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

674 PUBLISHED SOURCES
on World War II research, which is available only in multilith form (copy
in NBS Historical File).
A complete set of NBS publications is maintained in the NBS Library,
as are the files of mimeographed Bureau Orders, Director's Memoranda to
Division and Section Chiefs, Administrative Bulletins, and Administrative
Memoranda. An exception are the NBS Letter Circulars, presently located
in the Office of Technical Information and Publications (see p. 251n, above).
OTHER GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS
No series of Government documents has been more important to the anima-
tion of the history than the annual hearings before the Subcommittee of the
House Committee on Appropriations (first cited on p. 46n), on which occa-
sions the Director of the Bureau seeks to justify his requests for funds and
support for his research programs, new construction, additional staffing, and
the housekeeping operations of the Bureau. The give and take of the sessions
provides valuable insights into the personalities of the participants and a
wealth of informal information on Bureau affairs nowhere else to be found.
Except for those preceded by the word "Senate" in brackets (p. 130n), all
hearings cited are those of the House.
Extensive use has also been made of a half-century of House and Senate
reports and of their miscellaneous and executive documents, of hearings before
special committees of both the House and Senate, and of the Congressional
Record. They have provided much primary source material, particularly
concerning the progress of science in the Federal Government.
Consulted for material pertinent or peripheral to the operations of NBS
have been the annual reports and other publications of the Department of
Commerce, its Coast and Geodetic Survey, Census Bureau, and its Office of
Publications Management (formerly Bureau of Publications) ; also of the
Treasury Department, Department of the Interior, Department of Labor, the
Interstate Commerce Commission, the National Aeronautics and Space Ad.
ministration (formerly National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), and
the Council of National Defense, 1917—19.
Two other series of annual reports may be mentioned here, those of the
Smithsonian Institution, and the reports from the Bureau's counterpart in
Great Britain, the National Physical Laboratory. Both series have furnished
important and useful information.
BACKGROUND SOURCES
Histories: The history of the Bureau could not be written without tracing
the progress of science and of American business and industry in the 20th