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

RESEARCH FOR INDUSTRY 265
appliances fell to 1 or 2 instead of 40, and the next year no such deaths
occurred at all.126
Considerably more complex is the history of Bureau research in the
rare sugars, said to be the first new industry created in the United States by
the war.127 Cut off from German sources, the sugar technologists of Bates'
polarimetry section undertook to prepare and supply small standard samples
of pure sucrose (ordinary sugar) and dextrose (corn sugar) for use in
standardizing saccharimeters, testing the heat value of fuels, and for the
differentiation of bacteria in medical laboratories. So obscure were the
manufacturing processes as described in German patents that reconstruction
of the sugars required almost completely original research.
The preparation of dextrose and other rare sugars (arabinose, raf-
finose, xylose, rhamnose, melibiose, ribose, dulcite, mannite) in the few
industrial laboratories willing to undertake such work was, therefore, both
difficult and expensive, some of the sugars costing from $10 to $500 per
pound. Even so, the products were not wholly satisfactory, for lack of even
the most fundamental data on their properties. On behalf of the industry
the Bureau undertook a systematic study of the whole group, looking to
purer forms than the manufacturers could achieve. If ways to reduce the
cost of the sugars could also be found, it might well increase their commer-
cial importance.128
In 1917 Dr. Richard F. Jackson, a member of Bates' group, solved
the problem of producing hard refined dextrose. Two years later the theo.
retical and technical work for large.scale manufacture of an almost chemi-
cally pure low-cost dextrose was completed by W. B. Newkirk, another mem-
ber of the Bureau's carbohydrate group, for the Corn Products Refining Co.,
and a new industry was launched.'29
Although the Bureau produced experimental quantities of many of
the rare sugars, it chose to concentrate on levulose, as a sugar potentially
acceptable for diabetics. The sweetest of all sugars, it was also the most
NBS Annual Report 1923, p. 78; T303, "Causes of some accidents from gas appli-
ances" (Brumbaugh, 1926) ; memo, Crittenden for A. V. Astin, Apr. 10, 1953 (NBS
Historical File); Elmer R. Weaver, MS, "History of the Gas Chemistry Section, NBS,
1910—1957," pp. 35—36 (NBS Historical File).
Letter, GKB to Executive Secretary, Am. Eng. Council, July 5, 1928 (NBS Box
253,PA).
NBS Annual Report 1919, p. 120—121; Annual Report 1921, p. 112.
Many of these naturally occurring rare sugars are of interest to chemists and bacte-
riologists for their biological function in the human body and have, as well, industrial
applications. Some are also necessary as starting materials for the preparation of
synthetic sugars.
S293 (Jackson, 1917); S437 (Jackson and C. G. Silsbee, 1921); LC500 (1937);
interview with Dr. Horace S. Isbell, Apr. 23, 1963.