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

236 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30)
Ames of the Johns Hopkins University. The appointment was to become
effective on the date of his termination of service as director.47
In a very real sense, Dr. Stratton never left the Bureau. As he told
a Bureau member who wrote to him soon after his arrival in Cambridge,
* * I can never cease to be a member of the Bureau which has been
practically my life work, and I shall never hesitate to give counsel and sup-
pOIt whenever the opportunity may afford itself." 48 Both as member of the
Visiting Committee and as creator of the Bureau, Stratton's counsel and
concern were to be frequent and voluminous and continued so throughout
his tenure at MIT. Most of his correspondence was with Dr. Burgess, ap-
prising him of details of Bureau operations, advising on Bureau procedures
in cooperating with industry and Government agencies, and forwarding
inquiries sent to him at MIT. Planning to buy a radio set in the fall of
1923, Stratton wrote asking about the latest radio developments at the
Bureau. He recommended new members for the Visiting Committee, and
was active in securing lecturers for the Bureau, writing Burgess on one
occasion that he had invited the Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, to come to
the Bureau. In turn, Dr. Burgess discussed problems of Bureau appropria-
tions with Stratton, sent him new publications for comment, and frequently
mailed slides and other material for lectures and addresses Stratton
planned.49
An able administrator at MIT, Stratton nevertheless seems to have
regarded the Institute as another Bureau of Standards, or as an extension of
the Bureau. In training scientists and technologists for industry, the Insti.
tute offered complementary services to those of the Bureau. Stratton had
exchanged one campus for another. Within a year after assuming the presi-
dency, he began work on a reorganization and expansion program at Cam-
bridge, much of it closely modeled on the Bureau, which undertook to
establish at the Institute new departments of aeronautical engineering, auto-
motive engineering, building construction, fuel and gas engineering, hydrau-
lics, physical metallurgy, municipal and industrial research, public health
engineering, and ship operation.
Throughout his tenure at Cambridge, Stratton's addresses and talks
were filled with his memories of the Bureau. In the several score manu-
scripts and reading copies that survive, mention of the Bureau by name sel-
dom occurs, but striking to anyone acquainted with its activities is the
Letter, Hoover to SWS, Nov. 1, 1922 (NARG 4.0, Secretary of Commerce, file 67009/5).
Letter, SWS to Walter A. Hull, Jan. 5, 1923 (Stratton Papers at MIT).
Correspondence from 1923 on between Stratton, Burgess, and the assistant director,
Fay C. Brown, will be found in NBS Boxes 42, 43, 46, 48, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 61, 62, 64,
70, 75, 81, 82, 174, 184, 185, and 214, and in NBS Blue Folder Boxes 4 and 8.