Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1965
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1965 TECHNICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS Annual Report for: INSTITUTE FOR BASIC STANDARDS INSTITUTE FOR MATERIALS RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED TECHNOLOGY CENTRAL RADIO PROPAGATION LABORATORY n UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE John T. Connor, Secretary J. Herbert Hollomon, Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS A. V. Astin, Director 1965 Technical Highlights of the National Bureau of Standards Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1965 May 1966 Miscellaneous Publication 279 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, D. C, 20402 — Price 65 cents Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 6-23979 CONTENTS THE DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT _ 1 NBS—An Evolving Institution 1 Management Progress 3 NBS As a Scientific Laboratory 5 INSTITUTE FOR BASIC STANDARDS 11 Physical Quantities, Constants, and Calibration Services 12 International Base L nits 13 Length. Mass. Frequency and Time. Temperature. Luminous Intensity. Electric Current. Mechanical Quantities 19 Force. Pressure. Vacuum. Electrical Quantities—DC 24 Resistance Ratios. Voltage. Current Ratio Standards. New Compensated Current Comparator. Absolute Electrical Meas- urements. AC-DC Transfer Standards. Voltage Ratio Detector for Millivolt Signals. Electrical Quantities—Radio 25 Low-Frequency Calibration. High-Frequency Electrical Stand- ards. High-Frequency Impedance Standards. High-Frequency Calibrations. Microwave Standards. Microwave Calibrations. Photometric and Radiometric Quantities 30 Ionizing Radiations 32 Engineering Measurement and Standards 36 Phyical Properties 39 National Standard Reference Data System 40 Nuclear Data. Atomic and Molecular Data. Solid State Data. Thermodynamics and Transport Data. Chemical Kinetics. Col- loid and Surface Properties. Information Services. Measurement 48 Nuclear Properties. Atomic and Molecular Properties. Solid State Properties. Thermodynamics and Transport Properties. Chemical Kinetics. Colloid and Surface Properties. Mechanical Properties. Radio Plasma. Applied Mathematics 69 Performance Characteristics 71 Technical Assistance to Others - — 72 INSTITUTE FOR MATERIALS RESEARCH 79 Preparation and Characteristics of Materials 80 Preparation. Characterization. Measurements of Properties of Materials 82 Basic Measurements on Basic Materials. Basic Properties of Engi- } neering Materials. Engineering Properties of Engineering Ma- terials. iii Standard Reference Materials 85 Technical Assistance to Others - 86 Technical Information Dissemination 88 INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED TECHNOLOGY 91 Engineering Measurement and Standards - — 91 Building Research. Performance Criteria 93 Data Processing. Building Research. Linking Engineering Measurements and Performance Criteria to Standards 95 Participation in Standardization Groups. Office of Engineering Standards. Dissemination of Technical Information 96 Federal Clearinghouse. Invention and Innovation 100 Textile and Apparel Technology 101 Assistance to Other Agencies 102 CENTRAL RADIO PROPAGATION LABORATORY 105 Immediate Objectives 106 Developments in Fiscal 1965 107 Ionosphere Research. Troposphere Research. Space Environments. Atmosphere Processes. APPENDIXES 115 Organization of the National Bureau of Standards 115 Institute for Basic Standards. Institute for Materials Research. Institute for Applied Technology. Central Radio Propagation Laboratory. Summary of NBS Staff as of June 30, 1965 124 Financial Data for Fiscal 1965 124 Advisory Committees 125 Statutory Visiting Committee Technical Advisory Panels Awards and Honors 131 Education, Training, and University Liaison 132 Publications 134 Publications in the Bureau's Series. Publications in Outside Journals. Patents 202 The General Conference on Weights and Measures 203 iv : I THE DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT NBS — AN EVOLVING INSTITUTION Ever since its establishment by Congress in 1901 the Bureau has been characterized by a dynamic adaptation of its programs to the changing needs of science and industry. The Organic Act of 1901 as revised in 1950 authorized the Bureau to carry out the following basic functions 1. Development and maintenance of the National standards of measure- ment and the provision of means for making measurements consistent with those standards; 2. Determination of physical constants and properties of materials; 3. Development of methods for testing materials, mechanisms, and structures, and the making of such tests as may be necessary, particularly for Government; 4. Cooperation with other governmental agencies and with private orga- nizations in the establishment of standard practices incorporated in codes and specifications; 5. Advisory service to Government agencies on scientific and technical problems; 6. Invention and development of devices to serve special needs of the Government. Subsequent legislation. Executive Orders, and other actions added to these functions and assigned new responsibilities. Although the measurements-standards mission has remained fundamen- tal to the Bureau's programs since its inception, the Bureau has engaged in a wide variety of activities which did not directly stem from its measure- ment responsibilities. Generally, these programs have been undertaken to meet the specialized needs of other Government agencies, or to provide scientific and engineering data for various segments of private industry and commerce which were not in a position, at the time, to maintain re- search activities of their own. 1 The exponential growth of U. S. scientific and technological activity has increased the Bureau's workload in measurement and related fields many fold. At the same time, several new responsibilities have recently been assigned to it. Among these are: • To serve as the focal point within the Federal Government for stim- ulating the application of science and technology to the economy. Apart from fostering a viable national measurement system, this function involves an increased effort in the dissemination of technical information and in the development of engineering measurements and standards, which provide the technical base for performance criteria of goods and services. • To set up and operate the National Standard Reference Data System. NBS has been assigned the task of directing the centralized collection, evaluation, organization, and distribution of standard reference data. • To establish and expand a Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information. Here, the product handled is not data as such but R&D documents, the entire unclassified output of the considerable Federal scientific and technological complex. These documents help keep industry abreast of current technological developments. • To set up and operate a central technical analysis service to conduct cost-benefit studies for our own, and other Commerce bureaus and Federal agencies on request. • To establish a central and major Government resource in the automatic data processing field. Under this heading we will be providing the tech- nical base for standardization in the computer field and developing ways of using computers for new tasks and for using them more efficiently on old tasks. The last two responsibilities were assigned to us during fiscal year 1965. • Our Central Radio Propagation Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado has also been given major additional responsibilities. It has been asked to provide the nation with space environment information and prediction services and to extend its support to the nation's telecommunications indus- try to cover the infra-red and optical portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. On the other hand, this important part of the NBS is scheduled, during fiscal year 1966. to become a key component of a new agency, the Environmental Science Services Administration, created by the President's Reorganization Plan No. 2, which was presented in fiscal year 1965. The Bureau once again has made a major contribution in the creation of a new scientific facility. All of these recently assigned or expanded missions are described in greater detail in Section 3. These assignments are in addition to our traditional measurement re- sponsibilities, which in the meanwhile have grown extensively. There are 2 demands for increased accuracy and range of measurements, as well as for expansion of our various measurement services—calibration, testing, standard materials. Moreover, with the increasing complexity and sophis- tication of the science and engineering associated with measurement and standards there has been a corresponding increase in costs—both of laboratory facilities and equipment and of professional manpower. The Nation s scientific and technical capability depends in large part on the capability of our measurement system. In a literal sense, measurement is the pacemaker of progress. In this Age of Science and Technology, more and more of our activities depend upon the work of the scientist and the engineer. This applies to economic activities no less than to the glam- orous advances in space and defense programs. Other nations of the world are harnessing the power of science and technology. If we are to maintain our world position we will have to expand our science and technology, and if we are to do that, we must have a national measurement system that unleashes our full potential for tech- nological growth. MANAGEMENT PROGRESS Maintaining a proper balance between our resources and our respon- sibilities has been particularly crucial this past year because of the coin- cidence of new or added responsibilities