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

FROM GAGES TO GAS MASKS 199
But the moratorium on. patent litigation also ended with the war,
and since no one had an important infringement-free radio patent, tie ex-
pectations of commercIal radio were checked. Except for laboratory ex-
perimentation, the wartime work on vacuum tubes, radio circuits, and
transmission apparatus remained out of reach to all. Until that impasse
was breached in 1921, no radio manufacturer could safely make anything
but crystal sets for the public. The Bureau continued its research and
waited.93
FROM GAGES TO GAS MASKS
The mass production of guns, ammunition and other ordnance material,
with components made in almost 8,000 plants across the country, reached a
scale in World War I never before attempted in any machined produèt. The
manufacture of interchangeable parts and components in widely separated
factories depended upon the accuracy of hundreds of thousands of gages, and
of the master gages on which they were based. Construction of a single
round of artillery ammunition, for example, required gaging of 80 dimen-
sions, necessitating the use of over 500 different gages. To standardize these
shop gages required 180 master gages.94
The work of standardizing and testing master begun under an
urgent deficiency appropriation of June 1917, soon outstripped the facilities
Stratton had set up 2 years before at the Bureau, and branches were estab-
lished in New York, in Cleveland, and at The 4 laboratories
handled over 60,000 gages used in making America's munitions.95 The
magazine Science was to say that "The national provision for master-gauge
standardization was one of the most important contributions of the war." 96
At the height of its activity the Bureau gage section numbered 225
engineers, physicists, master gage experts, inspectors, toolmakers, technical
assistants, and administrative aides. Besides testing and calibrating gages,
the section trained gage inspectors for Ordnance plants, Navy yards, arsenals,
and commercial manufacturers. It also carried out an extensive salvage
"Memo, SWS for Secretary of Commerce, Sept. (NBS Box 10, IEW).
Crowell, America's Munitions, pp. 25, 124—125. Including the gages used by Govern-
ment inspectors, almost 800 gages were necessary in the manufacture of a single complete
round.
"These comprised plain gages (plain plug, snap, and ring gages), profile gages (tern-
plets, chamber and fixture gages), and screw-thread gages. Originally set up in the
Stucco building (erected early in 1918 for the testing of building materials), the gage
laboratory moved to larger quarters in Northwest building later that year. Of more than
$4 million spent by the War Department for gages in 1917—18, Stratton reported, over
$550,000 came to the Bureau (Hearings * * * 1921, Jan. 2, 1920, pp. 1583—1584).
°' "The work of the Bureau of Standards during 1918," Science 39—40 (1919).