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

THE PECULIAR PEACE
Further augmenting its fund of research was the Federal policy of
utilizing its own institutions through transferred funds and of entering into
contracts with universities and industrial firms to carry out investigations
required by its agencies. In the process of formation for many years, the
policy was increasingly resorted to during the war and continued at an
accelerated rate in the postwar years.5
The history of transferred funds at the National Bureau of Standards,
for the conduct of research and development on behalf of other Federal
agencies, provides an interesting note on the progress of science in the Fed-
eral Government. The first such funds formally authorized were transferred
to the Bureau in 1921 by the Army, Navy, the National Advisory Com-
mittee for Aeronautics, the Coast Guard, the Bureau of Engraving and Print-
ing, and the Department of Agriculture. They totaled slightly more than
At the height of World War II they approached $9 million, or
almost 70 percent of the Bureau's total operating funds. During the Korean
war, transferred funds, almost wholly from the Department of Defense and
the Atomic Energy Commission, were to exceed $40 million, or 85 percent
of operating funds. A decade later they leveled off at approximately $14
million annually, or 40 percent of the Bureau budget. How this imbalance
came about merits some discussion.
As early as 1942 the Visiting Committee to the Bureau began urging
an end after the war to the Bureau's deep engagement with industry, almost
wholly supported by transferred funds. The development of new weapons,
new materials, and substitute materials during the emergency made the re-
search for industry necessary, but in peacetime, the Visiting Committee felt,
such research belonged in the universities and in the laboratories of industry
and not at the Bureau.
While research and development programs will, in the future,
[said the Committee] be even more extensively adopted by Ameri-
* can industry, the importance of the Bureau of Standards * *
will undoubtedly increase in respect to its most important function,
namely, serving as a court of last resort on those matters of standards
which depend upon scientific [determinations] * * 41
Direct
aid to industry, while very important, should not be allowed to
Dupree, Science in the Federal Government, pp. 371—375.
Exceptions to transferred fund research was the work of the U.S. Naval Radiotelegraphic
Laboratory and the Signal Corps Radio Laboratory at the Bureau which from 1908 to 1932
were directly supported by those services (see ch. Ill, p. 140). The military research
and defense funds of 1918—19 were emergency transfers of the President, outside legisla.
tive authority.
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