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

192 THE WAR YEARS (1917-19)
and commercial exploitation of the vacuum tube remained locked in the
courts.
The impasse was broken on April 7, 1917, when by Presidential proc-
lamation all commercial radio, comprising some 60 stations serving mari-
time commerce, was handed over to the Navy Department, and all other
stations, amateur and privately owned, were closed down for the duration.
The Navy, long anxious to secure better equipment for its ships, its coastal
stations, and the radio chain it operated across the Pacific, immediately
assumed all liability for patent infringements, and companies sprang up over-
night to manufacture radio equipment, vying with the big three, General
Electric, Westinghouse, and Western Electric, already in the field.
That event, together with the visit of the French commission and the
requirements of the Army Signal Corps and the Navy, provided the major
stimuli for the attack on the wartime radio problems facing this country:
the training of technicians, civilian and military, in a complex and rapidly
changing subject; the establishment of a high-powered transatlantic radio
system (clearly of foremost importance not only for itself but in the event
the enemy cut the telegraph cables); the development of low-powered radio
equipment for battlefield communication; radio means for locating enemy
radio stations, airplanes, ships, and submarines; equipment for communica-
tion with submarines when submerged; and portable radio apparatus.79
In the Navy laboratory at the Bureau, Dr. Austin, who in his long-
distance transmission research had recently begun an investigation of the
reenforcement of signals from the upper layer of the atmosphere, now took
up the development of new radio apparatus for his service. In the Bureau
laboratories the most immediate consideration was the training of thousands
of men in radio communication for the Signal Corps to meet battlefield needs.
To available training material and set up better courses of radio
instruction, a conference of university representatives was called at the Bureau
in late December 1917. Following the conference, a Bureau group under
Dr. Dellinger rushed preparation of a treatise on radio principles, measure-
ments, and theory—subjects not covered by any publication then available—
to supplement Signal Corps training pamphlets. Circular 74, "Radio instru-
ments and measurements," with 318 pages of text, a bibliography, index, and
224 illustrations, came off the presses in March 1918, as a much needed
reference book for radio instructors in the Army and Navy schools and the
universities. It appeared later in hard covers as a commercial publication
and its continued usefulness led the Bureau to issue a revised edition in
1924. Frequent reprints made this bible of radio engineers and amateurs
available through the next two decades.
""War Work," pp. 223—225.