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

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE
Predecessors of this history have been the formal study of the aciministra-
tion of the Bureau by Gustavus A. Wéber, The Bureau 'of Standards: Its
History, Activities and Organization (1925), a sound reference book about
the Bureau during its first quarter century, and the highly readable popu-
larization by John Perry, in The Story of Standards (1955). The more
complex plan of the present history and the range of its sources require
some description of its documentation.
Following the bibliographical information given here for each work is
the page reference to its first citation in the text. The latter I have given
not only as a convenience to the interested reader seeking to track the ab-
breviated form of subsequent citations to their source, but in some instances
to direct the bibliographic-minded to such additional information about
the work as its location or library catalog number.
PUBLISHED SOURCES
NBS PUBLICATIONS
The range of Bureau publications and a brief account of their history
of publication appear in the notes to appendix I. Detailed information on
the publications from 1901 to 1947 is given in NBS Circular 460, from
1947 to 1957 in the Supplem'etnt to C460, and from 1957 to 1960 in NBS
M240.
The Annual Reports of the Bureau (since 1958 entitled Research High-
lights of the National Bureau of Standards) provide an indispensable
guide to the framework of the history. I have however kept in mind the
natural inclination to prepossession and party spirit inherent in any such
publication, wherever issued. The Annual Reports of the Bureau are com-
plete. except for the years 1943—45, when manuscript copies only, noted
on p 369n, were prepared.
A number of useful summary histories of the work of the Bureau, of weights
and measures, laws relating to weights and measures, and the development of
standards and standardization in industry, appear in NBS Miscellaneous Pub-
lications. Included in this series is the excellent survey of Bureau research
during World War I (M46, 1921), but not Dr. Briggs's 188-page report
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