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

146 ELECTRICITY, RAILROADS, AND RADIO (1911-16)
That the two somehow seemed related is evident from Dr. Stratton's frequent
use of the portmanteau phrase "radio telegraphy and radio activity." 92
In Europe, where radium and radiation research had been carried
on at fever pitch since the discoveries of Roentgen and Becquerel, a Congress
of Radiology and Electricity met at Brussels in 1910 to survey recent prog-
ress and discuss the question of standards for radium research. A year
later Mme. Curie prepared a carefully measured quantity of radium chloride
scaled in a glass tube, based on the proportion of radium to the weight of
the radium salts in the tube as measured by its gamma rays. This was
accepted by the International Committee on Radium Standards, appointed
by the Congress at Brussels, as the international standard and deposited in
the International Bureau of Weights and Measures at Sèvres. Research in
radium began at the Bureau of Standards in December 1913 when a phial
containing 20.28 milligrams of pure radium arrived from abroad. A cov-
ering communication certified its equivalence to the International Radium
Standard at Sèvres and described its comparison with another quantity of
radium salts prepared at Vienna and accepted as a second standard.93
Dorsey, who came to the Bureau from Johns Hopkins in 1903 and
for almost a decade worked under Rosa on electrical measurements, had
followed with excitement the published accounts of radiation research. He
became interested particularly in the applications of X rays and radium to
medical diagnosis and treatment, then a craze sweeping the country and involv.
ing almost as many fakers as reputable physicians.
As early as 1896 Scientific American magazine described the con-
struction of a fairly effective X.ray tube by connecting the carbon filaments
of an incandescent lamp to an improvised high.voltage apparatus. These
X-ray tubes, as well as fluoroscopic screens, soon became commercially avail-
able and doctors and technicians by the hundreds opened offices across the
country to practice the new wonder on marveling patients. Pusey and Cald-
well's The Practical Application of the Roentgen Rays in Therapeutics and
Diagnosis (1903, reprinted in 1904) warned of certain radiation hazards to
doctors and patients alike but the dangers were not yet clearly understood.
As a result, efforts at protection from the rays tended to lapse after the first
meager precautions.94 X-ray and radium protection standards were not
to come within the province of the Bureau until the late 1920's.
Learning of the international standard of radium in Washington, hos-
pitals and physicians sent their radium salts to the Bureau for analysis, and
°'
E.g., at Hearings * * * 1918 (Dec. 1, 1916), p. 465.
Dorsey, Physics of Radioactivity, pp. 162—163.
For the early history of medical radiology, see Percy Brown, American Martyrs to
Science Through the Roentgen Rays (Springfield, Ill., and Baltimore, Md.: C. C.
Thomas, 1936), pp. 144—145.