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

334 THE TIME OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION (1931-40)
published in a new series, 'Building Materials and Structures Reports'
(BMS)
With the approach of war, New Deal sponsorship of the program
ended and the special funds for the Bureau ceased. At the urging of the
building trades, of engineers, and architects, the work continued under both
research and transferred funds and was broadened to include all building
construction. Halted during the war, building technology achieved divi-
sional status in 1950 as a necessary and permanent Bureau function.
One other line of research extending earlier work, reactivated in the
year of the Great Crash, was that on the permanence of paper and paper
records. With funds provided by the Carnegie Foundation, studies were
made of the permanence of Government writing papers, the preservation of
records, and of library storage conditions. Light, heat, humidity and many
other deterioratives of papers and books were assessed, but the principal,
ioe NBS Annual Report 1935, P. 84; Annual Report 1938, PP. 90—92. The program, under
the direction of Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, was formally launched in 1937. See Arch. Rec.
82,34(1937); NBSLC5O2 (1937).
The Bureau preserves the Declaration of Independence by air-sealing it in a frame
against air pollutants.