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

THE BEGINNING OF GOVERNMENT TESTING
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." 76
91
- 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 Office 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.77 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.78
So extensive had this testing program become by 1909 that the Bureau
had to restrict its own research and was experiencing difficulty in handling
76 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—496; Hearings * * * 1910 (Dec. 4,
1908), p. 171.