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

110 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16)
STANDARDS FOR PUBLIC UTILITIES
Still developing along the empirical lines evolved in the previous cen-
tury, the electrical industry in the early century was as much in need of
standards of quality, of performance, of safety, and of service as it was of
standards of quantity. A contemporary historian's indictment of the gas
industry, that owing to its monopoly in many cities it used fraudulent meters,
supplied inferior gas, and collected excessive rates from helpless consumers,
applied equally well, he said, to the electric lighting industry, street rail-
ways, and the telegraph and telephone companies.'3
The Bureau was more charitable. Talking with utility company
representatives, manufacturers, and industrial scientists, Stratton and Rosa
found that many of the shortcomings of the industry were "not entirely [the
fault] * * * of the manufacturer, but [resulted from] the lack of uniform
standards and specifications." 14 So Stratton reported when in 1904 the
Bureau threw out three-quarters of a shipment of electric light bulbs sub-
mitted for testing by a Government purchasing office. Not long after, the
Bureau of Corporations, the new watchdog agency set over trusts in the
Department of Commerce (and predecessor of the Federal Trade Commis-
sion, organized in 1915), asked the Bureau to investigate the relative illumi-
nating power of a number of kerosene oils on the market. Their quality
proved no less dubious than that of some of the gas and electric lamps already
determined by the Bureau. Standards of illumination and uniform specifi-
cations for the lighting industry were manifestly needed. And because the
Bureau's investigation began with the incandescent lamp, photometry or the
scientific measurement cf light became a function of Rosa's electrical di-
vision and remained so for 40 years before it was transferred to the optics
division of the Bureau.
Before long the Bureau became involved with much more than gas, oil,
and electric lamps. In the wake of Roosevelt's crackdown on the trusts, the
public service monopolies came under fire. Many States and cities, goaded
by the press, the muckraking periodicals, and reforming citizenry, instituted
reforms of their own, first attempting to regulate the utilities by legislation
and lawsuit and then setting up public service commissions and other local
regulatory agencies. Beginning in 1907, city and interurban street rail.
ways, gas and water companies, electric light and power companies, the
telegraph and telephone, and even the all.powerful railroads found their
rates and services increasingly subject to a measure of regulation.
Harry T. Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic: 1885—1905 (New York: Dodd Mead,
1906), p. 315.
Hearings * * 1906 (Dec. 2, 1904), p. 232.