Standards of weight and measure were original- 

 ly provided for when the Constitution was writ- 

 ten. The first effort to satisfy this requirement was 

 made by Secretary of State Jefferson, but his pro- 

 posals were turned down by the Congress in 

 1796.1-^ No further steps were taken until 1836, 

 when Dr. Hassler included standardization of 

 weights and measures in the Coast Survey.'-' As 

 late as 1886 the head of the office testified that, 

 "the office of weights and measures at present is 

 a very slight affair, I am sorry to say." '28 in fact, 

 instruments needing careful calibration had to be 

 sent abroad, usually to Germany.'-*^ Germany had 

 created a complete establishment for such work in 

 1868, and England took initial steps as early as 

 1871. In the United States a bill establishing the 

 National Bureau of Standards within the Treasury 

 Department was passed in 1901. The Bureau was 

 transferred to the Department of Commerce and 

 Labor when that department was established in 

 1903. From the very beginning NBS has recog- 

 nized that it must perform basic research of many 

 kinds, including determination of physical con- 

 stants and properties of materials. 



The Bureau played an important role in World 



War I, working with industry and the Carnegie 



Institution to develop high-quality optical glass, 



and to redevelop optical instruments which had 



previously been German industrial secrets. '''O In 



the mid-to-late 1920's NBS peaked in influence 



under Commerce's aggressive secretary, Herbert 



Hoover. 



One of the ten points in his campaign against 



waste was the development of pure and applied 



scientific research as the foundation of genuine 



laborsaving devices, better processes, and 



sounder methods. '"*' 



The Bureau's research was drastically cut back 



during the depression.'^- 



During World War II, the Bureau's expertise 

 again was of great importance. It did important 

 work on proximity fuses for bombs and rockets, a 

 legacy of which is the Army's Harry Diamond 

 Laboratory. Furthermore, it contributed to the 

 atomic bomb project, primarily through studies of 

 the purification of graphite and uranium and pre- 

 cise measurements of the properties of these and 



i^f-Dupree. p. 18. 



I27lbid..p. .'52. 



'-"Testimony before the Allison Commission. March I, 1886. 

 quoted in Dupree. p. 272. 



iWDupree.p. 272. 



""Ibid., p. 322. 



'"Ibid., pp. .1.38-340. quoting from Secretary of Commerce, 

 Annual Report. 1926, p. .1. 



'"Ibid., p. .346. 



338 COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS AND HISTORICAL TRENDS 



other materials. In addition, the Bureau continued 

 studies of optical glass, because by the beginning 

 of the war the U.S. had fallen behind Ger- 

 many and Japan in the development of optics. 

 Less well remembered perhaps is the Bureau's 

 development of an air-launched cruise missile, fully 

 automated, which was successfully used against 

 enemy shipping in the Pacific. It was developed 

 too late to have a major impact on the war, howev- 

 er. '^-^ 



NBS— Current Trends 



The research responsibilities of the Secretary of 

 Commerce, as stated in the Bureau's enabling act, 

 include such basic research as the determination 

 of physical constants, the development of meth- 

 ods of chemical analysis, the study of extreme 

 temperatures, the investigation of radiation, the 

 study of atomic and molecular structure, metal- 

 lurgical research, etc.'^"* However, when the Sci- 

 ence Policy Research Division of the Congres- 

 sional Research Service reviewed the Bureau for 

 the Subcommittee on Science, Research, and 

 Development in 1971, it warned "that there are 

 problems confronting the Bureau which, if left 

 unattended, may result in difficulties not only for 

 the Bureau, but for the Nation as a whole. ^''^"^ 

 One of these problems is the recent tendency of 

 the Congress to assign NBS specific short-range 

 tasks without adequate funding, forcing the Bu- 

 reau to reallocate resources from its primary mis- 

 sion in order to perform these newly assigned 

 tasks. A potential problem aired in the 1971 re- 

 view is that all of the Bureau's authority "comes 

 to it by delegation from the Secretary. . . . Thus 

 the responsibilities and powers of the Bureau and 

 its director, in principle, are subject to change by 

 the Secretary of Commerce as he may see ftt."'-*^ 

 In private discussions, various NBS staff mem- 

 bers have expressed the fear that research classi- 

 fied as basic is more likely to be cut than that 

 classified as applied. One cause of this classifica- 

 tion problem has been the Mansfield amendment, 

 which applied only to DOD but was considered by 

 some management personnel to apply to other 

 agencies, including NBS. 



The effect of the constraints has been to reduce 

 the Bureau's basic research, but a strong and suc- 



'"Communication from Dr. Allen Astin, former Director 

 NSB, to NSB statT. July 1977. 



"*U.S. Library of Congress, National Bureau of Standards: 

 Review of Its Organization and Operations (GPO: Washington. 

 DC. 1971), pp. 12.S-128. 



'"Ibid, p. 1. 



i^''Ibid.,p. \\5. 



