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

TECHNOLOGICAL VS. BASIC RESEARCH
a new deal designed to promote foreign trade and provide special services
to business in the fields of science, technology, management, and marketing.
He intended to expand the Department's output of basic statistical informa-
tion and provide detailed analyses on the economic outlook for the use of
business, Government, and the public, and to this end the scientific and tech-
nical bureaus of his Department must be strengthened. What he had in mind
for the National Bureau of Standards was not spelled out, except that it was
to be responsible for "technological research and development on problems
of direct and practical interest to industry."
Before the same subcommittee 2 weeks later, Dr. Condon asked for
increased funds for intensified activity by the Bureau "from an industrial
and economic point of view" in the fields of metallurgy, high polymers, build-
ing materials, thermodynamics, rubber, hydraulics, atomic energy, electronics,
and radio propagation. Their research was "no more than simple national
wisdom." The four fields in which the Bureau planned to concentrate its
greatest resources, however, were nuclear physics, building materials and
structures, radio propagation, and rubber chemistry. They would require
"research in fundamental science of a long-range and basic character" and "a
great deal closer cooperation in fundamental research by the universities."
Dr. Condon's remark, that his Assistant Directors would "see that
appropriate research work is initiated in new fields * * * [and] that there
is not too much effort expended on routine tests [at the expense of basic re-
search]" did not entirely satisfy the subcommittee, the Bureau of the Budget,
or senior members of the Bureau who viewed testing—with an appropria-
tion of $1.5 million annually—as a primary and irreducible function of the
Bureau.55
Hearings * * * 1947, p. 5. Considering its importance to the Government, said
Wallace, the program and appropriation for the Bureau were modest, no more than
"comparable to the scientific program of a single large private corporation" (ibid., p. 8).
Hearings * * * 1947, p. 178; NBS Annual Report 1946, p. 172. Discussed at length
at the hearings but unreported elsewhere was an appropriation in the budget of $100,000,
to provide specifications for consumer goods. Since the 1930's the Bureau's codes and
specifications division had maintained a small section called "consumer contacts."
Almost certainly at the prompting of Secretary Wallace, funds were inserted in the 1947
budget to expand the section to 32 members in order to extend the work on Federal
specifications and the factfinding tests of products for the Federal Trade Commission
to the consuming public. As a beginning, the Bureau was to develop at once methods
of testing and test machines for determining consumer standards and specifications in
leather goods, to "provide simple means of finding out what we get for our money"
(Hearings * * * 1947, pp. 205—206, 217—220). It was a short-lived project. Within
months, along with most of the simplified practices and trade standards divisions of the
Bureau, it was transferred to another agency of Commerce. Its chief, George N.
Thompson, went to the Bureau's new building technology division.
Hearings * * * 1947, p. 191; interview with Dr. McPherson, Dec. 5, 1961.
447