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

CURTAILMENT BY LIMITATION OF FUNDS 349
time, and Bureau policy, as elsewhere in the Federal establishment, continued
vague and uncertain for almost another two decades.
Bureau appropriations between 1932 and 1933, as the Science Advisory
Board reported, fell by half, and further diminished by the sums diverted to
the testing work of the Bureau, left its research funds reduced by almost 70
percent. Equally imperiled was the fundamental research carried out under
statutory salaries and investigations under special appropriations. Among
projects in the latter category, two were scheduled for early termination, the
whole of the levulose program and all research on utilization of waste prod.
ucts of the land, the second by transfer to the Department of Agriculture.149
Except in the Bureau's huge industrial research and standardization pro-
grams, however, most of the other cuts in special appropriations did not ex-
ceed 15 percent. And in the research funds transferred to the Bureau from
other Government agencies, slashes ranged between 10 and 50 percent. The
necessity for economy was the sole justification offered.
A member of the metallurgy division who had left the Bureau several
years before to become director of the Battelle Memorial Foundation wrote
between Bureau members or between the Bureau of Standards and industries and
other organizations."
Lowell and Dunmore gained little from their revolutionary invention. Granted a license
by the inventors to manufacture the device in 1922, Dubilier in turn licensed it to
Philco and several other interested makers of radios. Then in 1924 the Radio Corp. of
America (RCA), largest of the radio manufacturers, developed a heater type of vacuum
tube that performed as well with alternating house current as the Lowell-Dunmore unit.
Within a year or two most radios sold to the public were operating on house current
with the RCA tube (see "The electric light socket and our vacuum, tubes," Sci.
Am. 132, 240, 1925.)
Dubilier at once sued RCA for infringement of the patents and won the first round
in the Delaware courts. When RCA offered to settle out of court and Dubilier refused,
RCA appealed. The case was finally adjudicated in 1937 in favor of RCA when it was
decided that the Lowell and Dunmore patents were not valid by reason of priority and
the only new element in the invention, the suppression of a.c. hum, was inherent in the
RCA tube and constituted no infringement (interview with P. D. Lowell, Nov. 12,
1963).
Stratton's patent policy announced in 1922 continued in force until modified in 1940,
when patents were procured by the Justice Department and assigned to the Secretary of
Commerce for licensing under terms he prescribed (Hearings * * * 1942, Feb. 11, 1941,
p. 219, and policy letter, LJB, Feb. 16, 1944, NBS Box 489, AGP).
The long-accepted Federal policy of permitting employees to retain title to their in-
ventions ended on Jan. 23, 1950, when by Executive Order 10096 it was announced that
all rights to any invention developed by a Government employee in the course of his
assigned work belonged to the Government (see app. C).
140 Some cherished research died hard. As late as 1939, Dr. Briggs requested experi-
ments on the possible use of levulose or xylose in the quick-freezing process for preserv-
ing fruits and strawberries. Nothing apparently came of the study (memo for F. J. Bates,
Dec. 7, 1939, NBS Box 490, 1DM).