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

RESEARCH IN CRITICAL MATERIALS 425
forged hand tools, wood saws, plumbing and heating tanks, refrigerator•
valves and fittings, shovels and spades, and welded chain.166
Among new commercial standards dictated by the war, porcelain-
enameled steel utensils replaced the aluminum, stainless steel, and copper
pots and pans that were donated to the scrap drives. Extensive use was
made for the first time of plywood and fiberboard in the construction of
barracks, concrete forms, boats, pontoons and other normally all-wood prod.
ucts. Mineral wool and fiberboard also proved satisfactory and in some
cases superior replacements for cork as insulation materials.167 What with
victory gardens, meatless Mondays, and ration books, the war was only
months old when it became evident that life on the homefront was to be a
matter of substitutes, do-it-yourself, or do without.
Of the hundreds of consumer products merely simplified out of ex-
istence by the war, most conspicuous was the automobile. A War Production
Board order of January 20, 1942, stopped all production of cars and light
trucks. The last passenger car rolled off the assembly line 3 weeks later.
Domestic refrigerators came under severe curtailment next, and in a sweep.
ing order in May, the manufacture of more than 400 other civilian products
using iron and steel ceased.'68 The great conversion to war production had
begun.
An index to the vast potential of production in this country on the
eve of war, though it was concealed by the doldrums in which industry con-
tinued to languish and by the great pool of the unemployed, appeared in
the incredible rapidity with which the Nation became fully armed and sup.
plied for global warfare. By September 1943, hundreds of huge new rubber,
steel, petroleum, aluminum, and magnesium plants had arisen and began
reaching full-scale operations where fields or forests had ruled before. Tanks,
guns, shells, tires, aircraft, and great catalogs of miscellaneous supplies and
parts were pouring along assembly lines to waiting freight trains headed for
the ports of embarkation. Supplies and equipment that did not cross with
troopships filled convoys for the arming of the British, French, and Rus-
sians, or for the stockpiles that were being crammed into the English
countryside.
November 194.3 marked the high point in war production. Thereafter
it began to slope downward. The successive targets for production of raw
materials and finished products set during the preceding 3 years had been
Nelson, p. 240; NBS War Research, pp. 172—173. In some instances sales to industry
of the simplified practice recommendations for these products ranged as high as 25—
30,000 copies. Many had to be reprinted later to meet the continuing postwar demand.
See NBS Annual Report 1946, p. 207.
'°' NBS War Research, pp. 173—174.
Nelson, pp. 224, 283.