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

APPENDIX M 657
Oneida, the latter a training ship whose crews on weekend outings and picnics frequently
included some of Stratton's friends.
As Director of the Bureau and also a highly eligible bachelor, Stratton was in
constant demand at official functions and private dinners. He was a frequent guest at
the White House, beginning with the McKinleys. Later, the houseful of young Roose.
velts became a recurring delight, as were his visits to the home of Commerce Secretary
Hoover with its two enterprising youngsters. But his entertainment ranged far beyond
official circles. For an inherently shy person Stratton had, Dr. Burgess was to say,
"probably as wide an acquaintance among men of science, industry, engineering, and
business as any single American." Among his hundreds of acquaintances and friends,
the two most intimate and longlasting were, not surprisingly, in the instrument industry,
John Bashear, the great instrumentmaker, and Ambrose Swasey, manufacturer of machine
tools and astronomical instruments, including the Lick, Naval Observatory, and Yerkes
telescopes.
One chore that Dr. Stratton had all his professional life and could not evade was
making speeches. Through the years he was called on more and more for talks and
dedications and addresses, yet never learned to enjoy the prospect or effort. Even late
in his career the thought of making an informal speech at the Bureau, on the occasion
of its 25th anniversary, was daunting. As he wote to Dr. Burgess, "Of course, you
know speaking is rather difficult for me." 6
As the Bureau grew larger and the responsibilities greater, Dr. Stratton took less
and less time off, until the yearly trips to Paris, mostly for meetings at the International
Bureau of Weights and Measures, often became his only real vacation. It was during
one of these Atlantic crossings shortly after World War I that he met Francis R. Hart of
Boston, banker and member of the executive committee of the Massachusetts Institute
of Techology, who is said to have submitted Stratton's name to the committee when that
institution was looking for a new president.7 He was invited to Cambridge in the spring
of 1922 but deferred the decision to accept the office until he had discussed it with
Secretary Hoover. Besides his concern for the Bureau, he had just bought an old house
in Georgetown and was in the midst of remodeling it. Friends of 20 years were in
Washington and its environs, and his roots were deep in the Bureau he had founded.
But more visits to Cambridge followed, and on January 2, 1923, after receiving with the
Hoovers at their annual New Year's day reception, Stratton arrived at the president's
house on Charles River Road in Cambridge to stay.
Returning to the Bureau late in 1926 to take part in the celebration of its 25th
anniversary, Stratton recalled as the greatest accomplishments of the Bureau under his
direction, not its many achievements in science and technology, but its impact on Amer.
ican industry. Its most significant accomplishments for the advance of industry, promised
when the Bureau was founded, were "the influence upon manufacturers, of the intro-
duction of scientific methods of measurements and methods of research * * * [and]
the training of men for industry." 8 They were also the objectives he had raised to new
heights in his administration of MIT.
Dr. Stratton was summering at the home of friends in Manchester, Mass., in June
1927 when Gov. Alvan T. Fuller asked President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard
University, Judge Robert A. Grant of the Probate Court of Suffolk County, and Dr.
5lbid.
6 Letter, Oct. 28, 1926 ("General Correspondence files of the Director, 1945—1955") -
Undocumented account in Prescott's manuscript. Hart may have been partly
mental, hut for a better documented account of the invitation, see ch. V. pp. 233—235.
8 Speech, Dec. 4, 1926 (NBS Blue Folder Box 3, APW3O1c).