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

344 THE TIME OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION (1931-40)
threatened to disclose industrial processes. Almost all of them found
important uses and applications when war came.
"CURTAILMENT BY LIMITATION OF FUNDS"
In September 1934 Science magazine reprinted an excerpt from the
bulletin of the Société Française de Photographie et de Cinematographic
concerning an event that had occurred almost a year earlier:
The budget: retrenchments which the Government of the United
States have made has forced the Bureau of Standards to close its
laboratory devoted to the study of photographic emulsions, a labo-
ratory in which Messrs. Burt H. Carroll and Donald Hubbard have
carried on researches the publication of which has for the first time
given quantitative information on the preparation of modern photo.
sensitive emulsions. * * * Our society will be honored in award-
ing to Messrs. Carroll and Hubbard two of its medals, thus
expressing its appreciation of their important contributions in a
field heretofore mysterious.136
Research in photographic emulsions, initiated at the Bureau in 1921, grew
out of the need in the spectroscopy laboratory for emulsions sensitive to
infrared spectra. Commercial film was not very satisfactory, particularly
for spectrographic purposes. Its sensitivity was of a low order, its base of
cellulose nitrate was flammable, and it shrank badly. The search for a better
infrared emulsion led the Bureau to the study of emulsions in general.137
With funds transferred from the Army Signal Corps, which was
equally concerned with better film, Dr. Meggers went to Germany and ob-
tained pilot plant machinery for making emulsions. To operate the plant
installed in the basement of the Chemistry building, he brought to the Bureau
two skilled technicians, Carroll, a chemist from the Chemical Warfare Service,
and Hubbard, a recent University of Florida graduate in chemistry.
For 7 years results were largely negative. The fIrst notice, of their
efforts, now with funds provided by Congress for "industrial research,"
appeared in the Director's annual report of 1926 and spoke only of the diffi-
culties under which they labored:
The science of lens design has received a great amount of attention
which is almost classical in character. The preparation of photo.
"6Science, 80, 263 (1934).
S422, "Studies in color sensitive photographic plates * * *" (Walters and Davis,
1922); S439, "Sensitometry of photographic emulsions * * P" (Davis and Walters,
1922); interview with Dr. Meggers, Mar. 13, 1962.