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

TESTING GOVERNMENT MATERIALS 127
and varnishes; lubricating oils; rubber and rubber materials, papers of all
kinds, textiles and fibers, rope and cordage, and leather and leather goods.53
Gradually a procedure evolved to bring the Bureau's testing program
into closer association with the industries making these materials. At an
early stage in each investigation, manufacturers' representatives, laboratory
personnel, and industrial engineers were invited to the Bureau to discuss
their problems. To assure as wide cooperation as possible, the Bureau held
conferences with industrial associations, technical societies, and educational
institutions concerned with the materials investigated by the Bureau. And
research that started with establishment of a specification before long enabled
the Bureau to suggest better materials or methods in the manufacture of the
product, improved quality control, new uses for the product, and even utiliza-
tion of waste materials.
The Government testing program that began with a batch of incan-
descent lamps in 1904 achieved its main outlines by World War I. Almost
three.quarters of the work of the chemical division was in materials testing
and research. Dr. Stratton, in addition to heading the optical group, had
taken over the new engineering research division, to supervise personally the
construction of special test apparatus and to study and test instruments,
devices, or machinery of intereSt to the Bureau but outside the province
of its scientific divisions.54 And out of the testing of structural iron and
steel came another new division, for research in metallurgy, under Dr. George
K. Burgess.
In charge of high temperature investigations since 1903, Dr. Burgess
had done notable work in optical pyrometry, high temperature platinum
resistance thermometry, determination of melting points of pure metals,
and with Dr. Waidner, chief of the heat division, had proposed a theoretical
absolute standard of brightness that was destined to be realized experi-
mentally two decades later. Meanwhile, the testing of engineering instru-
ments, metals, and metal materials—from alloy wire and flexible copper hose
to car couplers, boilers, and girders—to see that they met Government spec.
ifications, had led the Bureau into the chemistry of metals, into studies of
their electrical, magnetic, and mechanical properties, and into the field of
stress measurement. Frequently consulted on these tests, Burgess became
especially interested in the properties of metals at high temperatures and in
the working of metals in foundry processes. Despite the fact that iron and
steel was the industrial giant of America and its metallurgical processes were
carried out with great technological virtuosity, Burgess found a distressing
lack of application of scientific principles.55
See NBS C45, "The testing of materials" (1913).
NBS Annual Report 1914, p. 15
Burgess, "Metallography and metallurgy at the Bureau of Standards," Met. & Chem.
Eng.1O,1 (1912).