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

256 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30)
ernment purchases during the war and became the leading spirit in urging
the reorganization. He was to serve the AESC for almost 30 years.10°
The American Engineering Standards Committee thus became the
national clearinghouse for engineering and industrial standardization
throughout the country. Officially accredited to the Committee by 1927
were representatives of 365 national organizations—technical, industrial, and
governmental—including 140 trade associations and 60 or more agencies in
the Federal Government. Its title long since a misnomer, in 1928 the AESC
was renamed the American Standards Association.101
By then, standardization had become "the outstanding note of this
century," its influence pervading "the remotest details of our industrial
regime," tapping "all sources of scientific knowledge and [affecting] every
phase of design, production, and utilization." So trumpeted the opening
paragraph of the "Standards Yearbook," a new Bureau publication first
issued in 1927, to furnish key information on standardization to manufac-
turers, industrialists, engineers, and governmental purchasing agencies. Its
392 pages described the fundamental and working standards of the United
States, the organization and work of the Bureau, of the national and inter-
national standardization agencies abroad, those of the executive departments
and independent establishments of the Federal, municipal, and State govern-
ments, the central agencies for industrial standardization in this country, and
those supported independently by technical societies and trade associations.
Succeeding issues of the "Yearbook" detailed the annual accomplishments
of all these agencies and described their current activities.10'
The rage for standardization in the l920's was not confined to this
country. It swept every nation with any degree of industrial development,
as the Bureau's compendious "Bibliography on Standardization" bears wit-
100 NBS Report 6227, "American Standards Association, Inc." (December 1958), app. I.
101 P G. Agnew, "Work of the AESC," Ann. Am. Acad. Pol. Soc. Sci. 137, 13 (1928).
By 1941, according to NBS M169, "Standardization activities of national technical and
trade associations," issued that year, more than 3,000 national and interstate trade
organizations and 450 technical societies were carrying on standardizations and simplifi-
cation activities.
The "Yearbook" was issued as NBS M77 and revised annually for the next 6 years
as M83 (1928), M91 (1929), M106 (1930), M119 (1931), M133 (1932), and M139
(1933). The brief notice of consumer testing in the "Yearbook" was expanded in
M90, "Directory of commercial testing and college research laboratories" (1927), super-
seded by M125 (1936), M171 (1941), and M187 (1947). A similar need for better
coverage prompted M96, "Organizations cooperating with the NBS" (1927) —there were
a total of 212. A decade after the last "Yearbook," a revision of its most generally
useful sections appeared as M169, "Standardization activities of national technical and
trade associations" (1941).