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

424 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941-45)
Tens of thousands of other types of gages and measuring instruments
were calibrated in the Bureau's expanded gage section. A handbook on screw
thread standards, originally issued in 1939, was revised in 1942 and again
in 1944, to keep up with the improvements in thread standards that evolved
during the war.164 In other sections of the metrology division the certification
of standard weights, volumetric glassware, thermometers and other instru-
nients soared as laboratories were set up or expanded in industry and as
war plants came into production. Almost 100,000 standard samples of steels,
irons, alloys, ores, ceramics, chemicals and hydrocarbons, oils, paint pig-
ments, and other substances were distributed during the period, representing
a fourfold increase over the prewar rate.
Little publicized, yet significant in the conservation of critical mate-
rials, was the wartime effort of the simplification and commercial standards
groups at the Bureau. At the beginning of the defense program in 1940 a
number of industry advisory committees were set up as liaison between
industry and Government on simplification. Simplified practice recommen-
dations made by these committees were incorporated in regulations issued by
the Office of Price Administration and later in the orders of the War Pro-
duction Board, resulting in important savings in labor, machines, and both
critical and noncritical materials.'65
WPB orders limiting the sizes and weights of tubular radiators, for
example, were estimated by that agency to have saved 23,000 tons of cast
iron. Builders' hardware was reduced from approximately 27,000 to 3,500
items. Sixty-five percent of all types and sizes of brass and bronze pipe
fittings were eliminated and the variety of brass and bronze valves was re-
duced from 4,079 to 2,504 types, saving thousands of tons of carbon steel,
copper, and alloy steel.
Forged axes, hammers, and hatchets were reduced from 636 to 303
types, conserving vital alloy steels, and all use of these steels as well as
high-polished finishes were eliminated from rakes, hoes, and forks, while
their variety and sizes dropped from 915 to 129 types. Wrenches and pliers
were reduced to one style and one grade per manufacturer.
In order to concentrate manufacture on fewer essential types, dental
excavating burs were mercifully reduced from 75 to 24 sizes, though all of
them, from the point of view of the patient, may still have seemed too large.
Other products similarly affected included concrete-reenforcement steel,
H25, "Screw-thread standards * * 'u" (1939, superseded by H28, 1942, and revised
in 1944); NBS War Research, pp. 163—164. MS Annual Report 1944 reported that
53,000 copies of H28 were sold.
ie For industry's reaction to "defrilling" (it approved, but warned its members against
voluntary standardization without clearing with a defense agency), see Business Week,
Nov. 22, 1941, p. 17, and May 1, 1943, p. 30.