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

174 THE WAR YEARS (1917-19)
where tests of new alloys warranted it, the Bureau evolved standard test
methods and manufacturing control procedures.35
At the request of the NACA and the Navy, studies were made of the
properties and methods of manufacture of light alloys of aluminum, for the
construction of a proposed all-metal airplane, and of duralumin, known to be
used in the construction of the German zeppelins.3° Cooperating with the
War Industries Board in its drive to conserve imported tin, the Bureau
found cadmium an acceptable substitute in tin.Iead solders. It also made
recommendations for the reduction of tin in bearing metals, modified the tin
content in bronzes, and contributed to recovery processes for tin scrap.
Similar research to conserve manganese, in short supply throughout the war,
lead to revised specifications of the manganese content in several types of
steel.37
In these metallurgical investigations the Bureau introduced, in many
instances for the first time, new concepts of quantitative measurement in
the industry. Under "cookery" methods of manufacture, still prevalent in
many plants, adding a variable quantity of manganese, for example, and the
necessary fluxes, resulted in a satisfactory steel and industry was therefore
content. Bureau laboratory and foundry research showed that even better
steel resulted from exact measurement of its ingredients, and besides con-
serving raw materials this precision made possible greater control over the
manufacturing process.
New technologies and the all-consuming nature of the war soon
produced shortages never before envisaged. One of these was in platinum,
imported largely from Russia. It was needed in large quantities as a catalyst
in the manufacture of munitions, was used in the contact points of airplane
magnetos, and in the making of chemical laboratory ware. As it grew
scarce its price soared, and hunting for platinum ores in this country became
as avid a pursuit in World War I as uranium hunting was to be some 25
years later.
Despite its importance to industry, very little was known about the
rhodium, iridium, palladium, iron and other metals found as alloys in corn-
merical platinum or about their effect on manufacturing processes. The
study of platinum and the platinum metals which began during the war under
"War Work," Pp. 158—172. A supersteel rumored to be possessed by the Germans and
thought to be a zirconium alloy was identified after the war as a uranium alloy, of more
propaganda than military or industrial value. See letter, director, Nela Research Labora-
tory to SWS, July 28, 1917 (NBS Box 11, IM); correspondence in NBS Boxes 10 and
11, IM 1918; interview with Dr. Raleigh Gilchrist, Oct. 30, 1962.
For the Bureau's many years of interest in duralumin (1917—35), see correspondence in
NBS Box 384, IM.
"War Work," pp. 154—158, 160—162. See T109, "Conservation of tin in bearing metals,
bronzes, and solders" (Burgess and Woodward, 1919).