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

STANDARDS FOR THE AGE OF ELECTRICITY
ELECTRICITY,
RAILROADS, AND
RADIO (1911—16)
The first two decades of the 20th century witnessed a new industrial revolu-
tion, the electrification of American industry. In 1899 less than 5 percent
of all power used in industry had been electric. By 1909, with the develop-
ment of more efficient generators, better electric motors, and transmission
lines of greater carrying capacity, it had risen to 25.4 percent, and by 1919
to 55 percent.1 An age of electricity had arrived, its challenge to the long
dominance of heavy industry, by promising lighter and more specialized
products, as revolutionary in its impact on the lives of ordinary men as
the present age of computers and automation.
Dr. Rosa was speaking of the electrical industry when he said: "It is
largely to meet their needs [the electrical instrument-makers and manufac-
turers-]—t-hat -the bureau was organized, and if by serving them the standard
of excellence of American-made instruments and machinery is raised, the
bureau will have served the public also." 2 Or. as Dr. Stratton wrote to
Secretary of Commerce and Labor Cortelyou, in a letter of 1904 describing
the spheres of interest of the Visiting Committee: "The work of the bureau
is perhaps more closely related to electrical interests than any other."
Electric light and power companies, appliance manufacturers, com-
munication and traction companies developed at a phenomenal rate through-
out the period. So numerous were the demands of the electrical industry
and of electrical research laboratories for basic measurements, instrumen-
tation, tests and calibrations that almost half the new people coming into
the Bureau went into Rosa's division. By 1910 the testing of materials for
Government agencies, by its sheer volume, was in the ascendant, but Strat-
ton reported that electrical research and testing was still, "next to structural
1
Samuel H. Schurr and Bruce C. Netschert, Energy in the American Economy, 1850—
1935 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1960), p. 187.
2
Rosa, "The organization and work of the Bureau of Standards," Science, 19, 949
(1904).
'Letter, SWS to Cortelyou, Dec. 10, 1904 (NBS Box 296, APV-Remsen).
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CHAPTER III