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

THE AIRPLANE IN THE LABORATORY 181
The instrument panel in the De Havilland—4 of 1918. Most of the instruments shown
were of European origin, all modified by the Bureau before adoption as U.S. Army
standard for the De Havilland.
after the war in a new power plant section set up in the heat division at the
Bureau.
All of the altimeters, airspeed indicators, tachometers, and other
aeronautical instruments that came to the Bureau for examination and test-
ing were based on European prototypes. Many were still in an elementary
stage and underwent considerable modification in the laboratories prior to
their adoption as standard by our Army and Navy. Successive modifications
of the inclinometer or banking indicator led to an almost wholly new instru-
ment. The same was true of the rate-of-climb indicator, whose inherent
defects could not otherwise be eliminated.55
If instrumentation and engine problems were to a degree overcome
by the end of the war, time militated against getting the highly publicized
"cloud" of American planes into the air. When in July 1917, the Signal
Corps was directed by Congress to design and build a fleet of 22,000 planes,
neither the military services nor American industry had developed a single
modern airframe or engine. A year was simply not time enough to acquire
the necessary skills or experience, and the Government's overambitious pro-
gram resulted in fewer than 700 planes. These were chiefly flying boats and
observation planes, the latter principally a redesigned De Havilland—4, called
by the American pilots who took them up, the Flying Coffin.56
"War Work," pp. 11—16, 38—40; NBS Annual Report 1919, pp. 186—187.
George C. Reinhardt and William R. Kintner, The Haphazard Years: How Aierica
Has Gone to War (New York: Doubleday, 1960), p. 80.