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

412 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941-45)
jor production finally centered on Buna S, the butadiene.styrene composition
known as GR—S (Government Rubber—Styrene) •328
Apart from its studies in 1942 of the polysuiphide Thiokol as an
interim synthetic for retreading tires, the Bureau rubber section was initially
kept busy testing new processes for making rubber that were submitted by
public spirited citizens. Rubbers were brought in that had been distilled
from the oil of vegetable refuse, from gelatins, glycerine, and tannic acid,
and even concocted from rubber itself. None could be wholly ignored. There
was always a chance that a new composition or process might be found.
But none was, and Donald Nelson, director of the War Production Board,
paid a mixed tribute when he said of the hopeful that each with his product
was sent "to the Bureau of Standards, on whose hard-working scientists we
inflicted all these 'inventors.' 129
Bureau participation in the fledgling industry expanded early in 1943
when it was directed to assist the Rubber Research Co. in standardizing the
quality of the synthetic rubbers coming into production. More than 50
reports described the test and analytic procedures developed by the Bureau,
including methods for determining the styrene content of the GR—S copoly-
rner and the purity of its styrene, butacliene, and other hydrocarbon com-
ponents, and procedures for determining density, specific heats, and thermo-
dynamic values of GR—S and of the polymerization of styrene.
The studies led to the preparation of a series of standard control
polymers making uniform production possible. The controls, specifications,
and rapid routine methods of analysis established for the first of the synthetic
rubber plants were proved out as each of the other plants came into produc.
lion. By late 1944, 19 Government-owned plants across the Nation were
making synthetic rubber meeting identical specifications, resulting in a prod-
uct more nearly uniform in quality than natural rubber.13° The new billion-
dollar industry turned out over 700,000 tons of rubber that year, and as the
war ended was operating at a rate in excess of a million tons annually. By
then 87 percent of the rubber consumed in the United States was synthetic and
the industry was producing one-third again as much rubber as the country
had actually used before the war.'3'
Buna S was essentially a compound of butadiene, from grain alcohol or from petroleum
products, and styrene, from ethyl benzene derived from petroleum and coal tar.
Nelson, p. 300; NBS War Research, pp. 117—118.
130 Frank Freidel, America in the 20th Century (New York: Knopf, 1960), p. 399;
Hearings * * * 1946 (Feb. 2, 1945), pp. 261, 270—273; NBS War Research, pp. 115—
116.
Feeding the 19 rubber-making plants were 15 others producing butadiene, 5 making
styrene, and 9 producing other necessary chemicals (Jones, p.415).
"' Jones, pp. 401, 414. Only the 'Federal Government could afford the construction of
whole industries such as aircraft manufacture, nonferrous metals (magnesium and