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

300 THE TIME OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION (1931-40)
ance of his morning's mail. A potential voter had written to her Congress-
man for the recipe she was certain the Bureau of Standards had for a cosmetic
to protect her complexion when she played tennis or went bathing.
Some of the queries sent to the Bureau were not as farfetched as they
seemed at first glance, as Dr. Coblentz observed in one of his monthly reports:
That the Optical Division of this Bureau should be called upon to
help solve [the problem of increasing the birth-rate of pigs and
decreasing the price of bacon] seems comical on first thought.
Nevertheless, the question presented by a large forest-products cor-
poration, of the proper windows for hog houses, was a fair one
that is worthy of consideration. Perhaps the inquiry should have
been turned over to the Housing Commission for more mature
consideration. However, having had some experience with prob-
lems in solar radiation as well as the farrowing of pigs, advice was
given on the proper arrangement of hog-house windows in order
to trap and conserve the maximum amount of sunlight.3
But many of the inquiries from the public in that decade, whether
addressed to the "Natural Bureau of Standards," "National Bureau of St.
Andrews," "National Burrough of Standards," "National Brewer of Standards,"
occasionally the "Department of Science," or by its right name, defied
the best minds of the Bureau. Would the Bureau describe "what the average
American should be"? Had it a pamphlet on "what the well-dressed
person should wear"? Would the Bureau please send its booklets dealing
with "protection against the electric influence of radioactive Dictagraphs,
the kind that follow people around everywhere * * * and influence
* * *
hypnotically"?
Newspaper stories in the period announcing somewhat prematurely
the imminence of an age of atomic energy aroused interest and apprehen-
sion.5 How, wrote a correspondent, might he "avoid being hit by the 'death
ray'"? Another asked whether he ought not to sell his gas and electric
stock—to which Dr. Crittenden replied that he had better keep it, since no
method was yet in sight to hasten or retard the natural disintegration of
radium or other radioactive materials. Nor, wrote the Bureau to another
correspondent, was science in a position to release atomic energy by the
rapid withdrawal of the magnetic field in a quantity of matter, not even that
containing the heavy atom of uranium, thorium, or radium. And to some-
one who proposed to obtain heat from the oxygen and hydrogen in water,
NBS Box 23, PRM, December 1922.
Correspondence in NBS Box 162, 1G.
Contributing to the speculations were a series of speeches and articles by a member of
the Bureau, Dr. Paul D. Foote. See his "Ancient and modern alchemy," Cml. Age, 31,
337 and 423 (1923), and "The Alchemist," Sci. Mo. 19, 239 (1924).