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

314 THE TIME OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION (1931-40)
for which he received his doctoral degree in 1901, was on an aspect of the
physical action of moisture in soil.46
Dr. Briggs headed the biophysical laboratory of the Bureau of Plant
Industry, which he had organized in 1906, when he was detailed by Execu-
tive order to the Bureau of Standards upon America's entry into the war and
set to work constructing a wind tunnel for aviation research.47 Two years
later he brought into his aviation physics section Hugh L. Dryden, a graduate
student from Johns Hopkins, recommended by Professor Ames as "the bright.
est young man he had ever had, without exception." By then Briggs was
wholly won to the study of aerodynamics and formally severed his connection
with the Department of Agriculture. Briggs and Dryden were to remain
closely associated throughout their careers at the Bureau.48
Chief of the mechanics and sound division when Stratton left the
Bureau, Briggs had declined the proposal of the Visiting Committee that his
name be submitted with that of Burgess for the directorship, saying that he
considered Burgess jhe better fitted at the Bureau for the position. Soon after
he became Director, Burgess asked Congress that a position of Assistant
Director be established at the Bureau, to take over some of the burden of
supervising research and testing. Dr. Briggs was offered the position and
declined, but when in 1926 Secretary of Commerce Hoover proposed that Dr.
Ray M. Hudson of his office be made Assistant Director at the Bureau,
Burgess asked Briggs to reconsider. On September 29, 1927, two Assistant
Directors were appointed, Briggs for research and testing and Hudson for
commercial standardization.49
Dr. Brigg's assumption of the Director's chair after 6 years of super-
vising research and testing and a year as Acting Director was therefore
without incident, except that it occurred at the nadir of the depression. He
was already confronted with the task of preserving a working organization in
the face of repeated reduction in salaries, staff, and programs, and was
about to participate in a series of congressional and special committee inves-
Briggs, "On the adsorption of water vapor and of certain salts in aqueous solution
by quartz," J. Phys. Chem. 9, 617 (1905).
The request for the transfer of Dr. Briggs to the Bureau said he was needed "in
connection with the organization of a division for the purpose of certifying all gages
in the manufacture of munitions." Letter, Secretary of Commerce to Secretary of
Agriculture, May 22, 1917 (Department of Commerce records, NARG 40, file 67009/43).
The gage work, however, remained a section in the division of weights and measures,
and Dr. Briggs went into aeronautics.
48 Interview with Dr. Briggs, Nov. 1, 1962. Dr. Dryden succeeded Briggs at the Bureau
as section chief in 1922, as division chief in 1934, and as associate director in 1946,
leaving in 1947, 2 years after Brigg's retirement, to become research director of the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.
Interview with Dr. Briggs, Nov. 2, 1962. The positions are described in NBS Annual
Report 1928, p. 1.