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

REVISING THE ORGANIC ACT 149
Overman of North Carolina wondered too: "You have here * * * [a request
for] a physicist qualified in optics. I want to know what you do with that
fellow. What is his business?" 102 Patiently, Dr. Stratton explained, and
the physicists were his.
So well did Stratton get along with Congress that one of his admiring
colleagues, sitting with him at the annual hearings, referred to him as "a
scientific politician." Congressman Joseph T. Johnson of South Carolina
marveled at Stratton's way with a committee, even when the subject was as
minor as funds for grading the Bureau grounds. "Now, you have made a
specially strong plea—in fact, you always make a strong plea and hypnotize
this committee." 103
Behind the pleas were results, and the kind that a business-minded
Congress appreciated. Stratton poured out facts on the dollar-and.cents
value of Government testing and the public benefits "from a financial stand-
point" of Bureau research in public utility service. He had only to show
•that "we have never been able to keep up with 25 percent of the demands
made on the Bureau," to say that never before had "the Bureau had so many
demands for its cooperation in regard to industrial standards, in devising
standard methods of measurement and test, and in researches involving
precise measurement," for Congress to reach for its purse and add some-
thing more.104
The annual increases in Bureau staff, equipment, and funds were
the envy of other research agencies in the Government. "As you know,"
Congressman Frank H. Gillett of the Appropriations Subcommittee once
said to Stratton, "our liberality to this bureau is one of the things that is
criticized somewhat, and [so] we should be glad to get * * * results." 105
And Stratton cited the weights and measures investigation and the testing
of Government materials, now being done for almost 60 different bureaus
representing every department of the Government, the success of which had
led to the organization of the General Supply Committee and almost doubled
the test work of the Bureau.
The proliferation of Bureau research interests' under' Stratton and Rosa
had largely changed the mission of the Bureau envisioned in its organic act.
Established to provide this country with a scientific basis for accurate meas-
urements and a source of information regarding basic properties of materials
determined by such measurements, the Bureau became involved almost at
'°'
i{earings * (May 22, 1912.), 232.
10"Hearings a a a 1916 (Nov. 28, l9l4),p.
104 Hearings * * (Dec. 2, 1910), p. 270; NBS Annual Report 1912, p. 3.
Hearings *
p. 262. On a later occasion, when asked by Congress how
appropriated were being spent, Stratton said that in most investigations
from 75 to 80 percent went for staff, the remaining for materials and equipment (Hearings
a a a 1921, Jan. 2, 1920, p. 1566).