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

366 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941-45)
Act, and to increase the output of its optical glass from the current 9,000
pounds to 75,000 pounds per year. It was prepared to certify U.S. materi-
als sent abroad, especially optical and electrical instruments, master gages,
aircraft instruments, textiles, metals, and cement.
Should the United States become involved, the Bureau was prepared
to solve tech.nical problems of the military services submitted to it, as it had
in the First World War. It would test supplies, particularly high precision
instruments such as certain electrical and optical instruments, gages, screw
thread standards, rubber, textiles, paper, leather, plastics, metals, and glass.
It was also ready to assist in the development of new specifications for war
materials.
Attached to the memorandum of readiness was a copy of "The War
Work of the Bureau of Standards," covering the activities of the Bureau in
1917—18.'
Although the Bureau signified its readiness, the Nation was as un-
prepared for war as it had been two decades earlier. in 1939 the Army
had 500 ancient tanks, 5,000 airplanes, 2 million old rifles, and scarcely
enough cartridges for a normal year's training. Even 3 years later trainees
were to qualify with the pistol for lack of rifles, and maneuver with simulated
guns and tanks.2 The Navy's newest battleship was 20 years old, and the
British fleet was still the first defense of our shores. Across the country,
more than 9 million people were unemployed, and industry, despite the pro-
duction potential it had achieved through the application of science, standardi-
zation, and operating efficiency during the depression years, clung to its
wait-and-see attitude.
As early as the spring of 1938 the President had promulgated the
idea of "educational orders" to assist industry in tooling up for the produc.
tion of certain war materials. Yet 2 years passed before the first order was
actually issued.3 Other orders, little publicized, followed. The President
knew that the majority in the Nation was far from committed to the idea of
war. The central issue of the campaign of 1940 appeared in the Democratic
Party Platform: "The American people are determined that war, raging in
1 Memo, LJB for John M. Johnson, Assistant to Secretary of Commerce, Sept. 1, 1939
(NBS Box 429, AG).
2 Reinhardt and Kintner, The Haphazard Years, pp. 165, 188.
The order, promptly accepted by the steering gear division of General Motors, called
for 500 .30 caliber Browning machine guns. It was not received until June 1940. In
March 1941 the first machine gun ever made by an automobile company was completed.
Donald M. Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy; the Story of American War Production
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946), pp. 225—226.