Just before the armistice was signed, the American Expeditionary Forces indicated that they would require 50,000 miles of outpost wire every month, beginning in January, 1919. This requirement had already been fully anticipated, since the American manufacturers had set for themselves a maximum production of 68,000 miles per month by August, 1919.
To secure this production every wire mill in the United States worked 24 hours per day. When the production was at its height, inquiries came from the allied governments, indicating that they would call on American wire makers for a quantity of wire equal to what the latter were already producing for the American Expeditionary Forces. In other words, this proposition called for the doubling of a production which had already attained great size. Yet, had the fighting continued, there is every reason to believe that the industry would have risen to the demand.
The production of outpost wire was an intricate operation. To fill the demand for 50,000 miles of outpost wire a month called for 300,000 miles of steel strand and 400,000 miles of bronze strand every month. The steel strand had to be given repeated heat treatments before it had acquired the necessary tensile strength.
ELECTRIC BATTERIES.
The American Expeditionary Forces consumed great quantities of electric batteries, the familiar dry battery of commerce being most used. Toward the end of the fighting arrangements were being made to establish in France a plant at which dry batteries would be assembled by French labor, utilizing parts made in America. The necessary apparatus and materials for the first operation had reached France prior to the armistice, but the plant was not in production at that time.
Storage-battery requirements of the American Expeditionary Forces were heavy and exacting. The storage battery was the only practicable source of electrical energy for the operation of small portable radio outfits. Field conditions required a storage battery that would not spill its contents, with a jar not easily broken, the whole equipment being as light as possible. A rubber composition jar was finally adopted.
The chief reliance of the American Expeditionary Forces was in storage batteries of European manufacture, which were to be used until American production got underway. When by the summer of 1918 America had perfected her own designs of radio equipment, the Signal Corps took up the matter of storage batteries for radio and decided upon types. This was in July, 1918. A conference of battery manufacturers was called and the orders were allocated among practically all the storage-battery plants in the United States that were in a position to undertake quantity production. The end of hostilities stopped this production on the eve of heavy deliveries.
FIELD GLASSES.
When the war began, the Signal Corps had the duty of providing field glasses for all branches of the Army, issuing them to noncommissioned officers and selling them at cost to commissioned officers engaged in combat. The first estimates showed that these glasses would be needed by the tens of thousands, whereas the manufacturing facilities in the United States had turned them out merely by the hundreds.