COTTON FIBER SCIENCE — PALMER 493 



George Gans, working on instrumentation problems in the Depart- 

 ment's cotton-quality research program, and who holds 24 U.S. 

 patents covering past inventions of apparatus for cotton testing, bale 

 sampling, and ginning; the late Dr. Norma Pearson who became an 

 authority on neps and other imperfections of cotton quality ; James H. 

 Kettering who, until his recent retirement from the Department's 

 Southern Regional Laboratory, made important adA^ances m knowl- 

 edge of the chemical phases of raw and chemically modified cotton 

 fibers; William H. Gray, in charge of the fiber testmg and process- 

 ing laboratories of the Cotton Division, AMS, at Clemson, S.C. ; and 

 Joseph T. Rouse, Head of the Washmgton Testing Section of the 

 same organization. 



Some appreciation of the vitality of cotton fiber research may be 

 had by noting the extent to which it has been expanded and to which 

 its results have foimd application in industry. From a bare handful 

 of cotton fiber research and testing laboratories in the world, of 

 which Webb's laboratory in the Department of Agriculture was the 

 first of importance in this coimtry, the number has grown in 30 years 

 to more than 325, of which over 180 are in the United States. Today 

 hardly any mill or merchant house dares rate itself in front rank 

 that does not possess at least some laboratory equipment and trained 

 laboratory personnel. The cotton textile industry, impatient to push 

 forward to a greater mastery of the teclinical problems inherent in 

 its raw material, has established for itself such splendidly equipped 

 and supported research and service institutions as the Institute of 

 Textile Technology at Charlottesville, Va., and the Textile Research 

 Institute at Princeton, N.J. Moreover, the commercial research lab- 

 oratories of Milton Harris iVssociates at Washington, D.C., and the 

 Fabrics Research Laboratories, Inc., formerly at Boston but now at 

 Dedham, Mass., under the direction of Dr. Walter J. Hamburger, must 

 be credited with important contributions of new apparatus, techniques, 

 and knowledge, while the U.S. Testing Company with headquarters 

 at Hoboken, N.J., has been concerned with the development of instru- 

 ments and methods for the rapid evaluation of cotton quality. 



The coordination of test results in these numerous laboratories has 

 itself become a function of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 

 cooperation with two other American and two European laboratories. 

 To promote uniformity of methods for cotton fiber testing instruments 

 used commercially throughout the world, an International Cotton 

 Calibration Standards Committee was formed in 1956. This, it may 

 be said, was the fruition of ideas earlier germinated but long in matur- 

 ing. More than 20 years before. Dr. Nazir Almiad, then Director of 

 the Technical Laboratories of the Indian Central Cotton Committee 

 at Bombay, and Webb had engaged in a series of letter exchanges, 

 agreeing on the need of international standardization of laboratory 



