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

FROM GAGES TO GAS MASKS 203
attack on that front in April he was badly gassed and died of complications
several weeks later.'°7
Almost the whole of the legacy of science and technology that seemed
so rich in promise at the turn of the century was, in that holocaust in Europe,
reworked into weapons and agents of war. None was more frightening than
the chemical poisons first introduced on the battlefield in 1915. Although
it is difficult to believe, America entered the war years later knowing
little or nothing about the gas war in Europe. The Bureau first encountered
its challenges when a special mission arrived with models of the protective
gas masks then in use in France. Besides its investigations for American
gas masks, the Bureau also worked with the Bureau of Mines, the Chemical
Warfare Service, the Geophysical Laboratory, and the universities on a
number of tests and experiments preliminary to this country's production of
war gases and smokes.108
Two new gases were introduced in the field by the Germans as the AEF
arrived in France in the summer of 1917. The first was mustard gas, for
which no satisfactory defense was ever devised, the other, diphenylchloroarsine,
a sneeze gas. The arsenical sneeze gas—actually not a gas but
an irritant smoke—even in minute quantities readily penetrated all gas
masks then in use, producing uncontrollable coughing and sneezing, and.
forced removal of the mask, to expose its wearer to the lethal gases that
were fired simultaneously with the sneeze gas.109
In the Bureau paper mill and at a commercial mill a group under Dr.
Philip V. Wells made numerous special crepe paper filters to prevent mask
penetration of . the smokes, testing them in a gas chamber erected on the
grounds. But the filter, added to others already in the mask, so increased
the difficulty of breathing while wearing the mask as nearly to immobilze
the soldier. As a result, neither this country nor the Allies produced
more than a handful of cannisters incorporating this paper, and sneeze gas
casualties continued high to the end of the
war years but a new problem in detection
or a solution to an old one was presented to the Bureau. None
Redfleld, With Congress and Cabinet, pp. 222—223. Lt. Arthur J. Fecht, member
of the Bureau with Weibel, survived the gassing and served in the sound-ranging section
of the 29th Engineers to the end of the war. Interview with Dr. Silsbee, Nov. 27, 1962.
Crowell, America's Munitions, p. 405; NBS Annual Report 1918, pp. 104, 159;
Annual Report 1919, p. 149.
Studies of chemical substances in suspension were carried out in the Bureau's
dispersoid section set up in the optical division.
Letter W. K. Lewis, Research Division, CWS, to SWS, July 31, 1918 (NBS Box 6,
IC); "War Work," pp. 72, 199—200. Almost a third of AEF battle casualties resulted
from gas, most of them from mustard gas or phosgene, following concentrations of
sneeze gas. See Col. H. L. Gilchrist, A Comparative of World War Casualties
From Gas and Other Weapons (Washington, D.C., 1931), p. 19.