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

72 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10)
in the first and second floor laboratories were double-paned and sealed tight,
and each room could be darkened completely. Filtered air, artificially cooled
in summer, circulated in the building, and each laboratory was equipped with
controls to regulate room temperature and humidity .precisely. Special f a.
cilities available in certain of the laboratories included cold brine, carbon
dioxide, and liquid air for iow temperature work; gas and electric furnaces
for high temperature studies; direct electric currents at potentials up to
20,000 volts and currents up to 20,000 amperes.
Weights and measures, optical research, high and low temperature
laboratories, and electrical standards laboratories occupied the ground
floor. On the second floor were additional weights, measures, and optical
laboratories, the inductance and capacity laboratories, and electrical measure-
ments rooms. The director's office, a reception room, the library, a publica-
tion and mailing room, and Dr. Stratton's private laboratory occupied the
third floor, and on the fourth were to be the thermometer laboratories. A
large lecture room (subsequently diverted to storage) and apparatus space
utilized the attic. With its connecting tunnel, but exclusive of equipment,
South building cost $200,000.
In this initial complex, based on Bureau specifications and designed
by the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department, said Rosa, the
Bureau intended "an intimate association between research and testing in
the domain of physics, extending into the field of chemistry on the one hand,
of engineering on the other." 42
The program of work then planned by no means utilized all the labora-
tories provided in the two buildings. But Congress had said that the build-
ing appropriations must cover the first 5 years of the Bureau, and it took
little imagination to see that as its resources and range of skills were recog-
nized, the demands on the Bureau would increase. Even then Stratton and
Rosa foresaw the necessity of East and West buildings, to complete the
quadrangle, although their purpose, except to provide additional laboratory
space, was not yet plain.
Startlingly plain, once spotted, however, was something entirely omit-
ted in the original architectural plans of the two buildings. There was no
place to eat. The "thermometer and photometric standards laboratories" on
the fourth floor of South building had to give way to a council lunch room
(later the senior lunch room) and a junior lunch room, with a kitchen be-
tween. By the time the staff moved in, these were equipped with tables
Rosa, "Plans for the new buildings for the NBS," Science, 17, 129 (1903). For
later modifications in the interior planning and details of facilities and equipment, all
more or less minor, see Stratton and Rosa, "The National Bureau of Standards," Proc.
AIEE, 24, 1039 (1905).