202 OCEANOGRAPHY 1961 — PHASE 3 



Mr. Miller. Well, lias the Society of Exploration Geophysicists 

 tried to establish standards? 



Dr. Blake. They have in certain fields. I will not say they have 

 been completely successful; but at least they do recognize the need 

 for this, and there is an effort in that direction. 



Mr. Miller. I have in mind the fact that in the early days of the 

 automobile industry, every inanuf acturer adopted his ov^na standards. 

 There was one company that had all its bolts built with the nuts with 

 a left-hand twist on them, in the hopes that when you had to get a 

 replacement you would be told that this is the only one that would 

 fit. And they tried to maintain a monopoly. They soon gave that up. 



And then the Society of Automotive Engineers itself established 

 standards that are accepted. I think this is true in several other 

 industries. 



Dr. Blake. A parallel example in seismology, for example, might 

 be the standardization of the types of magnetic tapes that are used for 

 recording data. When we started out in this field about 10 years ago, 

 there were perhaps half a dozen different types of tapes in use. The 

 situation that resulted soon became intolerable to the industry, and 

 we are now making efforts to standardize on not more than two dif- 

 ferent kinds of tape. 



Mr. DiNGELL. If the gentleman will yield very briefly: With re- 

 gard to this business of a national data center, and as provided in 

 the bill before the committee, H.R. 42Y6, can you conceive of another 

 organization within the Federal Government or outside the Federal 

 Government which could do this precise work as well as the organi- 

 zation that is contemplated in 4276 ? 



Dr. Blake. I am not familiar with all the organizations that exist 

 in Government that might do this. But I would certainly agree that 

 some such centralized agency is needed. And I do not know of any 

 existing at the present time. That may be because I do not know of 

 all the agencies that exist in the Government. 



Mr. DiNGELL. Are you aware of any work that the Bureau of Stand- 

 ards or the Department of Commerce has done in this field ? 



Dr. Blake. Not in this particular area, no. 



Mr. DiNGELL. Thank you very much. 



Mr. Pellt. Do you happen to know, Dr. Blake, whether private 

 industry, such as your own research corporation, was consulted, either 

 prior to or for an evaluation after the Texas tower disaster? 



Dr. Blake. I am not familiar with all the details. But I mentioned 

 this wave forces I program. The Navy did participate in that. When 

 we started the wave forces II, that blue booklet T showed you was 

 a proposal for that program, which was submitted to the Navy as 

 well as other oil companies. 



This proposal is dated December 15, 1958. 



Initially, the Navy declined to participate in this program. Very 

 recently, I imderstand that fhQj have come back and indicated, now, 

 that they do have a strong interest in participating in the program. 



Mr. Pelly. You have said that on the basis of your findings you 

 found your owncompany was probably using design factors of unnec- 

 essary strength in engineering, where some were maybe a little delin- 

 quent. On the basis of the information that you developed, would it 



