Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

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." 56 It was a neat thrust,
considering that the entire cost of the Bureau to date came to less than a
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.57
" For additional notes on the early chemistry division, see letter, Campbell E. Waters
to John F. Waidron, 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.