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

CURTAILMENT BY LIMITATION OF FUNDS 345
graphic emulsions, on the other hand, is largely a secret and empiri-
cal art known to relatively few. There is probably room for ten
times more improvement in making emulsions than in making
lenses.
That year Carroll and Hubbard had made over 400 batches of emulsion.
Under more exact controls, they were turning out emulsions with superior
keeping qualities, but the secret of emulsion sensitivity still eluded them.138
The breakthrough came 2 years later, and their first paper, on
the sensitization of photographic emulsions by colloidal materials.139
In 1933 Carroll and Hubbard published their seventeenth report on
the mechanism of photographic hypersensitivity, and their preparation of
new "grainless" emulsions.14° Not only were these emulsions superior to the
best commercially available, but disclosure by the Bureau of the method of
their preparation threatened to make public vital trade secrets. It was the
time of the great depression, and the advisory committees surveying Bureau
research and mindful of recent complaints of Government interference with
private industry had to recommend retrenchments. The emulsion project
was among the first to be terminated in the interest of economy.141
The emulsion work was one of seven investigations which the Visit-
ing Committee specifically "questioned whether the Bureau ought to con-
tinue": (1) its research in heavy hydrogen, (2) its work on dental cements
and alloys, (3) distinctly industrial problems like temperature measurements
in the pouring of cast iron, (4) ignition phenomena and flame propagation in
internal combustion engines, (5) development of large-scale production
methods for levulose, (6) design of a telephoto astronomical objective, and
(7) development of special photographic developers.142
The precise areas of industrial research terminated or curtailed under
the pressure of economy are difficult to identify or document, since they
NBS Annual Report 1926, p. 34.
119RP20 (1928).
"°NBS Annual Report 1933, p. 52. The key paper in the group was RP447, "The photo-
graphic emulsion: analysis for nonhalide silver and soluble bromide" (1932).
Dr. Briggs' outline of the project and unavailing efforts to interest the Carnegie Insti-
tution of Washington in its support appear in letter, Sept. 7, 1933 (NBS Box 361, IPS).
Subsequent photographic research at the Bureau was limited to work on the international
standardization of photosensitometric methods and, in cooperation with the ASA, prepara-
tion of specifications for films and plates. See NBS Annual Report 1940, p. 71.
N0TE.—-In 1934 Burt Carroll and his assistant, Charles M. Kretchman, went to Eastman
Kodak. Hubbard remained at the Bureau.
" Minutes of meeting of the Visiting Committee, Aug. 23, 1934 (NARG 40,67009/5).