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

142 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16)
The Conference ruling on interference 'became the second radio law
enacted by the United States. (The first, in 1910, had called for installation
of radio apparatus on all steamers, foreign and domestic, operating out of
American ports.) 84 Congress, aroused to the importance of radio, also called
for more efficient radiotelegraphic service, restriction on the free use of wave-
lengths, and the licensing of commercial and amateur radio stations. Com-
merce's Bureau of Navigation, made responsible for these matters, called on
the Bureau of Standards to investigate the bases for establishing the laws
asked for by Congress, including better radio equipment, test procedures,
and standards.85
Congress turned over enforcement of the interference ruling to the
Bureau of Navigation, and at its request Koister was assigned to devise a
portable measuring instrument for this purpose, to be used by ship radio in-
spectors. The decremeter he designed, measuring wavelength as well as
decrement, was at once adopted by the Bureau of Navigation and by the
War and Navy Departments.86
The Bureau of Navigation also called for a radio beacon system to
aid ship navigation in fog and rough weather. Between 1913 and 1915
Kolster developed an improved radio direction finder or radio compass—the
forerunner of modern aviation instrument landing systems—that enabled
a ship to establish its position by determining with high accuracy the direc-
tion of sending station signals.87 But it took more than twice as long to put
the new direction finder into operation as to design it. The Bureau of
Lighthouses proved reluctant to use scarce funds to install beacon stations
along the shore until ships were equipped, and ship captains, traditionally
conservative, refused to have all that machinery—and electrical, at that—
cluttering up their ships.
Commerce's Bureau of Navigation C211 (1910) announced that after July 1, 1911, by
the Radio Act of June 24, 1910, it became unlawful for any ocean-going passenger steam-
ers to sail without radio communication apparatus. After the Titanic, the Radio Act was
amended to require two operators, instead of one, on constant watch; an auxiliary power
source; and extended the act to include cargo ships. See correspondence with NBS and
copy of the act in NBS Box 10, JEW; also Paul Schubert, The Electric Word: the Rise
of Radio (New York: Macmillan, 1928), pp. 63—65.
"Earlier, in the summer of 1912, Waidner and Dickinson of the Bureau's heat division,
aboard Navy patrol boats, investigated methods of detecting the proximity of icebergs.
Most promising seemed temperature variations, but they proved as great far removed from
icebergs as near them. NBS Annual Report 1914, p. 28, and S210 (1914). Later a
salinity meter was developed for the International Ice Patrol to locate icebergs and
reported in RP223 (Wenner, Smith, and Soule, 1930).
NBS Annual Report 1914, p. 35; S235, "A direct-reading instrument for measur-
ing * * * decrement" (Kolster, 1915); correspondence in NBS Box 10, IEW.
87 NBS Annual Report 1916, p. 56; S428, "The radio direction finder * * (Koister
and Dunmore, 1922). The original direction finder was the invention of two Italians,
Bellini and Tosi, in 1907. See Schubert, pp. 139, 154.