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

128 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16)
In 1911, at the suggestion of Henry M. Howe, professor of metal-
lurgy at Columbia University and a recently appointed member of the
Visiting Committee to the Bureau, Burgess undertook the determination of
the critical points on their heating and cooling curves of a number of spe-
cial steels. As the investigation continued, Burgess won Dr. Stratton to his
proposed plan for a long-range investigation of basic physical metallurgy.
In 1913, as the investigation of rail and wheel failures for the Nation's
railroads began, his metallurgy section in the heat division was raised to
divisional status.56
An allied field even more empirically operated at that time than
metallurgy was that of electrodeposition, the deposition by electrolysis of
metallic coatings on a variety of materials. As electrotyping, it was widely
used to produce facsimile plates of metal type from a wax impression. Elec-
troforming was employed in the phonograph industry to make master plates
and molds to produce recording discs. Electroplating coated metals to im-
prove their appearance and protect them against corrosion.
In 1913 the Government Printing Office asked the Bureau for help
with their electrotyping baths. A young man in the chemistry division,
Dr. William Blum, who had been preparing standard samples since his ar-
rival at the Bureau in 1909, was sent to see what he could do. The GPO,
he found, had no method for controlling the composition of the bath, and
there was little or nothing in print on the subject. His calculations for re-
storing the sulfuric acid content of the solution as it was used up in the
plating process solved the difficulty, and Blum's career in electrodeposition
began.57
Blum's work on the structure of electrodeposits, on current distribu-
tion and throwing power in solutions, on pH control of the baths, and on
alloy deposition was among the first scientific studies in this country to
supplant the hit-or-miss information upon which the industry rested. His
introduction in 1921 of electrolytic reproduction of plates used in printing
currency at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing replaced the hand method
of rolling into case-hardened soft steel, which was capable of approximately
70,000 impressions at best, while electrolytic plates with a chromium sur-
face that could be recoated permitted as many as a million impressions. He
directed electrodeposition research at the Bureau for over 30 years.
Not all Bureau work with metals was to be as rewarding as that in
Burgess's division or in Blum's section. One such instance was the ingenious
instrument developed during the early work on metals, a new type of
permeameter, devised in 1909 by Dr. Charles W. Burrows of the magnetic
Bureau Announcement No. 28, July 1, 1913 (NBS Box 3, AG).
NBS C52, "Regulation of electrotyping solutions" (1915, 2d ed., 1916); Hear-
ings * * * 1918 (Dec. 1, p. 483; interview with Dr. Blum, Oct. 15, 1963.