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

18 AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
Yet the time was ripe. By the 1880's science and invention had be-
come as fervid subjects of public concern as welfare would be in the 193O's,
With the dramatic rise of the electrical industry there was no longer any
question about the necessity of Government support, only about the degree
and immediacy of it. Indeed, in 1884 Congress went so far as to appro-
priate $7,500 for a national conference of electricians at Philadelphia. But
it took no action on the recommendation of the conference for a Federal
agency "charged with the duty of examining and verifying instruments for
electrical and other physical measurements."
Some felt that more than measurement was wanted in the young and
directionless industry. Writing in 1887 about the development of the
storage battery, Thomas C. Mendenhall, physicist and president of Rose
Polytechnic Institute in Indiana, said: "A good deal of valuable information
concerning [itsi behavior * * * has been accumulated; at an expense far
greater, however, than would have been necessary, had the whole subject
received in the beginning an exhaustive examination at the hands of a com-
petent commission under Government authority and at Government expense.
The vast importance of the questions involved would seem to justify such a
course." 19 Such an authority had recently been proposed and, with little
debate, dismissed.
The proposal for a Department of Science arose out of an investiga-
tion of intramural bickering over functions in the survey agencies of the
Government. A joint congressional commission, headed by Senator William
B. Allison of Iowa, was directed to consider the possible reorganization for
greater efficiency of the agencies involved, that is, the Army Signal Service,
the Department of Interior's Geological Survey, the Treasury's Coast and
Geodetic Survey, and the Navy's Hydrographic Office. The Allison Com-
mission turned to the National Academy of Sciences and asked it to appoint
a committee to make a study of similar European institutions and recommend
methods of coordinating the work of these scientific agencies in the
Government.
In September 1884 the committee made its report. "The time is
near," said the National Academy, "when the country will demand the
institution of a branch of the executive Government devoted especially to
the direction and control of all the purely scientific work of the Government."
It therefore recommended the establishment of such a branch, to be called
the Department of Science, with the purely scientific functions of the survey
agencies in contention reorganized in this Depaitment. It was to comprise
four bureaus: the Coast Survey, the Geological Survey, a meteorological
bureau combining the weather services of the Army and Navy offices, and a
new physical laboratory. The latter was to take over the little weights and
T. C. Mendenhall, A Century of Electricity, pp. 213—14.