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

472 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51)
The Bureau had long since outgrown the facilities for cryogenic re-
search in its small iow temperature laboratory in Washington when in April
1951, with the cooperation and financial support of the AEC, ground was
broken at Boulder, Cob., for the construction of the world's largest liquid
hydrogen plant and cryogenic laboratory. The plant at Boulder was com-
pleted that summer and the staff to man the plant and laboratory buildings
moved in. The hydrogen liquefiers, the units producing liquid nitrogen to
precool the hydrogen, and the purifiers, all in duplicate to insure continuous
operation, were designed and their construction supervised by the Bureau.
Both the plants and laboratories incorporated elaborate safety and anti-
explosion features to minimize the hazards of working with liquid hydrogen
in large quantities.'2'
Engineering research and production at Boulder accelerated when in
1956 the Air Force became interested in liquid hydrogen as an aircraft and
rocket fuel.122 Large-scale operations were established after 1957, when the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) began negotia-
tions for all the liquid hydrogen the Boulder plant could supply, as a missile
and satellite fuel. It followed the announcement by the U.S.S.R. in August
1957 of its first successful test of an intercontinental ballistics missile
(ICBM). Two months later Russia's 184-pound satellite, Sputnik I, was
launched and began orbiting the earth. A new race, to span continents and
send men and machines into space, was on.
The cryogenic plant at Boulder shared the 220-acre tract with the
Central Radio Propagation Laboratory (CRPL), the new Bureau division
evolved from the wartime Interservice Radio Propagation Laboratory
(IRPL) that had operated out of the Far West building at the Bureau.'23
Established on May 1, 1946, under Bureau operation and administration,
CRPL came under the direction of an executive council representing the
Army, Air Force, Navy, Federal Communications Commission, Civil Aero-
nautics Administration, Coast Guard, the Bureau itself, the Weather Bureau,
Bureau devised a standard and precise method of producing liquid and solid hydrogen at
a temperature 25° above —4597° F or absolute zero (Sci. Am. 129, 106, 1923). In 1931,
with the same apparatus, Dickinson and Brickwedde, by precooling with solid hydrogen,
produced liquified helium for the first time in this country, at a temperature of —456° F.
(Science News, 73, 12, 1931; Time, 17, 58, 1931; NBS Annual Report 1931, p. 8).
i!j
NBS Annual Report 1952, p. 14.
112
Russell B. Scott, "Liquid hydrogen for chemical and nuclear rockets," Discovery, 21,
74 (1960).
While the cryogenic plant began operations at Boulder in the fall of 1951, not until
completion of CRPL were the Boulder Laboratories formally dedicated, on Sept. 8, 1954.