Though Maj. (now colonel) Williamson was formally in charge of this emergency work, he requisitioned the masks from the Bureau of Mines, which took entire charge of the first contract. Following this, on August 31, 1917, the Gas Defense Service of the Surgeon General's Department was established by official order, and Mr. Dewey, who had been working as a volunteer in the Bureau of Mines, was commissioned major and put in charge.
The next step was to prepare for the permanent development and manufacture of gas masks. Contracts were let for the manufacture of 320,000 component parts of masks as we then knew them, and a price was fixed for the assembling of the entire original requirement of 1,100,000 masks. The assembling contract went to the Hero Manufacturing Co., of Philadelphia, which remained until the end of the war the sole private contractor assembling our gas masks.
The spirit of cooperation and desire to serve the Government was evident from the start. The B. F. Goodrich Co. had been the only producers of the rubber parts of the first 25,000 masks. In this original contract it had gained valuable technical and cost knowledge; but in order that the Government might not be limited to one source of supply for such parts, the Goodrich Co. voluntarily imparted to the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and to the United States Rubber Co. the information that would enable them to bid intelligently for portions of the work. This was a distinct departure from the usual practice in competitive industry.
All during the fall of 1917 and early winter of 1917-18 the development of the mask continued, the Government experts working hand in hand with private contractors. Because of the newness of this sort of manufacture and because of the wide variety of unusual articles required, entailing in some instances the actual creation of hitherto unknown commodities, the Government at all times was required to act as the procurer of raw materials for the masks. In this period of development America designed her own typical mask—a gradual evolution, but one which, though based on the British design, arrived at a perfection which had been unknown in warfare before.
The triplex glass used in the eyepieces was a patented commodity produced only in one small factory in Philadelphia. It was necessary to expand the facilities for the production of this necessary material. Meanwhile some of the men engaged in the work had improved the eyepiece by providing it with an aluminum mounting. But this very improvement brought embarrassment to the work, since the Akron rubber contracts had provided for eyepieces inserted in the fabric itself, and to apply the aluminum frame brought about a radical change in the manufacturing methods at the rubber factories.
There were also many other problems that had to be solved before our authorities were satisfied to go ahead in quantity production. There was the matter of rubberizing the face-piece fabric, for instance. Two methods of rubberizing cloth were in use. The first method was to roll out a thin sheet of rubber and then press it into the cloth fabric by running the whole thing under heavy rollers. This was known as the calender method. The other method, called the spreader method, was more intricate. In this process the sailcloth, tightly stretched, was carried around a roller. Above the roller a few thousandths of an inch was a knife blade extending from edge to edge. The rubber compound in liquid form was then fed upon the roller in such manner that a thin film of it pressed under the knife blade and upon the cloth on the roller. The rubberizing method finally adopted was a combination of the calender and spreader methods. The rubber was applied green to the cloth. The curing process thereafter was highly important. If the curing process were too short, the rubber would be sticky and would pull off the sailcloth too easily. If the rubber were over-cured, it would crack and split.
Nothing short of absolute perfection in every part would do, since the slightest imperfection anywhere was likely to cost a man his life. Consequently we installed at the various producing plants not only 100 per cent inspection, but we constructed laboratories for putting the materials through the most elaborate and exhaustive sorts of control tests, and then reinspected the parts at the assembly plants, both before and after the assembly.
CHEMICAL DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT OF LONG ISLAND LABORATORY, GAS DEFENSE DIVISION, SHOWING INTERMITTENT FLOW CANISTER TESTING MACHINE.