The optical industry in this country before the war was in the hands of a few firms. Several of these were under German influence, and one firm was directly affiliated with the Carl Zeiss Works, of Jena, Germany; the workmen were largely Germans or of German origin; the kinds and design of apparatus produced were for the most part essentially European in character; optical glass was procured entirely from abroad and chiefly from Germany.
It was easier and cheaper for manufacturers to order glass from abroad than to develop its manufacture in this country. Educational and research institutions obtained a large part of their equipment from Germany and offered no special inducement for American manufacturers to provide such apparatus. Duty-free importation favored and encouraged this dependence on Germany for scientific apparatus.
With our entrance in the war the European sources of supply for optical glass and optical instruments were cut off abruptly and we were brought face to face with the problem of furnishing these items to the Army and Navy for use in the field. Prior to 1917 only three private manufacturers in the United States had built fire-control apparatus in any quantity for the Government. The Bausch & Lomb Optical Co., Rochester, N. Y., had made range finders and field glasses for the Artillery and Infantry, and gun sights, range finders, and spy glasses and field glasses for the Navy; the Keuffel & Esser Co., Hoboken, N. J., had produced some fire-control equipment for the Navy; the Warner & Swasey Co., Cleveland, Ohio, with J. A. Brashear, Pittsburgh, Pa., had furnished depression-position finders, azimuth instruments, and telescopic musket sights to the Army. The only other source of supply in this country had been the Frankford Arsenal.
Prior to 1917 the largest order for fire-control equipment which our Army had ever placed in a single year amounted to $1,202,000. The total orders for such instruments placed by the Ordnance Department alone during the 19 months of war exceeded $50,000,000, while the total orders for fire-control apparatus placed by the Army and Navy exceeded $100,000,000.
To meet the situation, existing facilities had to be increased, new facilities developed, and other, allied, industries converted to the production of fire-control material.
Quantity production had to be secured through the assembling of standardized parts of instruments which heretofore had either never been built in this country or only in a small, experimental way. A large part of the work had of necessity to be done by machines operated by relatively unskilled labor. The manufacturing tolerances had to be nicely adjusted between the different parts of each instrument, so that wherever less precise work would answer the purpose the production methods were arranged accordingly. Only by a careful coordination of design, factory operations, and field performance could quantity production of the desired quality be obtained in a short time. Speed of production meant everything if our troops in the field were to be equipped with the necessary fire-control apparatus and thus enabled to meet the enemy on even approximately equal terms.
To accomplish this object a competent personnel within the Army had to be organized and developed; the Army requirements had to be carefully scrutinized and coordinated with reference to relative urgency; manufacturers had to be encouraged to undertake new tasks and to be impressed with the necessity for whole-hearted cooperation and with the importance of their part in the war; raw materials had to be secured and their transportation assured. These and other factors were faced and overcome.
Although American fire-control instruments did not reach the front in as large numbers as were wanted, great quantities were under way, and we had attained in the manufacturing program a basic stage of progress which would have cared for all of our needs in the spring and summer of 1919. Incidentally there has been developed in this country a manufacturing capacity for precision optical and instrument work, which, if desired, will render us independent of foreign markets. At the present time there exists in this country a trained personnel and adequate organization for the production of precision optical instruments greatly in excess of the needs of the country. One of the problems which we now have to consider is the conversion of this development brought about by war-time conditions into channels of peace-time activity.