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

REVISING THE ORGANIC ACT
recently assumed by the Bureau, it too would relate almost entirely to Gov-
ernment purchases. Standards of practice looked principally to the enact-
ment of laws in technical and scientific matters, to ordinances relating to
the regulation of public utilities, and to the establishment of building and
safety codes.'2°
The almost wholly pragmatic cast of these functions could not be
missed, nor their overwhelming reference to Government testing and Govern-
ment investigations. The source of the new look of the annual report was ex-
plained in a section entitled "The relation of the Bureau's work to the
public." Yet not there but elsewhere in the report Dr. Stratton said:
"Government purchases are not greatly different from those of the public,"
and all information and data obtained in this work by the Bureau "is given
to the public in the form of suitable publications * * In other words,
the needs of the public and the Government service are precisely the same
as far as standards and specifications are concerned, whether it be standards
of measurement, quality, or performance." And "the Government can do
no greater service to the country than to place its own purchases on a basis
which may be taken as a standard by the public at large." 121
years later an elaborate chart of these "new" functions appeared
in the annual report. Asked about it at a congressional hearing, Stratton
replied: "There is not a single thing that the bureau does that I can think
of * * * which does not fall within five classes of standards * * I think
it [the chart] will clear up a great deal of uncertainty as to the scope of the
work of the bureau." 122
The new classification of functions and the elaborate reporting of
Bureau research projects continued through the annual report of 1923, a
tome running to an imposing 330 pages. Then a wave of conservation hit
the Nation and the Bureau. The report of 1924, in the third year of
Secretary of Commerce Hoover's tenure, totaled a scant 38 pages. The
chart of functions and classes of standards that had appeared since 1916 was
omitted and the splendid chart of the Bureau organization and map of the
Bureau grounds that appeared in the 1923 report were gone. While stand-
ards were still pursued under five classes, they were not so listed, and in
their place was the statement: "As a matter of convenience the organiza-
tion of the Bureau is based not on classes of standards, but upon the nature
of the work."
In a way, an era as well as a decade had ended.
120 NBS Annual Report 1914, pp. 9—12; Annual Report 1915, p. 14.
NBS Annual Report 1914, p. 12.
Hearings * * * 1918 (Dec. 1, 1916), p. 482.
157