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

STANDARDS FOR PUBLIC UTILITIES 119
cient knowledge of rail and wheel characteristics, the Bureau metallurgists
reported, and had not established uniform practices in their manufacture.33
The Bureau investigation of railway materials, begun with special
funds appropriated by Congress in 1912, continued until 1923 when the
program was absorbed in the statutory research work of the metallurgical
division. Answers were slow in coming, and during the war years railroad
accidents hit an alitime peak. But from 1921 to 1930, as better steel
through better technology went into rails and rolling stock, the rate of acci-
dents from these causes fell by more than two-thirds.34
When the Bureau began its "high iron" investigation, it was already
deeply involved in another rail problem, this one concerning city street cars.
Of all its public service investigations, few• defied the concerted efforts of
Bureau physicists, utility company engineers, and municipalities as did
the problem of electrolytic corrosion. The trouble began in the year
1887 when Frank J. Sprague laid out the first commercially successful
trolley system in this country, 12 miles of track in the streets of Richmond,
Va. In the next decade more than 2,000 miles of trolley track were put down
in cities and towns and out into their suburbs. By 1917, over 40,000 miles of
street and interurban railways spidered the Nation. New York City alone con-
tained almost 700 miles of trolley track, and it was actually possible to
ride from Brooklyn, up the length of Manhattan, out through Westchester to
Bridgeport, on to New Haven and Providence, all the way to Boston
by street car, paying a total of 48 five-cent fares for the trip.35
The majority of the trolleys operated on Sprague's overhead wire
system, with the electric current flowing into the rails through the car
wheels after passing through the car motor. In theory, the current then
flowed back to the generating station by way of the tracks and earth, com-
pleting the electrical circuit. In fact, much of the current strayed on its
•return, following paths of least resistance through underground pipes,
cables, and metal structures.
The first signs of trouble turned up in Boston in 1902 when, ex-
cavating to repair a break, the water mains under Boylston Street were
found badly corroded. The moisture and ordinary salts in the earth
"Hearings * * * 1913 (Feb. 10, 1912), pp. 761—762; Hearings * * * 1915 (Jan. 27,
1914), p. 677.
"From an annual average of 13,000 collisions and derailments in the period 1902—12,
they rose to 25,000 in 1918 and 1919, to more than 36,000 in 1920, and then began a
steady decline. By 1930 the total had dropped to 12,313. See Annual Table No. 61
in ICC Accident Bulletin Nos. 70 (1918), 74 (1919), 78 (1920), 99 (1930). L/C:
HE1780.A2.
"Robert A. Futterman, The Future of Our Cities (New York: Doubleday, 1961), pp.
52—53.