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

THE BUREAU TURNS TO WAR RESEARCH 165
them for the Bureau at a fraction of its cost.13 Components and processes
in the manufacture of rubber products were determined on a small rubber
mill similarly acquired, in which rubber compounds could be mixed and
tubing and other small rubber articles made. The Pittsburgh laboratories
had several small-scale kilns for firing clays and clay products, in which the
effect of various compositions were determined, and a cement kiln with a
capacity of a 'barrel at a burn. The metallurgical division had both an ex-
perimental foundry and a small rolling mill, for the preparation and heat
treatment of alloys, where over 3,000 foundry castings were turned out during
the
With the acquisition of the gage shop and optical glass plant, the
Bureau thus had seven of these small plants engaged in special production
and process problems all through 1917—18. It was negotiating for two
others, a small woolen mill and a cotton mill, as the war ended.
The wartime expansion of the Bureau might be said to date from
1913 when, to the original 8 acres of hilltop, an additional 9 acres were
added on three sides of North building. In 1918 another 10 acres to the
north gave the Bureau its first frontage on Connecticut Avenue, and small
parcels totaling almost 8 acres purchased over the next 2 years 'brought the
site close to its present form, except for the great slope down to the avenue,
not acquired until 1925.15
New field laboratories of the Bureau included two structural materials
(cement testing) stations at Denver and San Francisco, transferred from
the Department of Interior's Reclamation Service in July 1917. The next
year another cement laboratory, for Army, Navy, and Shipping Board con-
struction projects, was set up at San Diego, and branch laboratories for
gage testing were opened in New York, Cleveland, and Bridgeport, Conn.16
in Washington, the fourth major structure, East building, housing the
electrical laboratories, was completed in the spring of 1914. Later that year
a large storage and workshop structure called the Far West building went
up; a handsome new Chemistry building, begun in 1915, was occupied in
" Conversation with Dr. Robert Hobbs, Feb. 19, 1963.
14 For descriptions of these plants, see Stratton, "The work of the National Bureau of
Standards," an address before the Engineers' Club, Dayton, Ohio, May 4, 1915, pp. 43—45
(in Stratton Papers, MIT), and interview with SWS by H. E. Lobdel, editor, Technology
Review (MIT), 24, 7—10 (1922). For the foundry work, see NBS Annual Report
1918, p. 188; Annual Report 1919, p. 263.
"See app. L for the sequence of NBS land acquisitions.
'° NBS Annual Report 1918, p. 139; letter, SWS to Bureau of Public Roads, Department
of Agriculture, Jan. 24, 1919 (NBS Box 15, IRC).