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

THE CRUSADE FOR STANDARDIZATION 259
intended to systematize both industrial and Federal purchasiiig.108
Because its results were most readily understandable and lent them-
selves to impressive statistics, the aspect of the standardization program that
captured the greatest public interest was simplified practice. A Bureau study
made in the spring of 1921 found "many sizes and styles of material and
devices [in use], not through any real demand for such a variety * * * but
through the undirected natural expansion of * * business." The collec-
tive waste in commerce and industry from this source alone was said to
represent an annual "loss of 30 percent of America's energies." 109
Under Ray M. Hudson and later Edwin W. Ely, the division of simpli-
tied practice, organized in December 1921, got some startling results. The
hrst 2 recommendations issued reduced paving bricks from 66 to 7 sizes, and
metal and wood beds from a score or more varieties to 4 widths of one
procrustean standard
Begun with a congressional appropriation of $52,000 made in 1920
for "the general standardization of equipment," by 1925 the simplified prac-
tice program alone was spending twice that amount annually. Adopted
recommendations had reduced hotel chinaware from 700 to 160 varieties,
files and rasps from 1,351 to 496 types, milk bottles from 49 to 9 different
designs, and book and magazine paper from 267 to 11 sizes.111 Rec-
ommendations on the verge of acceptance ranged from warehouse and
voice forms to painthrushés and paper bag sizes. Totting up the rewards
as leaders in the crusade, representatives in nine important industries co-
operating with the division estimated that their annual savings through
simplification already exceeded $293 million.112 The figure, rounded off
to $300 million, received wide publicity.
108 Hearings * * 1925 (Feb. 12, 1924), p. 216. The "bible" was M65, superseded by
M130 (1932) and M178 (1945), the latter a volume of 1,311 pages. It was followed by
a subject index to U.S. Government master specifications, issued as M73 (1926), super-
seded by C319 (1927), C371 (1928), and C378 (1929). Three volumes of a planned
multivolume "Encyclopedia of Specifications," covering products of wood-using industries
(1927), nonmetallic mineral products (1930), and metals and metal products. (1932)
came out before the project was canceled. NBS Annual Report 1926, p. 39; Memoirs of
Herbert Hoover, II, 67.
109 NBS Annual Report 1921, pp. 22—23; Annual Report 1922, p. 265.
118 NBS Annual Report 1922, p. 266. NBS Simplified Practice Recommendations run
from Ri in 1923 through numbers above R250 in the 1960's.
110 Science, 57, 649 (1923), reported that simplified practice in the American instru-
ment industry had eliminated 1,800 of 3,200 items in its apparatus catalogs, including
99 out of 227 items of chemical porcelain, 123 of 190 forms of gas analysis apparatus, 70
of 148 types of gas burners (some of them over 50 years old), and 107 of 199 sizes and
types of funnels.
112 NBS Annual Report 1925, pp. 23—24; Daizell, Gait, and Hudson, pp. 42—43; pam.
phiet, "Simplified practice: what it is and what it has to offer" (Washington, D.C.,
1924); "Saving millions by standardization," Lit. Digest, 98, 62 (1928).