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

• amounts
376 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941-45)
of the world.33 Lost to the Bureau was the expanse of open fields (scarce in
the Washington area) on which the radio propagation research laboratory at
Meadows, Md., was situated. It was requisitioned in 1942 for the construc-
tion of Andrews Air Force Base, and the laboratory moved its recording
equipment to new structures at Sterling, Va.
On the 12.5 acres of "Pembroke Park" that the Bureau acquired in
1942, adjacent to the west and north of its Washington site, Congress au-
thorized construction of a new and much needed Materials Testing Labora-
tory. It was completed in April 1943 at a cost of Erection of a
6-foot wind tunnel for bomb and projectile rôsearch completed the wartime
construction at the Bureau under direct appropriations.34
The war saw virtually no change in the organizational structure of
the Bureau beyond creation of a special projects section for work on guided
missiles and a new division for proximity fuze and other ordnance research.
The staff of 950 in 1939 rose to 1,204 by mid-1941. Two years later it
totaled 2,263, including over 200 in uniform, and approximately that level
was maintained to the end of the war.35
More spectacularly, total working funds, direct and transferred, which
reached a new high—in excess of $3 million—in fiscal years 1940 and 1941,
soared to $71/2 million in 1942, and to their peak of $13'/2 million by 1944.
In 1940 transferred funds had been one-sixth of regular appropriations to
the Bureau. A year later, with NDRC and service assignments, they were
one-half, and by 1944 had grown to almost twice the amount of direct
appropriations.36
"Memo, LJB for Acting Secretary of Commerce, July 10, 1940 (NBS Box 442, AG);
NBS Annual Report 1941, p. 65; Science, 98, supp. 8 (1943); Science, 101, supp. 10
(1945).
"NBS Annual Report 1941, p. 61; Annual Report 1942, p. 103; MS Annual Report 1943,
n.p. With the Thom estate, known as "Pembroke Park," the Bureau site comprised 67.8
acres. The estate is described in Hearings * * * 1940 (Apr. 21, 1939), pp. 184—186.
The new wind tunnel, authorized in 1943, was completed at a cost of $110,000 2 years
later. See G. B. Schubauer, MS "History of the Aerodynamics Section," March 1956
(NBS Historical File). Other construction, under transferred defense funds, included
a number of Quonset huts, enlargement of the glass plant, storage and laboratory facilities
for the quartz program, and new quarters for the ordnance (proximity fuze) project.
Except for the main ordnance building and the addition of a story to the Far West build.
ing, all were temporary structures.
MS Annual Report 1943. Of the 2,372 on the Bureau staff in 1944, directors and
supervisors numbered 116, research scientists 679, laboratory assistants 576, and clerical,
mechanical and other workers 901. Report to the Senate Subcommittee on War Mobili-
zation, Apr. 13, 1944 (NBS Box 489, AGL).
'° See app. F. The agencies supplying transferred funds in 1942—44, as well as the
and in some cases the identity of the projects, are reported in NBS Box 464,
AG; Box 477, AG and FP; and Box 489, AGL.