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

SAMUEL WESLEY STRATTON 55
For over 20 years Samuel Stratton dominated the National Bureau of
Standards, shaping it to serve the Nation and to hold its own or even surpass
the national standards laboratories abroad. Like all good administrators,
he recognized potential ability in young scientists he met or who applied to
him. And as Kennelly says, he knew how "to organize them into cooperative
effort for the purposes of applied science, without any consideration of his
own personal advantage. His mind was dominated by the ideals of im-
proving all engineering enterprise through scientific study and research."
While it is true, as Kennelly implies, that his interest in technology was
strong, Stratton knew that the Bureau must establish a solid basic research
program and keep it at a high level if the Bureau was to fulfill its promise.
Fundamental research was often difficult to justify to a cost-conscious
Congress, but as he told a House committee in 1902, "H we are to advance we
have to create original things." More often than not he got his funds for
basic research.
Stratton's office was to have its share of bureaucratic troubles, within
the organization itself, with other government agencies, with members of
the public, and with politicians. When differences arose, Dr. Stratton could
be stern with the members of his staff—his flaming temper was famous—but
he would defend them with all his might against the slightest interference or
criticism that he believed unjustified. By its very nature, as impartial ruler
and arbiter of standards, the Bureau could not escape controversy, but Strat-
ton spoke with facts and a firm voice that kept controversy within bounds.
He never allowed anyone to forget that the Bureau's mission was to
serve science and industry in the Nation, and he himself became filled with
concern when a commercial chemist wrote of his difficulties with a product,
an engineer with his materials, or an enquiring citizen sought technical
help or information. He would scrawl in the margin of their letters: "Can't
we do something about this?" "Why can't we do this?" "This deserves
answering." But he was impatient with armchair inventors who thought
the Bureau ought to construct working models for them from vague de-
scriptions of vague ideas. Incoming mail at the Bureau, particularly in 1918,
was freighted with suggested weapons and materials for winning the war,
many of them, as Stratton said of a flux of letters proposing new alloys,
"products which, although found excellent enough, are not in any way
unusual, except in the secrecy about the composition which is observed by the
inventor." 14 And he could be withering when a colleague was vilified for
trying to let a crank down gently: "It is perfectly evident that you are more
"Hearings * * 1904 (Dec. 4, 1902), p. 70.
"Letter, SWS to Dir, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Jan. 21, 1918 (NBS
Box 11, IM).