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

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." 8
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
8 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.