked by Michelson. who had a strong interest in the Navy, to assist in organizing a volunteer naval militia at Chicago. A naval vessel on the Great Lakes was available for training in the operations of a warship, and Stratton accepted command of one of the four units constituting the naval militia battalion that was formed. At full strength his unit comprised a hundred men, consisting of trained engineers as officers and skilled artisans as crew. At the outbreak of the war with Spain in the spring of 1898, Stratton was commis- sioned a lieutenant, put in charge of the battalion, expanded with additional volunteers to 705 men, and all were formally inducted into the U.S. Navy. The battalion was sent to Key West where it was distributed among the ships preparing to put to sea. Stratton saw most of his original unit detailed to the battleship Oregon when it arrived in late May after its famous 16,000-mile voyage around the Horn. Many of his men saw action, but not Stratton. He had from the beginning of his naval service demonstrated marked executive abOity and could not be spared. He was first attached to the naval base, then as watch and division officer on Commodore George C. Remey's flagship at the base, and finally attached to the battleship Texas, sister ship of the Maine, when she came north after the battle of Santiago. Mustered out in November 1898, Stratton kept up his naval connections, and from 1904 to 1912 held the rank of Commander in the District of Columbia Naval Militia. The Bureau laboratories were never to be without research projects for the Navy and he maintained a strong attachment to that service all his life. His trip to the Nation's Capital late in 1898, to invite Admiral Dewey and Secretary of the Treasury Gage to give talks at the University of Chicago, led to Stratton's survey of the Office of Weights and Measures in the Coast Survey and the invitation to form and head the new National Bureau of Standards.' ' The originals of the Treasurv Department appointment of Dr. Stratton as Inspector of Standards, effective date of oath Oct. 28, 1899, and the U.S. Civil Service certificate formally appointing him Inspector, dated Dec. 12, 1899, are in the Stratton Papers, MIT, Box 11. A communication from Dr. Leonard B. Loeb, emeritus professor of physics. University of California, who studied and later taught under Michelson at Chicago, to Mrs. Dorothy Michelson Stevens, daughter of the great physicist, suggests that Michelson himself was very much interested in the position as Director of the new Bureau and, as plans for its establishment matured, hoped Stratton would make that known in Washington. Stratton had been Inspector of Standards for 6 months, working on the bill to be presented to Congress, when on Apr. 25, 1900, Michelson telegraphed Stratton asking him to return at once to Chicago, to help reorganize the local naval militia. Stratton, he said, was to be his chief of staff. (Telegram in Stratton Papers, MIT, copy in NBS Historical File.) But Stratton was now fully committed to his task in Washington. One of Stratton's first duties upon becoming Director on Mar. 3, 1901, was to recom- mend to Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage suitable members for the Visiting Committee to the Bureau. A letter in April 1901 to Stratton from Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, former head of the Coast and Geodetic Survey who had recently become President of MIT, agreed with Stratton on the wisdom of asking Elihu Thomson, as well as Michelson, to Join the Visiting Committee. "I think it wise to ask Michelson also as a member * * * because of his reputation and standing; no doubt we shall be able to keep him in good order." (Letter, Apr. 13, in Stratton Papers, Box 5.) The letter of invitation to Michelson was sent on June 6, 1901. No answer has been found. The letters APPENDIX M 655 Prior to his appointment in March 1901 as the Bureau Director, Stratton lived at a boardinghouse at the corner of 18th and I Streets. Later that year he moved into an apartment in The Farragut, then nearing completion, a block away on 17th Street. His famous perfect and faithful maid Cordelia who came at this time was to run his bachelor household and delight his frequent dinner guests with her good cooking for the next 25 years in Washington and in Cambridge. As Director of the Bureau, Dr. Stratton had considerable entertaining to do and learned to do it well. He streamed with charm and even his slight air of haughti- ness was engaging. If he was somewhat formal and shy with strangers and acquaintances, with those who became friends he was wholly at ease, merry, and playful. He enjoyed most of all friends with large families, whose children he could spoil with presents and confections. They were sometimes unusual presents, such as the piglet he brought to one house, the great white goose he carried to another. As a treat for the Parris children on P Street, one of whom, Morris, was many years later to become his personal secretary and assistant at MIT, Stratton on one occasion secured the private car of the president of the Washington Railway & Electric Co. and for an afternoon and evening took them and a swarm of their friends on a picnic trip around the city and out into the suburbs. Without a family, he made the Bureau family his own, presiding over their welfare, their education, and even their marriages, a number of which were held in his home at the Farragut. As the Bureau grew and the children of the staff members multiplied, Stratton began his custom of putting on elaborate Christmas parties and summer games and picnics for them. At the annual summer party in June, each child was weighed and measured and the new figures compared with those previously recorded. For their amusement he had swings erected on the Bureau la^vn, brought up an organ grinder and monkey, a merry-go-round with a caliope, and hired a clown, and ponies to ride. There was a toy for each child, balloons were everywhere, and all the ice cream, lemonade, cake, and cookies the youngsters could eat. And to keep their parents happy out on Connecticut Avenue, Stratton held frequent receptions for their entertainment and arranged dances, lectures, and musicals, the latter often by members of the staff — events unheard of in a Government bureau before that time.* He tried golf briefly and occasionally played tennis during his first years at the Bureau but never really cared for such organized exercise. The tennis ended when in 1905 Stratton and Louis A. Fischer, his chief of weights and measures, bought a 25-foot motor launch which they kept moored at a boat club on the Potomac. They spent many evenings and Sundays on the river, and made new friends along the waterway, among them James C. Courts, clerk of the Appropriations Committee, who became a great help to Stratton in getting Bureau bills through Congress. Not that he needed much help, for Stratton had a way with Congress, of interesting and exciting its committees in the research work of the Bureau, that was famous. As commander of the District Naval Militia, Stratton also had access to the monitor Puritan and a steam yacht, the to those who were to form the first Visiting Committee, including both Thomson and Pritchett, were sent on June 18 (see ch. II, p. 61) . Mrs. Stevens, Michelson's daughter, presently engaged in writing a biography of her father, acknowledges that the introspective physicist, with his almost complete lack of interest in adminstration, would probably not have been happy as Director of the Bureau. But that his standing as a scientist and metrologist made him unquestionably the best qualified man in the Nation, and otherwise the obvious choice, for the position is beyond question. * G. K. Burgess, "Dr. Samuel Wesley Stratton," The Tech Engineering News (MIT), 3,146 (1922). 656 CO e a. c APPENDIX M 657 Oneida, the latter a training ship whose crews on weekend outings and picnics frequently included some of Stratton's friends. As Director of the Bureau and also a highly eligible bachelor, Stratton was in constant demand at official functions and private dinners. He was a frequent guest at the White House, beginning with the McKinleys. Later, the houseful of young Roose- velts became a recurring delight, as were his visits to the home of Commerce Secretary Hoover with its two enterprising youngsters. But his entertainment ranged far beyond official circles. For an inherently shy person Stratton had. Dr. Burgess was to say, "probably as wide an acquaintance among men of science, industry, engineering, and business as any single American."^ Among his hundreds of acquaintances and friends, the two most intimate and longlasting were, not surprisingly, in the instrument industry, John Bashear, the great instrumentmaker, and Ambrose Swasey, manufacturer of machine tools and astronomical instruments, including the Lick, Naval Observatory, and Yerkes telescopes. One chore that Dr. Stratton had all his professional life and could not evade was making speeches. Through the years he was called on more and more for talks and dedications and addresses, yet never learned to enjoy the prospect or effort. Even late in his career the thought of making an informal speech at the Bureau, on the occasion of its 25th anniversary, was daunting. As he wote to Dr. Burgess, "Of course, you know speaking is rather difficult for me." ' As the Bureau grew larger and the responsibilities greater. Dr. Stratton took less and less time off, until the yearly trips to Paris, mostly for meetings at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, often became his only real vacation. It was during one of these Atlantic crossings shortly after World War I that he met Francis R. Hart of Boston, banker and member of the executive committee of the Massachusetts Institute of Techology, who is said to have submitted Stratton's name to the committee when that institution was looking for a new president.' He was invited to Cambridge in the spring of 1922 but deferred the decision to accept the office until he had discussed it with Secretary Hoover. Besides his concern for the Bureau, he had just bought an old house in Georgetown and was in the midst of remodeling it. Friends of 20 years were in Washington and its environs, and his roots were deep in the Bureau he had founded. But more visits to Cambridge followed, and on January 2, 1923, after receiving with the Hoovers at their annual New Year's day reception, Stratton arrived at the president's house on Charles River Road in Cambridge to stay. Returning to the Bureau late in 1926 to take part in the celebration of its 25th anniversary, Stratton recalled as the greatest accomplishments of the Bureau under his direction, not its many achievements in science and technology, but its impact on Amer- ican industry. Its most significant accomplishments for the advance of industry, promised when the Bureau was founded, were "the influence upon manufacturers, of the intro- duction of scientific methods of measurements and methods of research * * * [and] the training of men for industry." * They were also the objectives he had raised to new heights in his administration of MIT. Dr. Stratton was summering at the home of friends in Manchester, Mass., in June 1927 when Gov. Alvan T. Fuller asked President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University, Judge Robert A. Grant of the Probate Court of Suffolk County, and Dr. = Ibid. ° Letter, Oct. 28, 1926 ("General Correspondence files of the Director, 1945-1955"). ' Undocumented account in Prescott's manuscript. Hart may have been partly instru- mental, but for a better documented account of the invitation, see ch. V, pp. 233-235. 'Speech, Dec. 4, 1926 (NBS Blue Folder Box 3, APW301c). 658 a. fe. ■Ki ° ^ 2 2 V §? 1 ^ S 2 T^l 1*; ^1 11 ff o e c 1 «3 •IS '^ O ; c o a 'S a ^» 1 IS 4> tti ; a -a 0) oi ■S e I* o a CO -rJ o C g -a CO o S -S s «j _ a ■" t5 -a t^ a -53 1 f* "a. a. -ii CO ^'1 a. %- a £§ a: "* s -- *5^ •o csj 5;:2 g E a CO '^-S o S "^ c e CJ ^ iS a i -^ O ^ ^ 1^ ^d ' v5 ^ c ! 1 " ^ 1 i X t =1 -o ^■^ "« § C5 ^ "^ c 1*. 5^ ^.2 Ij:^ (^ 'r.;) a o k- ^ o" i 2^ ^ £; *^ a 5** (i> o to -2f K o !0 Is a S CD '* ! "« CO . C e « Oi g tJ -a l§ 1^ c^ •si -t^ -^ 'S Q) "Q "^ a a "a ^ 8 So ^c S a 05 CU 2^ 11 -c S, APPENDIX M 659 Stratton to serve on an advisory committee in the Governor's investigation of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. Seven years before, in May 1920, Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, one a shoe worker, the other a fish peddler, were arrested and suijsequently charged with the murder of a shoe factory paymaster and his guard at South Braintree, near Boston. They bore the stigma of being unnaturalized foreigners, wartime draft dodgers, admitted anarchists and atheists. These crimes might have convicted them but in truth they were tried for murder and on July 14, 1921, found guilty. Immediately after their arrest, Socialist and anarchist friends formed a Sacco- Vanzetti Defense Committee that was soon joined by a civil liberties committee and many of the dissident groups that flourished in the troubled years after the war. For 6 years the committee delayed execution of the sentence by successive motions for new trials, and created a worldwide cause celebre in which law professors and students, lawyers, college professors, editors, journalists, preachers, poets, playwrights, publicists, authors, labor unions, church councils, the radical press, volunteer agitators, and simple citizens, labored in the atmosphere of the hysteria provoked by the case. Two respites were granted by Governor Fuller after the sentence of execution, pronounced on April 9, 1927, was set. On June 1 the Governor appointed his advisory committee of three to make a final review of the evidence. Lowell, Grant, and Stratton studied the amassed records and held hearings and interviews with Judge Webster Thayer, the district attorney, the defense attorneys, the jury members, police, and many of the witnesses. A recommendation for commutation of the death sentence would have relieved them from the threats of violence and the abuse they were to suffer, but in their report to the Governor on July 27 they unanimously adjudged the trial fair and upheld the jury's verdict that the defendents were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on August 23, 1927. It was a harrowing experience. Tempers were high and threatening letters bombarded the committee. An armed guard sat in Dr. Stratton's office at the State House and in his car wherever he went. At Manchester a policeman followed his car and another patroled his house at night. When the ordeal was over Stratton sailed for Europe under secrecy imposed by the uneasy steamship company. He spent the hours before sailing in the port captain's office and boarded the ship only at the last minute. His name was omitted from the passenger list. In London the American Embassy took over, and in that city and in Paris there were demonstrations, but Stratton was not recognized and he continued his tour without event. Stratton's trips to Europe by then had become frequent, and besides visiting the friends he had everywhere, he spent much time in antique shops, collecting old silver in shops in Glasgow and at Mallets in Bath, rare china in Kings Street, London, old furniture in Rubgy, tapestries wherever they were to be found in France, and new pieces of china from the Sevres factory outside Paris and in the Rive Gauche. No new or idle pastime, this connoisseurship was quite in keeping with his long years of interest in ceramics, in textiles, and metalworking. His love of fine instruments and working with tools never diminished. As he had furnished a workshop next to his office at the Bureau, so one of the first things he set up in Cambridge was a nearly perfect shop, with great stores of material and extra tools, in the basement below his office at the Institute. Only slightly less complete wa; another shop downstairs in the president's house. His zeal for acquisition of "stock," as he called it, extended to his food supplies and linens for the house, to clothing and everything else that could be bought ahead. He was as lavish, within his means, toward others as toward himself, and never made a visit without a shower of presents for his hosts and their children. After visiting 660 APPENDIX M the American consul and his wife in Dresden one summer he mailed them great hampers of food unobtainable in postwar Germany. To friends he visited on Norway's North Cape he sent two barrels of fruit. Besides his good company, he was always a welcome and useful guest, for he willingly mended toys and broken household machines brought to his attention. A poor sleeper and avid reader from youth onward, Stratton carried books with him when he visited and collected them abroad. At home he kept his bedroom shelves filled with current scientific periodicals and books and often read from midnight to 3 or 4 in the morning. In his 8 years at MIT he introduced at that institution many of the innovations he had set going at the Bureau, extending its research in engineering and industrial proc- esses, in pure science, and expanding the Institute's work into new fields of applied science. Under him new laboratories and dormitories rose, lecturers were brought from the universities of Europe to make available the best research and teaching in science and technology abroad, and advisory committees of men eminent in professional or business life were appointed to counsel the departments of the Institute. As at the Bureau, Stratton was everywhere overseeing, counseling, and directing the affairs of the Institute and the student body, and as his 70th birthday approached the effort became overtaxing. Acting on his suggestion, the corporation of MIT divided the heavy administrative responsibility in 1930, making Dr. Stratton chairman of the corporation. Dr. Karl T. Compton, who had been head of the physics department at Princeton, came to assume the presidency of the Institute. Stratton's birthday on July 18, 1931, was celebrated by an avalanche of letters, almost 200 of them later mounted in a great gleaming leather birthday book. Beginning with a warm letter from Herbert and Lou Hoover, the book remains a remarkable index to the world circle of Stratton's friends and acquaintances. Four months before his birthday, Stratton, still hale, in excellent health, and full of memories of his years at the Bureau, came as guest of honor to a party held in East building to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its founding. On the evening of October 18, 3 months after his birthday and a week after returning from England where he had attended the international Faraday celebration, he died suddenly of a coronary occlusion at his home in Beacon Street. He was dictating a tribute to Thomas Edison, whose death had occurred that same morning, when his own came. Dr. Stratton's greatest achievement was in founding and establishing the National Bureau of Standards and gaining for it international respect and fame. It was a superlative feat and called for a high and specialized talent. Dr. Compton of the Insti- tute spoke for all in paying tribute to those distinguishing traits of Dr. Stratton's that had served the Bureau and the Institute and marked the man: his fundamental kind- ness of character, his wholehearted absorption in his work, and the consistency of his life and thought in pursuit of his ideals and objectives. Unsympathetic perhaps and certainly impatient with people or things that ran contrary to his ideal, he gave the full measure of his support and force to that which advanced his ideal, first of the Bureau and later of the Institute. Few men's lives have been so consistent, straight- forward, and unswerving in their devotion to public service as Stratton's, and with so complete an absence of self-interest. The intense admiration that Dr. Stratton inspired in his friends led two of them to attempt his biography. Shortly after his death, Morris A. Parris, his personal sec- retary, and Prof. Samuel C, Prescott, his closest friend at the Institute, chairman of the Department of Biology and Public Health, and soon to become Dean of Science, began collecting records, reminiscences, and memoranda for the biography. The APPENDIX M 661 materials gathered over the next 3 years were to form the shelf of Stratton papers located in the Archives Library at MIT. Several outlines of the proposed work and preliminary drafts of three chapters, through Stratton's early teaching career at Urbana, were completed when certain difficulties arose. Sufficient details and documents of Stratton's forebears could not be found and the early pages were thin. The complete absence of self-interest, and hence self-revelation, in Stratton's life and career gradually became evident. Then Parris left the Institute and Prescott assumed the additional duties of Dean of Science. But almost certainly the crowning diflBculty, stifling further work on the biography, was the prospect of attempting to record the history of Stratton's directorship of the Bureau." Professor Prescott undoubtedly relinquished his project under the pressure of his administrative and teaching duties, but it is more than likely that he also came to realize that the heart of any possible biography of Dr. Stratton could not be a record of his life so much as a history, the history of his greatest single accomplishment, the National Bureau of Standards. ^ The final correspondence in Prescott's search for biographical materials is that with Dr. Briggs of the Bureau in December 1934, which resulted in Prescott receiving nine items. These included copies of extracts from the report of the Electrical Conference of 1884 a chart of the funds and staff of the Bureau since its founding, the Bureau's brief biographical sketch of Dr. Stratton, and the program of the Bureau's farewell reception for him. APPENDIX N BOOKS by Staff Members of the National Bureau of Standards 1912-1960* Alt, Franz L., Electronic digital com- puters: their use in science and engineering. New York: Aca- demic Press, 1958, 336 p. Bates, Roger Gordon, Electrometric pH determinations: theory and practice. New York : Wiley, 1954, 331 p. Bichowsky, Francis Russell, Indus- trial research. Brooklyn, N.Y. : Chemical Publishing Co., 1942, 126 p. Blum, William, and G. B. Hoga- boom. Principles of electroplating and electroforming (electrotyp- ing). New York: McGraw-Hill, 1924, 356 p. ; 2d ed., 1930, 424 p. ; 3d ed., 1949, 455 p. Bogue, Robert Herman, The chem- istry