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

64 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10)
work of the Bureau and saw that he had the best of equipment and the best
of assistance to conduct his program. Where the Bureau was concerned,
they acted as one, and during Stratton's frequent absences on official business,
Rosa's decisions were final.
A diligent investigator—he published over 75 papers while at the
Bureau—Rosa demanded the same industry from his staff. But while their
minds were kept firmly on electrical matters, his increasing administrative
responsibilities, as well as his peripheral interests and zest for public affairs,
drew him repeatedly out of the laboratory. Unlike Stratton, he enjoyed
talking to groups of people and gave many lectures, later published, on the
work of the Bureau, the progress of electrical research, and the range of
scientific work being done in the Government. His most ambitious effort
late in his career was an exhaustive study of Government research and its
relation to the Federal budget, which was to lead indirectly to the establish-
ment of the present Bureau of the Budget.
It was said of Dr. Stratton that he was "continually on the lookout
for worthy research and testing work, and so the staff always seemed over-
burdened." 30 It was equally true of Rosa, who followed closely each new
development in the field of electricity, saw research projects everywhere, and
brought in a stream of bright young men to investigate them.
In its early years the Bureau regularly hired young men who were
potential specialists in their fields, only to win them to the ever-increasing
range of interests spanned by the Bureau. Before midcentury the advance
of science would demand many at the Bureau working at the extremity of
specialization. But Dr. Rosa, with wide interests himself, was wary of the
possible narrowing influence of high specialization—that should be left to
the universities, he said—and warned his division of its inevitable conse-
quences, that "we grow taller and thinner." 31 The justification for the
Bureau's ranging research was the clause in its enabling act making it responsi-
ble for the "solution of problems which arise in connection with standards."
Since almost every aspect of science, technology, industry, and commerce
is rooted in standards of some kind, all knowledge in these fields was by
definition within the Bureau's province. So Stratton, who had written the
clause, interpreted it, and under the guidance of Stratton and Rosa, the
Bureau acted upon it.32
'° Fay C. Brown, "Samuel Wesley Stratton," Science, 74, 428 (1931).
W. W. Coblentz, "Edward Bennett Rosa," Nati. Acad. Sci., Biographical Memoirs,
xvi, 356 (1934).
32 Years later Stratton was to say that he thought an enumeration of the organic
functions of the Bureau covered "about 99 percent of the field of research." Only food,
drugs, and materia medica were exempt. SWS address on the 25th anniversary of the
NBS, 1926 (Stratton Papers).