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

NEW SOURCES, RESOURCES, AND SUBSTITUTES 171
constants of metals and alloys, and standardization of machines, mechanical
appliances, and tools, he declared:
There never was a time in the history of the country when we should
be looking at such matters as critically as at present. The items
submitted—I think I can say all of them—are as fundamentally
concerned with both industrial and military preparedness as any
that will come before you.26
When war came, Stratton later said, it was not necessary to "change
the bureau's organization one bit." 27 The metallurgy division turned from
its rail and wheel investigations to armament steel research, the electro.
chemistry section took up •battery research, the electrolysis section turned
to sound-ranging problems, and the weights and measures division undertook
the preparation of military scales and gage testing. Photometry turned to
searchlight and other military illumination projects, pyrometry to optical
glass and aeronautical engine research, radiometry studied invisible sig-
naling devices, spectroscopy worked on military photography, and color-
imetry took up problems of camouflage. As still other inquiries and requests
for research poured in from the military services, from the NACA and the
National Research Council, and from the civilian war agencies—the Shipping
Board, the War Industries Board, the War Trade Board, the Railroad Ad.
ministration, the Fuel Administration—the Bureau shifted its electrical, op-
tical, and chemical investigations and its structural and industrial materials
programs to their military applications with scarcely a hitch.2'
NEW SOURCES, RESOURCES, AND SUBSTITUTES
The 299-page report, "The War Work of the Bureau of Standards,"
suggests that except in medicine and foodstuffs, there was scarcely an in-
vestigation of the National Research Council or War Industries Board or
a problem of the military services in which the Bureau was not concerned
in one way or another. From aircraft construction to camouflage, from
coke-oven investigations to concrete ships, from precision gages to illuminat-
ing shells, from optical glass to rubber, from submarine detection to X-ray
and radium research, the Bureau participated in almost the whole range of
America's wartime effort. As standards laboratory and as research institute
Hearings * * * 1917 (Feb. 2, 1916), pp. 991—992.
Hearings * * * 1919 (Jan. 25, 1918), p. 975.
"For a roster of the scientific staff and the wartime projects of the Bureau as of
September 1918, see app. J.