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

282 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30)
had proliferated. The annual tests of hundreds of samples of dry cells by
the Bureau, on which Government purchases of millions annually were based,
served to keep manufacturers on their toes and thus led to improvement in
the quality of the billions of dry cells sold to the public.181
Apart from the conservation and consumer studies of the Bureau, the
automobile industry before long took over most of its own research. But
aviation remained a fledgling, of interest principally to the National Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics, the Army Air Service, the Navy Bureau of Aero-
nautics, and, after 1927, the aeronautics branch of Commerce. All of these
agencies transferred funds to the Bureau of Standards for their research.
Besides engine research, to improve power and fuel economy of aircraft
engines at high altitude, investigations continued in ignition, aviation metal-
lurgy, instrumentation (including radio), and the aerodynamics of flight.
The military in the 1920's displayed some interest in better plane
design but, inherently conservative and on reduced appropriations, was to
express only passing interest in such innovations as the helicopter and jet
propulsion. Back in 1917 the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington
had sent the Naval Consulting Board, at its request, a two-foot model propel.
ler for a proposed helicopter. Asked to look it over, the Sperry Gyroscope
Co. sent it on to Dr. Edgar Buckingham at the Bureau to work out its aero-
dynamic equations. It seemed promising to him. Within the limits set by
the model, Buckingham reported, a small one-man helicopter was entirely
practicable. The only "real problem [was] motor stoppage." And, indeed,
in view of the unreliability of aircraft engines at that time, Buckingham was
probably right.t82 Twenty years passed before Heinrich Focke, in Germany,
demonstrated the successful achievement of vertical flight. Two years later,
in 1939, Sikorski's helicopter made its first flight in this country.
Jet propulsion fared even less well in the twenties. In the spring
of 1920 Dr. Robert H. Goddard, father of rocket engineering, who had pro.
posed the use of rocket weapons during the war, published the first of his
papers on "ejectors and new systems of propulsion" for airplanes. Both
the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the Army Air Serv.
ice, aware that jet propulsion was being worked on in Europe, offered the
Bureau funds to study its principles and possibilities. As it happened, Buck.
ingham, knowing of the work in Europe, had for some time been studying
the aerodynamics involved.
181 A brief history of dry cell testing, beginning with NBS C79 (1918), appears in H71,
"Specification for dry cells and batteries" (1959).
152 Letter, SWS to Elmer A. Sperry, Aug. 18,1917 (NBS Box 12, INA).