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

AUTOMOBILES AND AIRCRAFT 281
George W. Vinal of the electrochemistry section sent out a stream of research
and test results to the manufacturers. Automobile batteries slowly improved.
Simplification, in that highly competitive field, was more difficult, but a start
was made in 1922 when the Bureau, on behalf of the Army, prepared specifi.
cations limited to 17 of the some 150 sizes of batteries available.'78
A sequel to a battery study made for the Navy in the late spring of
1921 was to vex the electrochemists at the Bureau off and on for the next
30 years. The Navy came to the Bureau reporting trouble with the negative
plates of its submarine batteries. Chemical and spectroscopic tests of the
battery electrolyte and plates traced the repeated battery failures to impuri-
ties in the electrolyte. While studying electrolyte impurities, Vinal also
tested a new jelly electrolyte that had come on the market, as well as several
patent electrolytes, all being sold "with extravagant and impossible claims [of
extending the life of storage batteries] at relatively high prices." Where
these battery additives did not contain substances actually harmful to storage
batteries, as most did, Dr. Vinal reported, they were useless.
The results of the Bureau tests were used "both as a basis for specifi-
cation for [battery] acid and in published warnings widely circulated to
protect the public from fraud." The warnings went unheeded. Before
the decade was out, dozens more of the additives appeared on the market,
and at the request of Government transportation agencies, the Post Office,
and the Federal Trade Commission, were tested by the Bureau. The answer
to the claims made for them, again made public, was still a resounding no.'8°
The continued encouragement by a credulous public of the manufacture of
these spurious additives was some years later, as we shall see, to make head-
lines from coast to coast and imperil the reputation for scientific integrity -
of the Bureau.
Another long-term study in applied electrochemistry begun during
the war centered• on the dry cell batteries used in telephones, flashlights, and
radios. In the subsequent standardization crusade specifications for their
construction and operating life were prepared and under simplified practice
a successful effort was made to reduce the multitude of sizes and shapes that
Letter, SWS to Secretary of Commerce, Dec. 14, 1921 (NBS Box 8, IEB); Hear-
ings * * * 1923 (Feb. 1, 1922), P. 519.
NBS Annual Report 1921, pp. 70—71; Annual Report 1923, pp. 83—84; Annual Report
1925, p. 5; NBS TNB No.94 (Feb. 10, 1925), p. 1.
180 LC302, "Battery compounds and solutions" (May 15, 1931). Later Bureau letters to
motorists included LC512, "Automobile costs" of owning and operating a car (1938),
superseded by LC520 (1938), and for travelers, LC517, "Motorists' manual of weights
and measures" (1938).