1. Research and technical services, $4,200,000

This additional appropriation would finance the following actions:

(a) Recruitment of 151 additional staff members to initiate or accelerate urgently needed research tasks. Because they cannot be employed immediately, this will increase the standards programs in 1962 by 80 man-years of technical effort. ($1.6 million.)

(b) Diversion of 30 man-years of effort from lower priority work for other agencies to high priority measurement standards programs. ($0.5 million.)

(c) Purchasing scientific equipment needed for the accelerated and expanded programs. ($1.3 million.)

(d) Placing research and development contracts with other organizations having specialized competence to assist on particular standards and measurement problems. ($0.8 million.)

2. Plant and facilities, $1,500,000

The most critical area of unmet standards needs is the electrical standards at radio and microwave frequencies. In order to provide for the large-scale expansion required to meet these needs, additional facilities will also be required. The proposed budget includes $720,000 for the construction of a building that will provide some laboratory space in the relatively near future and $780,000 for the design of a large laboratory for the permanent housing of the expanded radio standards program.

RESEARCH AND TECHNICAL SERVICES APPROPRIATION

SUMMARY OF ESTIMATES BY OBJECT OF EXPENDITURE

All obligations incurred for the various programs of the Bureau are initially incurred in the working capital fund. This fund is subsequently reimbursed from the appropriate supporting funds: direct appropriations, funds from other agencies, and reimbursements from private sources. Thus, the appropriations are charged only with "other contractual services." An estimated distribution of these charges by object of expenditure is presented below:

"Research and technical services" appropriation, 1962-Summary of estimates by

1 The Bureau overhead positions indicated represent the pro rata share of central administrative and service activities supported by the "Research and technical services" appropriation. The financing for these positions is included in the amounts for each division since these overhead costs are charged to the various programs in proportion to the labor costs in the programs. An increase of 10 bureau overhead positions will be required to meet anticipated demands for additional central services in the areas of procurement, shops and plant. The remainder of the increase in average number of positions for Bureau overhead reflects the fact that the "Research and technical services" appropriation will support a larger share of the overhead costs.

RESEARCH AND TECHNICAL SERVICES-SUPPLEMENTAL ESTIMATE, 1962

A supplemental appropriation of $4.2 million is urgently required in order to accelerate the efforts of the National Bureau of Standards to respond to the greatly increased demand for improved calibration and measurement services for industry, defense agencies and their contractors, and the space program. Intensive studies in recent months of the needs for these services and the Bureau's ability to respond to the needs have indicated that the Kelly Committee recommendation that the standards and measurements program be doubled is probably an understatement of the total need. The Bureau must therefore look to an orderly and planned expansion of effort of significant proportions for a number of years. It is extremely important, moreover, that the initial stages of that expansion be accelerated. The proposed supplemental appropriation is therefore in the nature of emergency action to take prompt steps to deal with critical and urgent problems.

The plans for a sustained effort to achieve a major expansion of the National Bureau of Standards over the next several years are important elements in the President's program to accelerate economic growth, improve our foreign trade position, strengthen our national defenses, and accentuate our position of international scientific and technological leadership. The initial stage of NBS expansion, as reflected in this supplemental budget request, has a critical and fundamental relationship to the accelerated program for space technology outlined by the President in his second state of the Union message to the Congress on May 25. Before that acceleration, the space program had generated pressing demands upon the National Bureau of Standards-demands that NBS is not adequately staffed to meet. The need to strengthen the NBS ability to contribute its unique talents to such programs is therefore doubly urgent when the space program is to be speeded up.

The President's challenge to the Nation was expressed in the following terms: "This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, material, and facilities, and possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization, and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. It means we cannot afford undue work stoppages, inflated costs of material or talent, wasteful interagency rivalries, or a high turnover of key personnel."

"New objectives and new money cannot solve these problems. They could, in fact, aggravate them further-unless every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant gives his personal pledge that this Nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space."

These words have particularly important application to the role of the National Bureau of Standards as the supplier of national leadership in the physical measurement technology that is so important to all advanced scientific and engineering programs.

THE NEED FOR INCREASED STANDARDS RESEARCH

Many of our major national programs-military defense, exploration of outer space, peaceful and military uses of atomic energy, and civil aviation safety, for example-are dependent upon the prompt application of scientific discoveries to achieve technological advances. By their nature these programs have created major demands upon the National Bureau of Standards: for radically improved measurement techniques; for standards of measurement in new fields, at extended ranges, with greatly increased precision and accuracy, and usable in new environments; for precise data on fundamental physical constants and basic properties of matter.

The Federal Government is expending huge sums of money in these technologically oriented major national programs: more than $1 billion for the civilian space program, billions for defense production and defense research and development, hundreds of millions for atomic energy programs, and many millions for civil aviation research and equipment.

A cursory review of the nature of these programs and their mode of operation is enough to remove any doubts that they have been severely handicapped by an inadequate effort in those fields in which only NBS can serve and in those fields in which NBS can best serve. The lack of adequate standards and measurement techniques has compelled overdesign of components of technological devices to

assure reliability, excessive repetitive testing in lieu of accurate measurement of performance characteristics, and overproduction of components to compensate for inadequate production line measurements. Similarly, the lack of precise data on the fundamental properties of matter has compelled trial-and-error development of costly devices instead of engineering design based on scientific information.

The net result has been that many major national programs have been slower, less productive, less efficient, and much more costly than they would have been had they received the information and measurement competence that only NBS can generate. The agencies involved in these programs have frequently expressed their concern over these handicaps. The major industrial firms involved in these programs have described their problems and expressed their concern through their own association, the Aerospace Industries Association.

There has often been a ready recognition that technologically oriented programs create new demands upon the National Bureau of Standards, demands arising at both the experimental and the production stages of the programs. But two contradictory assumptions have seemed to characterize the planning of the programs. On the one hand, major new programs are planned, budgeted, and initiated with the tacit assumption that NBS will be able to provide radically new or improved standards services when they will be needed by the new programs. In other cases, past experience has led the program planners to assume that NBS will be unable to obtain the appropriations for the research and development effort necessary to provide the information or measurement competence required for efficient conduct of the new programs. In either case, large sums are expended elsewhere for lack of NBS effort that would cost a fraction of those sums.

While these have been costly and uneconomical expenditures, they should not be viewed as wasteful expenditures. In the context of their particular program requirements and in the absence of adequate NBS assistance, they were undoubtedly necessary. But the circumstances that made them necessary should not be assumed to be unavoidable in the future. The steps necessary to preclude the recurrence or continuation of such circumstances should be carefully considered. In this regard it is instructive to review two particular features of this situation, one concerning national budgetary policies and the other concerning the nature of the NBS role in modern science.

1. The budgetary policies which have restricted the ability of NBS to meet the needs of modern technology are themselves the resultants of the huge costs of the major national programs that rely upon and use modern technology, but a part of those huge costs can be attributed to the inadequacies of the NBS programs. Within the necessary limitations of the total Federal budget, the large expenditures for military defense and the space program have been a major factor in limiting the amount that can be budgeted for civilian activities. Yet, a minuscule fraction of those expenditures would permit an NBS program level that could produce far-reaching results in reducing the cost and accelerating the success of the major national programs.

2. NBS programs have a particularly far-reaching effect because individual NBS programs affect numerous other areas of research, development, production, and maintenance. An improved measurement standard or a new measurement technique may, for example, be of value to (1) scientists engaged in basic or applied research in numerous fields; (2) scientists and engineers engaged in development of missiles, antimissile devices, nuclear reactors, jet engines, space vehicles, and communication, guidance, or tracking systems; (3) engineers engaged in production, quality control, and testing of such devices or components thereof; and (4) technicians concerned with maintenance of such devices in good operating condition. Such an improved standard or measurement technique can, therefore, reduce duplicative and unproductive effort and accelerate technological progress în numerous fields.

The discussion thus far has referred to those cases where expensive makeshift approaches have substituted for adequate NBS services. In many cases, and in an increasing number as times goes on, this type of solution is not possible. The fact is that improved measurement capabilities are becoming indispensable to the reliability of complex devices such as missiles, rockets, space vehicles, electronic gear, etc. A satellite-launching rocket, for example, contains thousands of individual parts each of which must operate perfectly. The careful testing