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

EDWARD B. ROSA 65
Free exercise of the clause, as we shall see, enabled the Bureau to
conduct an abundance of original research, some of it only vaguely con-
nected with standards. At the same time, it subjected the Bureau to. a
plethora of investigations for Federal agencies and the public that at times
tended more to dissipate its energies than to increase its knowledge. The
legacy of accommodation left by Stratton and Rosa created occasional diffi-
culties in later years. Periodically, as its investigations became too far
ranging, the Bureau found it necessary to stop, reassess its scope and func-
tions, and shift course. But it never lost sight of its primary responsibility,
and the whole focus of its early research, the pursuit of standards.
During the 31/2 years in its temporary quarters in downtown Wash-
ington, the Bureau was completely taken up with planning new work on
standards, searching for personnel, acquiring or designing new equipment,
and overseeing the construction of its new laboratories. in September 1901
Henry D. Hubbard, who had been private secretary to President Harper at
the University of Chicago, came as secretary to the Bureau, his desk in Dr.
Stratton's office in the Butler building. He was to serve the Bureau for
almost four decades.u That same month Dr. Charles W. Waidner, a young
physics instructor trained at Johns Hopkins, who had taught there and at
Williams College, arrived to organize the Bureau program in heat and ther-
mometry. In the laboratories over in the Coast Survey building, Rosa,
Wolff, and their assistants continued to acquire equipment and carried out
electrical tests, while Fischer, with his new assistant, Roy Y. Ferner, looked
after the weights and measures work.
Orienting a growing staff and organizing its work permitted little
forward motion. One new member was later to say that while he did some
testing of instruments, the major part of his time in his first year at the
Bureau "was spent in library work. * * * Only the functions of the old
Office of Standard Weights and Measures were operating normally." In
December 1901 Dr. Stratton announced in Science, apparently in answer
to inquiries, that the range of Bureau services was as yet limited. More
exact determination of values for certain of the fundamental electrical con-
stants, better photometric measurements, and calibration services such as
those requested for clinical thermometers, pressure gages, and many other
instruments, while urgently needed, were simply not yet possible. For the
time being the work of the Bureau was confined to the comparison of a few
standards and measuring instruments, that is, to length, weight, and capacity
"A contribution to scientific literature, Hubbard's modernization of Mendeleev's per-
iodic table of the elements, first printed in 1924, is currently published by the Welch
Scientific Co. of Skokie, Ill.
MS, N. Ernest Dorsey, "Some memories of the early days of the NBS," Oct. 28.
1943 (NBS Historical File).