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

HIGH POLYMERS AND BUILDING RESEARCH 485
the National Bureau of Standards. The issue ignited soon after the Eisen-
hower administration took office in 1953.
In the controversy over AD—X2 that erupted in the Department of
Commerce, the Director of the Bureau was temporarily relieved of his post.159
Under press attack for an act of dismissal without a hearing, and con-
fronted with the reaction of scientists and scientific organizations, Secretary
Weeks rescinded his dismissal order pending a congressional hearing and
called upon the National Academy of Sciences to appoint a committee
"to evaluate the present functions and operations of the Bureau of Standards
In the Eisenhower administration, Sinclair Weeks, a manufacturer from Newton, Mass.,
became Secretary of Commerce. The new Secretary appointed Craig R. Sheaffer, presi-
dent of the Sheaffer Pen Co. in Fort Madison, Iowa, his Assistant Secretary for Domestic
Affairs.
Both the Secretary and his assistant were concerned over Federal agencies that in their
view often hampered the efforts of small business to get ahead. Both seem to have
thought the Bureau was one of those agencies. The Federal Trade Commission not long
before had forced the Sheaffer company to discontinue advertising its ballpoint pen
as a lifetime pen. (Senate Hearings, above, pp. 272, 511). He now found the Bureau,
long closely associated with the FTC, under his immediate supervision.
More than a year prior to the Eisenhower election, in August 1951, Dr. Condon, who was
Director when Circular 504 on battery additives appeared, resigned from the Bureau
to become director of research for the Corning Glass Works. Dr. Allen V. Astin, elec-
tronic and ordnance physicist and a guiding hand in the development of the Bureau's
proximity fuze, became Acting Director until his appointment as Director was confirmed
by the Senate on May 30, 1952 (see Hearings * * * 1954, Jan. 11, 1954, p. 76).
During that period, Pioneers, Inc., its distributors, and supporters continued pressure on
the Bureau to reverse its findings on AD—X2. At the request of the Post Office Depart-
ment in September 1951, the Bureau retested AD—X2. Six months later it was again
teste.d for the House and Senate Committees on Small Business, and again, almost a year
after, much more extensively, for the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee.
On Feb. 24, 1953, the new Postmaster General, Arthur E. Summerfield, as a con-
sequence of the latest Bureau findings, put AD—X2 on the mail fraud list. Six days
later, the fraud order was suspended. Assistant Secretary Sheaffer instructed Dr. Astin
to impound all copies of Circular 504 and all other reports, pamphlets, and data on
battery additives, including AD—X2.
On Mar. 24, 1953, Secretary Weeks forced the resignation of Dr. Astin "for a number
of reasons," none of which was specified, except that "the National Bureau of Standards
has not been sufficiently objective because they discount entirely the play of the market
place" ("Washington Post," Apr. 1, 1953, p. 1).
The action raised a basic question: whether Government through its regulatory and
scientific agencies was to judge the merits of new products offered to the public, or
whether this function was to be left to the test of the market place. The integrity of the
Government's primary scientific research body had been impugned. The Bureau was
being subjected to pressure, and to reorganization in accordance with an outside concept
of scientific objectivity. The attack on the Bureau implied a radical reversal in the
role of Government as the regulator of commerce.