Office of Technical Services of the Department of Commerce

DEC 01, 1951

The Commerce Department is obliged by law to accumulate technical information of all sorts and to make it available to the public. Its Office of Technical Services has been assigned these responsibilities. A brief picture of the OTS in action is provided in the following article.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3067100

Dwight E. Gray

Is my invention for disintegrating army tanks at several hundred yards any good? What is the best adhesive to use in laminating leather to glass when the product is to be used in a warm, humid climate? What technical reports are available on the refractive indices of transparent plastics? These particular queries, as far as I know, are imaginary, but they serve to illustrate the kinds of questions to which J. Horace Taxpayer can obtain answers from the Office of Technical Services (OTS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Before discussing these services separately, let us look briefly at the genealogy and present organization of the OTS.

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Dwight E. Gray, Library of Congress.