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

THE LEGACY LEFT TO US 217
benefit of the industries of the country." 150 There the Bureau would con-
tinue to foster the new industries born of the war, the manufacture of
scientific instruments, of aeronautical instruments, of automotive power
plants, and the science of electrodeposition. Redfield pointed to 'three
others that had grown out of recent Bureau investigations: The making of
chemical porcelain, never before produced in this country; the making of
hard-fired porcelain, for which we had been wholly dependent on Germany,
Austria, and Great Britain; 'and the making of pyrometer polarimeters
and other scientific instruments, previously obtained from Germany. In
applying science to industry, declared Redfield, "We have begun to do the
thing that Germany did 35 years ago."
Still other industries in which research had just begun included the
making of precision gages, dyes and chemicals, petroleum products, the
rare sugars, the platinum metals, rubber, paper, leather, and ceramics.152
The fields of metallurgy, photographic technology, and construction and
building materials must be examined anew. And Redfield promised that
"we will put in [the Industrial building] a small woolen mill, a cotton mill,
etc.," to investigate some of the basic problems in cloth manufacture that
engaged so much effort during the war and found little solution.'53
But the real legacy left to the Bureau was not a building or a program
but a series of intangibles: the closer relation that had arisen between the
Bureau and industry; the beginning of recognition of what scientific methods
could contribute to industrial technology; and perhaps more important, the
realization by industry that fundamental science, which seemingly produced
nothing, might have far-reaching, consequences at some. future time. In-
dustries that had set up their own laboratories before the war doubled and
Ibid, p. 958.
151 Ibid., pp. 932—933, 940. Redfield's remark is quoted in letter, Elizabeth Minor King,
"New York Evening Post," to Redfield, Mar. 22, 1919 (NARG 40, Box 119, file 67009/63).
152 In a memorandum to the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Dec. 16, 1918,
Stratton listed as new things produced on a commercial scale since 1915, in many
instances with Bureau help: manganin, a special alloy for use in electrical work; high.
grade volumetric glass apparatus; high-grade optical glass; four types of photographic
dyes; fused quartz of optical quality; chemical glassware (Pyrex); oxygen cbntrol ap-
paratus; improved design in aeronautical instruments; burned shale aggregates for
concrete ships; cotton airplane fabric; photographic paper; cigarette paper; and fine
grades of artifical abrasives (NBS Box 10, IG).
Hearings * * * 1920 (Dec. 12, 1918), p. 958. Acquired in 1918, the wool and
cotton mills were moved into the Industrial building upon its completion early in 1920.
See letter, Textile Research Co., Boston, Mass., to SWS, June 7, 1919, and attached cor-
respondence (NBS Box 4, AP). The woolen mill was never set up. Realizing its
need for scientific assistance, the textile industry, working in close cooperation with the
Department of Agriculture and the Bureau, organized its own research laboratories in the
1920's. About 1930 the cotton mill, no longer necessary, was dismantled. Conversation
with William D. Appel, Mar. 4, 1963.