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

130 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16)
Bureau, particularly that on the temperature scale and on refrigeration
constants.
In 1909 the American Society of Refrigerating Engineers, in search of
physical data for more efficient refrigeration, asked the Bureau to determine
the specific heats of several calcium chloride brines. Upon completion of
the work several years passed while the heat division which had made the
study went on with investigations in the constants of gases for the use of gas
engineers, in heats of combustion, its preparation of standard combustion
samples, and its experiments preliminary to establishing new fixed points
on the standard temperature scale maintained by the Bureau.
Then in 1913, at the request of the refrigeration industry, Congress
appropriated the sum of $15,000 for an investigation of the physical constants
involved in the construction and operation of large-scale refrigeration ma-
chinery, such as that used in meat-packing and other cold storage plants and
in refrigerated cars. Under Dr. Hobart C. Dickinson, D. R. Harper 3d, and
N. S. Osborne, studies were made of such fundamental constants as the
specific heat of ice, the specific and latent heats of the liquids and vapors
used in refrigeration, and their density and pressure-temperature relations.
Engineering aspects of the investigation included the study of insulating and
other materials used in the construction of large-scale refrigeration structures.
It was, Stratton reported to Congress, "a splendid piece of work" and a dis-
tinct contribution in the field of physical constants.61 By 1918, when most
of the original staff was diverted to military research, the basic investigation
had been completed and the accumulated data were reported to the industry.
The chemistry division took over certain portions of the work as a long-term
project.
A year after the study of refrigeration constants began, Congress
authorized an appropriation for another special investigation, a study of
fire-resistant properties of building materials. Fires were claiming thou-
sands of lives annually in this country, with property losses exceeding $250
million—lO times the rate of any country in Europe. Particularly baffling
to many, in the series of disastrous fires that struck American cities around
the turn of the century, was the fact that skyscrapers and lesser structures
purported to be fireproof often burned out as completely as the older build-
ings. It was an investigation long overdue.
Upon surveying city building regulations, Bureau engineers found
them "full of the most absurd data regulating the properties of materials." 62
Hearings * * * 1919 (Jan. 25, 1918), p. 979; letter, SWS to Secretary of Commerce,
May 31, 1922 (NBS Box 17, ITH).
[Senate] Hearings * * * 1913 (May 22, 1912), p. 236. Stratton also noted that
"The greatest [fire] losses are in the cities having fire laws regulations" (Hear-
ings * * * 1913, Feb. 10, 1912, p. 759).