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

204 THE WAR YEARS (1917-19)
certainly exercised the scientific and inventive talents of the Nation more
when we entered the war than did the menace of the U-boat. Submarine
detection was widely held to be "the most pressing of all problems" that
fateful spring as month by month the toll of merchant tonnage sent to the
bottom steadily rose. It was estimated that for a time one-quarter of the
leading physicists in this country were working on the submarine prob-
lem, and Edison's proposal to interrupt German submarine radio com-
munication was but one of thousands of solutions suggested.'11 As obvious
aids in sub hunting, and most capable of rapid development, the National
Research Council urged the Bureau to devise special goggles, colored lenses,
and special binoculars for better visual detection of submarines and their
periscopes. But before these and more complicated means of detection got
beyond the experimental stage, the convoy system with destroyer escort had
been inaugurated and shipping losses began to abate."2
As pressing as enemy submarine detection was detecting the presence
of dangerously combustible gases, hydrogen in particular, in our own sub-
marines. Elmer R. Weaver of the gas chemistry section pioneered the
development of thermal-conductivity measurements for the detection and
analysis of such gases that later became the basis for a muitimillion-dollar
instrument company."3
Thermopiles or bolometers, for the detection of ships and planes by
the radiation of heat from the smokestacks and exhausts, and electrical
inductance devices, for detection of metallic mines laid by the enemy,
were endlessly tested. None proved practical. Out of the work, however,
came a device employing the thermopile principle that made it possible to
send out infrared rays as signals without fear of detection. The Bureau
felt it might have far-reaching applications, since these signals, unlike radio
signals at the time, could be directed and could be operated without inter-
ference.h14 The device was a forerunner of the World War II snooperseope,
m Interview with Dr. Dellinger, Jan. 26, 1962. Even Dr. Stratton offered a device,
based on a series of wire hawsers suspended from ships' sides that would offer sufficient
resistance to deflect torpedoes from their course. Letter, SWS to Ch, Bur. Const. and
Repair, Navy Department, May 23, 1917 (NBS Box 11, IG).
112 "War Work," p.. 273. Some of the "target-finding torpedoes," one-man submarines,
and electrical devices suggested to the Bureau for locating or destroying U-boats,
often reached, Dr. Rosa said, into the realm of superscience. See correspondence in
NBS Box 7.
S334, "New forms of instruments for showing the presence and amount of corn-
bustile gases in the air" (Weaver and Weibel, 1919) ; T249, "Thermal-conductivity
method for the analysis of gases" (Palmer and Weaver, 1924) ; Science, 126, 161
(1957).
114 "War Work," pp. 133—139, 247; NBS Annual Report 1918, p. 146; letter, Millikan,
Chief of R&D Division, NRC to SWS, Jan. 25, 1918 (NBS Box 14, IPR) -