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

364 THE TIME OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION (1931-40)
Condon, than associate director of the Westinghouse Research Laboratory,
and later Director of the National Bureau of Standards, Lloyd P. Smith of
Cornell, and Henry D. Smyth of Princeton, with Henry T. Wensel, a Bureau
specialist in temperature measurements, were brought in to strengthen the
Uranium Section.188
As laboratory research and experimentation evolved processes re-
quiring large-scale plant construction, the final stages of research and pro-
duction were taken over by the Manhattan District, organized in the Army
Corps of Engineers in August 1942 to conceal the making of the bomb in the
anonymity of the military establishment. A year later the S—i Section,
though never formally dissolved, became inactive.189
Acceleration of research and engineering development of the bomb was
achieved under NDRC and OSRD by means of contracts let to universities,
industry, and research agencies both in and outside the Government, a num-
ber of the research contracts falling within the special province of the Bu-
reau. That part of OSRD and Manhattan District development work in
which the Bureau laboratories became actively involved is told in the next
chapter.
pp. 35—36, 44.
41, 82; Smyth Report, pp. 83—84.
Above, the standard yard and eli bed of Queen Elizabeth I, with inches marked in the yard
bed. Below, the eli, with sixteenths of the eli marked.