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

482 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51)
seller was suddenly withdrawn from further publication, with the official
explanation that it was both an inappropriate publication for a scientific
agency of the Government and was competitive with private industry.151
Bureau services such as "Care" represented, whether to homeowners
or to the public in general, have sometimes been unwelcome to private indus-
try, as well as to the friends of industry on Capitol Hill. One such public
effort in the postwar period came close to spelling disaster for the Bureau.
Ever since its founding, the Bureau, alone or in conjunction with the
Federal Trade Commission or some other watchdog agency, has from time to
time impinged on one aspect or another of rugged individualism or the prin-
ciple of laissez faire. It was the Bureau that led the first crusade against
fraudulent weights and measures in the marketplace, against faulty railroad
scales, mine scales, and truck scales. It aroused the ire of the public utilities
by pointing out the hazards of electrolysis, of poor gas appliances, and by
insisting on electrical safety codes.
It angered the building industry with many of its codes and specifica-
tions and some of its assessments of building materials. It repeatedly warned
the public against so-called gas-savers on kitchen stoves, against gasoline
additives, gasoline "dopes," destructive antifreeze solutions, and useless anti-
leak compounds. It exposed the fraud in proprietary radium and radioactive
nostrums. It reported the inferiority of reclaimed rubber for automobile
tires. Its research on photographic emulsions was stopped. Attempts were
made to suppress a number of its reports, including those on the quality
of heating and illuminating gas, on gypsum and certain other building mate-
rials, and on chemical glassware. And from time to time the Department
of Commerce itself considered it necessary to suppress Bureau releases, as
it did one in 1926 describing the quality of dental amalgams.
Every Director of the Bureau has come under fire from business inter-
ests or industry, entrepreneurs, or legislators as a result of some Bureau
investigation or other. Dr. Condon had been at the Bureau only a matter
of months when the "Aquella" incident occurred.
In January 1946 a popular tnagazine published the story of a fabulous
new paint formula for waterproofing masonry, with the claim that it had
been tested by the National Bureau of Standards and won an unqualified
"Excellent" rating.'52 It was being made at home and sold from door to
door by a family of French refugees who had arrived in New York in 1941
with no possessions but the secret formula for their paint. They claimed that
their waterproof paint called "Aquella" had been used throughout the
Maginot Line.
"New York Times," May 15, 1955, P. 68; correspondence with Vincent B. Phelan,
March 9—May 27, 1963 (NBS Historical File).
152 Kurt Steel, "Water, stay away from my wall," Reader's Digest, 48, 45 (1946).