Third in a series on the first years of the national bureau of standards: stratton builds a laboratory

This article is the third in a series of four that describes the establishment of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The first article featured the work of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, America´s first metrologist, who initiated the nation´s first coastal survey and a coherent system of weights and measures. The second article discussed the Convention of the Meter and the creation of the National Bureau of Standards by Public Law 56-177 on 3 March 1901. In this article, we follow the remarkable success of Samuel Stratton in building an effective and far-reaching standards laboratory. This article follows the outstanding personnel at the NBS and their work from 1901-1904, including the immediate and effective NBS response to the great Baltimore fire of 1904.