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

484 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51)
The appearance of new gasoline "dopes," antifreeze compounds, and
battery additives continued through the forties. Routine tests to determine
the validity of their advertised claims turned up nothing new.'55 Then in
the spring of 1948, Jess M. Ritchie, whose firm, Pioneers, Inc., of Oakland,
Calif., made the battery additive AD—X2, wrote to the Bureau asking for
special tests of his product, on the grounds that it was an exception to the
negative findings of the Bureau's Letter Circular 302 on battery additives,
published in 1931, but still current and available to the public.'56 Since the
Bureau does not make tests for private individuals or firms, it refused.
In January 1949, in connection with a current program of research
on the properties of batteries, the Bureau undertook a reinvestigation of
battery additives, in preparation for a revision of the 20.year-old LC302.
Among the additives tested, but as in all such cases unidentified except by a
number, was AD—X2, samples of which had been recently received from the
Better Business Bureau of Oakland. Essentially compounded of common
epsom and glauber salts (magnesium and sodium sulfates), AD—X2 was
found by the Bureau to have no special merits. Where these salts ordinarily
sell for about 22 cents a pound, when packaged as a proprietary battery
additive, at $3 per packet, they came to almost $20 a pound.
Dr. George W. Vinal of the electrochemistry section, coauthor with
Paul L. Howard of the Bureau circular in preparation, reported the test
results on AD—X2 to the Better Business Bureau in Oakland in April 1950,
identifying AD—X2 by name. This was admittedly a deviation from the
usual practice, but was intended as a reply to proponents of AD—X2 that prior
statements of the Bureau on battery additives did not apply to that particular
product.157 Four months later the national office made the report public.
Pioneers, Inc., directed its distributors to write to their Congressmen
in protest.'58 Before the end of 1951, 28 Senators and 1 Congressman had
sent queries to the Bureau on behalf of AD—X2. The issue smoldered for
more than a year, arousing public interest for the first time when in December
1952 a national magazine reported that laboratory tests of AD—X2 made at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were at variance with those of
NBS Annual Report 1947, p. 221; Annual Report 1948, p. 251.
Particularly objectionable to Pioneers, Inc., was the fact that the National Better
Business Bureau had reprinted LC302 in its own circular of June 19, 1931, as the
authoritative statement on the subject.
[Senate] Hearings before the Select Committee on Small Business * * on investigation
of Battery Additive AD—X2, 83d Cong, 1st sess., March 31—June 26, 1953, p. 220.
The findings on AD—X2, unidentified as such, were also reported in the reissue of LC302
in 1949 and in C504, "Battery additives" (Jan. 10, 1951), the latter including confirming
tests of AD—X2 made for the Federal Trade Commission in March 1950. The NBBB
letter is reprinted in Senate Hearings, above, p. 549.