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

94 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10)
pressed for time and staff as the work on standard samples grew. Never-
theless itborrowed time from these efforts to launch a much needed investiga-
tion of 4mpurities 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
arid 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.83 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 Office; 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
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range of structural materials, principally for the Panama Canal (under construction
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.