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

THE BUREAU IN THE PUBLIC VIEW
THE TIME
OF THE GREAT
DEPRESSION (1931—40)
The better-homes movement and the standardization crusade of the twenties,
fed by fountains of publicity, made the Bureau known to the public as it had
never been before. The spate of articles in the Saturday Evening Post,
Collier's, Popular Mechanics, Literary Digest, and Everybody's describing
how Uncle Sam was saving millions for autoists, homeowners, and the con-
sumer industries acquainted the general public with a helping hand in Wash-
ington, available to all, of whose existence many had not previously been
aware. The publicity had some remarkable consequences.
The Bureau since its founding had been a high-level information
center, an assaying office for inventions and ideas, and a court of appeal, to
which Congressmen sent inquiries from their constituents, businessmen their
production problems, and inventors their notions for appraisal. The Bureau,
after making tests, had politely discouraged citizens of the Great Lakes
States who saw their peat and its byproducts as unlimited substitutes for
coal and oil, had sent investigators to examine clays, sands, and mans oft"
hopeful economic value on behalf of owners of exhausted farmland, and
explained repeatedly to would-be inventors the technical fallacies in their
tide motors, and why a hole 12 miles deep, to harness the earth's heat, was
impracticable.1
Incoming mail at the Bureau surged following the appearance in the
early twenties of magazine articles on "Uncle Sam's Questio.n.and.Answer
Office" that pointed out that by "Federal law, every government department
has to answer every letter which it receives, irrespective of whether the
epistles come from lunatics or scientific ignoramuses." 2 The articles cited
a dentist's request for a method of measuring wear and tear on false teeth,
and a businessman's interest in a motor-driven letter opener to speed clear-
in NBS Box 12, IN; Box 13, INM.
2 George H. Dacy, "Answering a hundred million questions," Illustrated World, 37, 823
(1922); S. R. Winters, "Uncle Sam's question-and-answer office," Sd. Am. 129, 114
(1923).
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CHAPTER VI