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

GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY 491
ment of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission.174 As the conflict
began, the Bureau established its North Pacific Radio Warning Service for
the Arctic region, operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to insure reliable
radio communications in the war zone. Yet, even with almost half the staff
engaged once more in classified defense programs, the Bureau reported a
total of 630 unclassified projects going on in its laboratories.'75
As it braced itself for the national emergency, the Bureau marked the
approach of March 3, 1951, the 50th anniversary of its founding. The pub-
lications staff prepared a number of designs for a commemorative stamp for
the semicentennial but efforts to interest the Post Office were unsuccessful.'7°
In celebration of the anniversary, some 30 scientific and technical societies
of the country elected to hold their meetings that year in Washington.'77
In the Bureau, with the special cooperation of the Office of Naval
Research, sponsored 12 special symposia on subjects of current importance
to the Bureau and the Department of Defense.'78
The symposia were in mid-career when on August 10, 1951, Dr. Con-
don announced his resignation as Director of the Bureau. For more than
4 years he had been under intermittent attack by a subcommittee of the House
Committee on Un-American Activities, headed by Congressman 3. Parnell
Thomas of New Jersey, as an alleged security risk in high public office'79
Projected in Condon's "is there a science of instrumentation?" Science, 110, 339
(1949).
NBS Annual Report 1952, pp. 1, 2
It has been stated that as a rule it is not Post Office policy to so honor Federal
bureaus or agencies.
177 Also marking the semicentennial were companion articles by Dr. Briggs on the early
work of the Bureau and by Dr. Condon on its current program, in Sci. Mo. 73, 166 (1951).
See also Condon, "NBS: a Semicentennial," Science, 114, suppl. 3 (Aug. 17, 1951).
178 NBS Annual Report 1951, p. 100, and file, "NBS Semicentennial, 1951," in the Office
of Technical Information and Publications, NBS. The subjects of the symposia were
low temperature physics (subsequently published as C519, 1952), mechanical properties
of metals at low temperatures (C520, 1952), gravity waves (C521, 1952), the solution
of systems of linear equations and the determination of eigenvalues (AMS39, 1954),
mass spectroscopy in physics research (C522, 1953), energy transfer in hot gases (C523,
1954), electrochemical constants (C521t. 1953), polymer degradation mechanisms
1953), optical image evaluation (C52'S, 1954), electron physics (C527, 1954), char tc-
teristics and applications of resistancc strain gages (C528, 1954), and electrodeposit on
research (C529, 1953).
179 The trouble began on July 17, 1947, when the press reported that Thomas' Spe( ial
Subcommittee on National Security wis investigating Dr. Condon because his
ances included Russian scientists and alleged Communist sympathizers in this country.
In the uneasy years after the war, resentment arose against the scientists who worked
on the atomic bomb, and over transfer of control of atomic energy from the Army to