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

414 WORLD WAR 11 RESEARCH (1941-45)
loads or increasing speeds.134 Nevetheless, the public had to get along with
them since no natural rubber could be spared. Although later synthetic tires
were far more satisfactory, tire production was restricted, for much of the new
rubber was going into other products. Among materials made of the new
rubber and tested by the Bureau for military or domestic use were rubber
parts for landmines, cords for barrage balloons, pontoon fabrics, crash pads
for tanks, gaskets, soles and heels on shoes, jar rings for home canning,
flexible hose, and wire and cable insulation.135
While the Bureau, to be sure, could do nothing about the sharp re-
strictions placed on the use of motor vehicles or the national speed limit,
set at 35 miles per hour, it did hurry out a letter circular on how to prepare
one's car for dead storage.136 And it saved many civilian motorists, as well
as the military, a devastating headache that threatened when the standard
antifreeze compounds, ethylene glycol and ethyl alcohol, were declared criti-
cal. The market was soon flooded with substitute compounds with salt or
petroleum bases. The War Production Board at once stopped their manu-
facture or sale when the Bureau demonstrated the dangerously corrosive
action of salt compounds, even with inhibitors, and the rapid disintegration
of radiator hose caused by even the most highly purified petroleum com-
pound.137
Second only to the shortage of rubber was that of steel and steel plate,
for the building of ships, war plants, and expansion of steel plants them-
selves. To feed the blast furnaces, branch rail lines and spurs and abandoned
trolley lines all over the country were torn up and buildings and bridges
that had fallen into disuse were demolished for their metal.
Equally critical were some of. the alloying agents used in steel pro-
duction, particularly in the making of armorplate and projectiles. The ex-
tensive review that was made of specifications of Government buying agen-
cies was not only important but imperative, and the work of the metallurgical
experts at the Bureau and in industry to produce "lean-alloy" steels, using
less tungsten, less molybdenum, less vanadium, while retaining the essential
RP1574, "Measuring the rate of wear of tire treads" (Roth and Holt, 1944).
Hearings * * 1944 (Feb. 26, 1943), p. 82; M185, "Rubber research and technology
at the NBS" (Wood, 1947) ; RP1554, "Buna-S-Gilsonite for insulation of communication
cables" (Selker, Scott, McPherson, 1943) ; NBS War Research, p. 117.
LC694 (March 1942).
137 NBS War Research, p. 180; Hearings * * * 1944, P. 81. A number of gasoline
additives also came on the market with the usual claims of greatly increased mileage
and improved power. Not one except an additive containing iron pentacarbonyl was
found useful in the slightest, and while the pentacarbonyl acted like tetraethyl lead
to suppress knock, it greatly increased engine wear (Hearings * * * 1944, p. 80).