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

416 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941-45)
substitute metals included tableware, signal mirrors, and lifesaving equip-
ment.142
If in fall of 1941 the Nation's production capacity in steel was tight,
the real pinch was in copper and aluminum. Nation-wide scrap drives
brought in millions of domestic pots and pans and cleared cellar collections
of nickel, tin, aluminum, copper, brass and other metals, but it was still not
enough. To get more copper—the metal of communications systems—the
Army in the summer of 1942 furloughed 4,000 soldiers who had previously
worked in copper
One substitute for copper, when required as an electrical conductor,
is silver, which apart from its high cost is as good and in some cases an even
better conductor. As an early expedient, half a billion dollars' worth of
silver coins and bullion were borrowed from the Treasury and converted into
bus bars, transformer windings and the like.144 Another copper substitution
resulted in the "white" pennies that became common from 1943 on. To
satisfy the military demand for copper in its cartridge brass, the U.S. Mint
was urged to find something else for the 5,000 tons of copper that went into
the 1-cent piece annually. Bureau tests of pennies stamped from zinc-plated
steel sheets indicated that they would give at least a few years' service, and
over a billion went into circulation. When the bronze coin came back again
in 1944, the copper content had been reduced from 95 to 90 percent. Wear
and tear, it had been determined, would not be affected, and the public was
not likely to notice the difference.
The Bureau also presided over some tampering with the 5-cent piece,
changing its composition from 75-percent copper and 25-percent nickel to
50-percent copper and 50-percent silver. It made for a more valuable coin,
but at the time copper was precious and silver was noncritical. The addition
of a trace of manganese and aluminum made it tarnish-resistant and as ac-
ceptable as the original in coin-operated devices.145
Unlike copper, in the case of aluminum there were few or no mines
to be worked. The industry was small to begin with, and limited domestic
142
John E. Burchard, ed., Rockets, Guns and Targets (OSRD; Science in World War
11, Boston: Little, Brown, 1948), pp. 357, 396—397; Nelson, pp. 251—252; NBS War Research,
pp. 152—156, 170, 179.
Under preliminary development at the Bureau at the end of the war was a unique method
of plating by chemical reduction, called "electroless plating," that was to eliminate electrical
equipment, deposit coatings of more uniform thickness, and make possible thicker
coatings. See Abner Brenner, "Electroless plating comes of age," J. Metal Finishing,
52,3 (1954).
143
Nelson, pp. 173—174; Jones, pp. 442—443.
Nelson, p. 355.
Jones, pp. 336—337; NBS War Research, p. 178; interview with Dr. William Blum,
Oct. 15, 1963.