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

RESEARCH IN CRITICAL MATERIALS 417
supplies of low-silica bauxite, the source of aluminum, meant that 70 per-
cent of all bauxite had to be imported. Urgent investigations were begun
under contract at a number of laboratories to develop 'processes for using
some of the less pure bauxite and clays in this country.
At a high-level conference attended by Dr. Briggs and James I. Hoff-
man in the spring of 1942, it was decided to construct and operate a pilot
plant at the Bureau for the extraction of alumina (aluminum oxide) from
clays. By autunm both an alkaline and an acid recovery process had been
successfully investigated. Pilot plant production started in the alkaline
plant under a Bureau 'team directed 'by Lansing S. Wells and in the acid plant
under Hoffman and Robert T. Leslie.
As the submarine menace waned, increasing supplies 'of high-grade
bauxite ore from the Guianas reduced the need for the new processes. Both,
nevertheless, were fully verified in the pilot plant, the alkaline process re-
covering about 95 percent of the alumina in clay, the acid process resulting
in alumina with an average purity of 99.6 percent—almost the equal of that
from high-grade bauxite. From May 1943 on, the acid-process plant was
in almost continuous operation, finally producing alumina at the rate of 50
pounds a day. In a continuing emergency, large-scale production would
have been entirely practicable, •but otherwise clay could not compete with
the imported ore.'46
Along with quartz crystal, optical glass appeared on all lists of critical
materials. Between the two wars, the Bureau had been the only research or-
ganization in the country engaged in both research and production of optical
glass, with funds supplied chiefly by the Navy Bureau of Ordnance.147 Prior
to 1940, fewer than 20 people working in the glass plant turned out about
9,000 pounds annually, the entire output going to the Naval Gun Factory for
its optical requirements.
With war orders from 'the Navy, Army Ordnance, Army Engineers,
the Treasury's Procurement Division, and OSRD, the optical glass plant ex-
panded. An addition to the kiln building and construction of a second plant
with Navy funds more than doubled facilities. The refractories section in-
creased its manufacture of pots from 70 to 2,300 annually, and by working
in three shifts production went up from 15,000 pounds of optical glass in
1940 to more than 240,000 pounds in 1942 and in 1943. Even so, the
Bureau could not supply more than half the requirements, and Bausch &
Lomb, Haywood Optical, and Libbey-Owens Ford furnished the remainder.
RP1756, "Development of a hydrochloric process for the production of alumina from
clay" (Hoffman, Leslie, et al., 1946); NBS War Research, pp. 166—168.
141 Bausch & Lomb began making optical glass in World War I. It maintained its facili-
ties in the interim years, but admittedly "had no appetite for military business in peace-
time." See Fortune, 22, 76, 98 (1940); memo, GKB for Bureau of Foreign and Domestic
'Commerce, Feb. 4, 1926 (NBS Box 152, AG).