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

RESEARCH FOR INDUSTRY
quest of the industry, the Bureau made a compilation of almost 20 years
of its research data on the industrial applications of pyrometry. The orig-
inal printing of 2,000 copies of the 326-page manual, the first book on the
subject in this country, was exhausted within 2 months.14°
Not only pyrometers and thermocouples but hundreds of other instru-
ments, military and nautical, optical and aeronautical, were being made in
this country largely as a result of Bureau research and Bureau encourage-
ment of the instrument industry. "We now manufacture over 85 percent
of our industrial and scientific instruments and appliances," Burgess re-
ported to the Secretary of Commerce in 1924, "where before the war over
80 percent of these were imported." 141 Among the optical instruments
alone made in this country were spectrometers; spectroscopes, refractometers,
interference apparatus, and spectrophotometers, colorimetric and optical
pyrometers, polarimeters and saceharimeters, microscopes and binoculars,
astronomical telescopes and heliostats, surveying instruments, and military
instruments. Most glass volumetric apparatus was American made, as were
hydrometric and thermometric instruments and fire-resistance and automo-
tive-test instruments.142
Long interested in fostering new industries, the Bureau took even
more satisfaction in the changing attitude of established industry. "Not long
ago," Burgess noted in his annual report for 1923, "it was a matter of con-
siderable difficulty to obtain the cooperation of industrial groups in the small
amount, of research then carried on [for them] by the Government." Now,
1.10
T170, "Pyrometric practice" (Foote, Fairchild, Harrison, 1921); NBS Annual
Report 1921, p. 92.
Another compilation for heavy industry was made when in 1920 the Smithsonian asked
the Bureau to assist in revising its physical tables. They appeared in ClOl, "Physical
properties of materials" (1921). Twenty years later the original 20-page circular had
become the 4.80-page C447, "Mechanical properties of metals and alloys" (1943).
111
Letter, Sept. 13, 1924 (NBS Box 72, FPE). Similarly optimistic was Science, 57,
649 (1923), but it pointed out that scarcity of skilled labor, high labor costs (75—80
percent of the cost of constructing a delicate analytical balance went for labor), and
the American penchant for mass production would act to retard the young instrument
industry.
Seeming confirmation appears in a recent report that in the period 1948—56 "imports of
laboratory balances and analytical weights increased 1,096 percent, microscopes 671
percent, and other scientific instruments basic to military victory 131 percent," all
"strategic 'tools' of atomic research, public health, and scientific education." James R.
Irving, The Scientific Instrument Industry. Vocational and Professional Monograph
Series No. 98 (Cambridge, Mass.: Bellman Pubi. Co., 1958), p. 13 (L/C: T5500.17). Cf.
Frederick A. White, Scientific Apparatus (University of Michigan dissertation, 1960),
p. 65 if. L/C: Microfilm AC—i, No. 59—3296.
" Letter, GKB to U.S. Tariff Commission, May 10, 1923 (NBS Box 52, IPO); NBS
Annual Report 1935, p. 65.
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