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

NEW SOURCES, RESOURCES, AND SUBSTITUTES 175
a special appropriation continued at the Bureau for almost 30 years. The
wartime effort was limited to studying the effects of the metals alloyed with
-platinum when platinum was used for catalytic purposes, assaying the hope-
ful finds of platinum prospectors—mostly negative—and searching for
platinum substitutes. Although Bureau research showed that two gold-
palladium alloys known as palau and rhotanium made fairly suitable platinum
substitutes in the making of laboratory crucibles and dishes, they were not
to be more than wartime expedients.38
Since the whole of steel production was preempted for Allied arms and
munitions, for war emergency buildings and plants, and for our own
weaponry, it seemed for a time impossible to provide sufficient steel to build
the transports and merchant fleet this country needed but did not have.
Actually, by expansion of existing steel plants and almost total suppression of
the automobile industry, the necessary steel plate was made available, but
not before a number of wooden ships and even some of concrete came down
the ways. It was in the latter program that the Bureau laboratory at Pitts-
burgh had a considerable role, assisting in the development of a burnt clay
aggregate that expanded "like a loaf of bread when it rises," as Stratton said,
and yet was strong enough to make concrete ships possible.39
Based on designs prepared under the direction of Rudolph J. Wig
and Joseph C. Pearson, Bureau members with the Shipping Board, more than
40 concrete cargo ships and tankers were planned. Two experimental ships
of 3,500 tons were floated and satisfactorily tested in 1918 and 10 more of
7,500 tons deadweight were completed by 1921. None ever became opera-
tional. Although somewhat cheaper and faster to build than steel ships,
concrete bottoms by reason of their relative brittleness and reduced cargo
space were not deemed likely to replace steel or wood except in an emergency.
The same held true of the several concrete barges and concrete freight cars
tested by the Bureau4°
The months of the emergency disclosed unsuspected gaps everywhere
in this country's long vaunted belief in its self-sufficiency. Within weeks of
the declaration of war, leather, paper, and textiles went on the list of critical
materials and the search for substitutes began. Among leather substitutes
produced by industry at the urging of the Council of National Defense and
the War Department and tested at the Bureau were fishskin, porpoise, and
sharkskin as uppers for civilian and military shoes and a variety of composi-
tions for soles. When it was fcund that no flshskin would do, the shoe
"War Work," pp. 65—66, 159—60; Raleigh Gilchrist, MS, "The scientific activities of
Division 5 * * * 1917—61," pp. 15—18 (NBS Historical File).
Hearings * * * 1920 (Dec. 12, 1918), p. 947.
40 Proc. Am. Concrete Inst. 14, 441 (1918); ibid, 15, 241 (1919) ; ibid., 17, 284 (1921);
"War Work," pp. 86—87, 213; letter, SWS to R. J. Wig, Apr. 23, 1918, and attached
correspondence (NBS Box 7, ICP).