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

246 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30)
"A certain amount of prestige and glamour surrounded the iwork] in this
field," Coblentz wrote later, and there was a good deal of friendly competi-
tion with the investigations in progress in the national laboratories abroad.75
Certain phases of this research were to lead to the establishment of the pres-
ent-day International Practical Temperature Scale.
The international scale had its inception in 1911 when the national
laboratories of Great Britain, Germany, and the United States proposed that
they adjust the minor differences in the temperature scales each was main-
taining and that, in place of the practical values in use, they establish abso-
lute values for their points. More than a decade passed. The absolute
temperature scale they sought proved experimentally difficult to achieve.
Finally, in 1927 the three laboratories proposed adoption of an "interna-
tional temperature scale" that might be more readily realized than the abso-
lute—a practical scale ranging from the temperature of liquid oxygen to that
of luminous incandescent bodies—that would at least serve the immediate
needs of industry. Agreement on the basic fixed points and the series of sec-
ondary reference points on this scale was reached a year later. For the first
time it became possible to certify temperature measurements for a wide variety
of industrial purposes.76
The early work on the temperature scale coincided with an investi-
gation that began in 1913, to provide scientific data to the refrigeration
industry in this country for the better construction of its cooling plants and
machinery.77 The Bureau's success in determining the specific heat of ice,
the properties of ammonia, and other physical constants required by the in-
dustry led Stratton to request a special appropriation from Congress to con-
tinue Bureau research in physical constants. For a time Stratton dreamed
of an American "Landolt," as a new and more practical engineering reference
book of physical constants than was currently available in the German work
by Landolt and Börnstein78 The appropriation was small and short-lived;
the research was too fundamental for Congress. Using statutory funds the
Ibid., pp. 134—135.
Burgess, "The International Temperature Scale" (RP22, 1928); Science, 68, 370
(1928). Cooperation and exchange of information with national standard laboratories
abroad and with the International Bureau of Weights and Measures has been continu-
ous throughout the existence of the Bureau. Except in particular instances, the history
of that exchange is not elaborated in the present work. The scope of cooperation is to
be found in the annual reports of the Bureau. That for 1930, for example (pp. 3, 7,
9, 10), describes NBS exchanges of information and equipment relative to new inter-
comparisons of meter bars, the international temperature scale, standards of capacitance,
resistance standards, and standards of candlepower during the previous year with the
IBWM, NPL, PTR, and Japanese and Russian standards laboratories.
See ch. III, p. 130.
Letter, SWS to W. R. Whitney, General Electric, Jan. 6, 1920 (NBS Box 10, IG). For
Stratton's first proposal, see Hearings * * * 1917 (Feb. 2, 1916), pp. 986—98L