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

IN THE EVENT OF WAR 371
duce and other commodities across the Nation.15 Testing more than 400
commercial truck-weighing scales in the first year of its inquiry, the Bureau
found 80 percent of them with errors exceeding the agreed on allowable toler-
ance. Moving from State to State with its test vehicle, Bureau inspectors
consistently reported three out of four scales with excessive errors, and partly
as a result of these errors, a dangerous prevalence of overloaded trucks. The
5-year program was completed in 1941 when all 48 States had been visited
and their State and local agencies supplied with the inspection data collected
by the Bureau and its specifications for proper test equipment and
procedures.'6
Still not deemed matters of secrecy in 1941 were references to short-
ages of strategic materials, the acquisition of stores of quartz crystal, and
Bureau work in substitute materials.
Among the first metals declared critical were aluminum, zinc, and
tin, forcing industry to turn to porcelain-enameled iron for roofing and
siding and for kitchen and bakeshop utensils. New technical specifications
for Army and Marine Corps canteens, mess plates, and other ware made of
enameled iron followed Bureau studies of their weather resistance and im-
pact and torsional resistance.'7 Investigations were also made in the stress-
strain properties of stainless steel as a substitute for aluminum alloy in air-
craft production and in airplane firewalls and cowlingsls
While stainless steel (soon to be in critical supply too) proved in
some instances an acceptable substitute for aluminum alloy and enameled
iron had its uses, their limitations did much to foster the plastics industry,
then in its infancy. In 1936, a year after/ the establishment of its plastics
section, the Bureau prepared a comprel1lensive survey of the young in-
dustry.'9 By 1941 sufficient knowledge was available to set up emergency
specifications utilizing plastics in place of scarce metals in many Govern-
ment purchases. With Navy and NACA funds, research began on the prop.
erties and fabrication of these strong lightweight materials, and tests were
made of their use as metal substitutes in such aircraft accessories as wind-
shields and transparent enclosures. Utilization of the synthetic resins, as
15
The investigations into weights and measures and railroad car scales are described
in chs. II and III. In testing mine scales in 1918, the Bureau did not find a single scale
—upon which the wages of coal miners were based—even approximating the reasonable
tolerance set by the Bureau, and one scale for weighing loads of less than 2 tons was
found out of balance by the extraordinary error of 616 pounds. NBS Annual Report
]918, p. 29.
'°
NBS Annual Report 1937, p. 62; Annual Report 1941, pp. 67—68.
"NBS Annual Report 1941, p. 80; Annual Report 1942, p. 120.
NBS Annual Report 1941, p. 74; Annual Report 1942, p. 118.
19
C411, "Organic plastics" (Kline, 1936) ; Kline, "History of plastics and their uses
* * s," a series of articles in Modern Plastics, vols. 17—18 (1940—41).