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

RESEARCH FOR INDUSTRY 263
RESEARCH FOR INDUSTRY
Spurred by Hoover's campaign against waste in industry, the Bureau
seized the opportunity to extend its investigations in the utilization of raw
materials, the quality of manufactured articles, and the quest for new uses
for the by-products of industry. By 1922 work in progress included research
on automobile engines to find ways to increase their operating efficiency,
studies of electric batteries, of power losses in automobile tires, and reclama-
tion of used lubrication oil. New public utility studies looked to improved
efficiency of gas appliances and, for electric service, improved methods of
measuring dielectric losses as indicators of insulation quality or deteriora-
tion. Under way in the construction field were stress studies of building
materials, which for lack of scientific data were often used in excess amounts,
and studies of fire resistance properties of building materials. With the
expertise acquired in the wartime work on sound, the Bureau also began
studies of sound transmission in structural materials—the scientific shushing
of noise.
Other studies sought to determine heat flow in structures and in struc-
tural materials, thermal conductivity of materials at high temperatures, spec-
troscopic analyses of metals, elimination of gases in metals, uses for low-grade
cotton, utilization of American clays in the manufacture of paper, utilization
of flax straw and tow in making paper, utilization of refuse molasses, and
recovery of waste sugar.122
Some account of one or two of these investigations may serve as
representative of Bureau research for industry in the 1920's. The work
on gas appliances, for example, had important results both for the public
and the industry.
Without any specific legislative directive, but using funds first
granted by Congress in 1915 for the "investigation of public utility stand-
ards," the study of gas appliances began as a result of the sharp rise in the
cost of household gas after the war. About half the cities and towns in the
United States which were supplied with gas used natural gas, the ideal
and cheapest fuel, but like petroleum, widely believed to be in limited supply.
The Bureau investigation, therefore, centered on its conservation. It soon
traced the greatest waste of natural gas, estimated as costing consumers a
million dollars a day, to faulty or poorly installed domestic appliances.
Hoping to ameliorate some of the worst conditions found, the Bureau pre-
NBS Annual Report 1922, p. 8; Hearings * * * 1923 (Feb. 1, 1922), pp. 501—508. A
summary of NBS research for industry, 1921—27, appears in letter, GKB to Exec. Council,
Amer. Eng. Council, July 5, 1928 (NBS Box 253, PA).