cult to determine whether a standard even exists. It is the intent of this legislation to improve these several important aspects of communication in the standards field and thus reduce the difficulties of using standards effectively.

In summary, the role and importance of standards in domestic commerce is accepted by American industry. The national standards development activities function reasonably well. On the other hand, support of international standards activities by American industry is spotty. The ramifications of inadequate United States participating in international standardization activities are of sufficient importance nationally that stimulation and cooperation by the Federal Government is warranted.

Effective use of standards is hampered by lack of knowledge concerning them. This legislation will improve information dissemination to businessmen, users, and the general public. This activity is clearly justified in light of the tens of thousands of standards in existence that are not even indexed or organized by content.

Mr. Chairman, it is our intent to rely to the fullest extent possible on the voluntary standards bodies and organizations in carrying out the purpose of the legislation. Standards often are the norms by which technology enters commerce. They reflect common interest and should reflect a sound public interest through involvement of all concerned-producers, distributors, users, consumers, and government. We urge the subcommittee to act favorably on this bill which would strengthen this standards process.

Mr. ROUSH. Thank you, Dr. Hollomon, for your very comprehensive statement.

Chairman Miller, do you have any questions?

Chairman MILLER. I think Dr. Hollomon has covered the field very well. The need for this bill demonstrates again the process of coming into the technological age where these changes are taking place.

I remember years ago when I was in the California Legislature, we were concerned with the standards that were used in the processing and the selling of fresh fruits and agricultural products. In one part of the State we had one standard and in another part of the State we had another standard. When you bought a lug of peaches in northern California, it weighed so much. If you bought a lug of peaches in southern California it cost so much; and we used "lug" where bushels were the usual measure on the east coast. The legislature had to take cognizance of it and establish standards throughout the State, and I think this is what is taking place here today.

You see in Europe today a resurgence, a determination to fight for business; we can't do business with them unless we have a measure that they understand and we understand, a common measure of doing business. This is part of the necessity for this bill.

Dr. HOLLOMON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ROUSH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Conable?

Mr. CONABLE. Dr. Hollomon, how does this proposal square with our problems relating to the metric system?

Dr. HOLLOMON. Let's take a specific case of household refrigerators, for example. We are excluded without modification of our products in European markets. Now, whether or not we go metric in that case,

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of course, is not applicable because these are electrical standards which are expressed in metric values.

There are two ways to approach this problem. One is that you decide on what the measures are and then allow each country to specify how he measures it in his own system.

Let's take another case; the most celebrated case in the standardization business having to do with it-the screw thread case. The American screw thread based on a certain number of turns per inch is the most standard screw thread. However, in Europe, it is specified in metric terms, but an agreement has been made to a large degree to use the conventional system as the means of specifying the number of turns per inch, so it is not necessary to insist on one measurement system or another to agree on what the standard would be.

Let's take the case of standardization of shipping packages. In Europe this is growing at a great rate, particularly in France, to get modularity so when you ship boxes you use the same size pallets and so forth. It is growing in this country in the container field. Here if they insist as they would in this case that they be metric units, we can adapt to that, except that we would specify the shipping package in inches or feet.

If the Europeans are on the metric system and we are not, or our products do not dominate the market for some reason or we can't persuade them otherwise, it may mean that the actual device has to be made in unit sizes related to the metric system, but this would have to be negotiated out.

What I am saying is that if we were on a metric system-not that we should be it would give us an improved opportunity in making standards more compatible.

Mr. CONABLE. It would be easier to arrive at standards.

Dr. HOLLOMON. Right.

Mr. CONABLE. On page 5 you cite the failure of the canned goods manufacturers to participate.

Dr. HOLLOMON. Yes.

Mr. CONABLE. Did the Commerce Department study why the canned goods manufacturers did not participate?

Dr. HOLLOMON. One of the problems is finding the appropriate representatives and being able to support them in the activity. This would be my guess.

Mr. CONABLE. You stated that as an example of a bad failure, and I am sure there must have been some reason they didn't do it. We do have lots of canned goods producers associations of one sort or another.

Dr. HOLLOMON. Yes.

Mr. CONABLE. We are a food exporting country.

Dr. HOLLOMON. The information I have with me indicates that the ASA, the then ASA, asked the can manufacturing institute, one of the trade associations, to fund and support and develop our participation in this field. They were not able to do so either for financial or other reasons.

Mr. CONABLE. Do you conceive the information gathering part of this legislation to be perhaps its most important aspect?

Dr. HOLLOMON. No, sir, I don't. I think both are important. They are related in a very definite way, of course. In order to be able to deal with the problem of taking products to a foreign market, one

of the things an American manufacturer would like to know is what standards exist for that product. If you are a large company with foreign affilitates all over the world, this is not a difficult task. If you are a relatively small company exporting from this country, it is a very difficult task to find out exactly what standards apply; so certainly the information activity relates to the international standardization problem.

Therefore, I would say that the most important thing we should do is to get at the problem of assisting, developing, and supporting our international standardization activity, but in order to do that, one of the requirements is to have the information available to our people. Now, there is a second part of the information problem which is equally important. There is a vast number of Federal standards issued by the Federal Government. Our present guess is somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000. Frequently, the Federal Government issues a standard when there is already an industry standard in use that they could have used, and they make it slightly different and this requires the producer to produce two kinds of products, one for the regular civilian market and one for the Federal market or conversely. There may be a Federal use for clothing for the military and for which people are trying to develop a voluntary standard and they don't know that the Federal standard exists.

We had a study relating to this legislation 2 years ago. We put together a private committee and they couldn't find out how many standardization bodies there are in the United States and how many standards that were available and what they were. This makes it very difficult for a manufacturer to determine how to proceed.

Mr. CONABLE. One other question. This activity would be within the Commerce Department? This work would be done by the Bureau of Standards?

Dr. HOLLOMAN. I think the majority of the activity would be carried out by the Bureau of Standards.

Mr. CONABLE. The Bureau of Standards is already doing work in this field, apparently.

Dr. HOLLOMAN. They are. The Bureau of Standards participates in activities when the Government is involved in setting standards. We are involved in some cases on a government-to-government kind of negotiation.

Secondly, the Bureau of Standards technical people participate to a large degree in committees that make voluntary standards in this country. They represent a neutral interest, but we do not support through funds the international activities of the country except now and then sending a person abroad to help. We frequently are faced with the former ASA coming and finding no one to represent the United States in one of these international bodies and sometimes we can arrange to have an expert who does that.

Mr. CONABLE. Would you tell us what Dr. Astin is doing in Czechoslovakia?

Dr. HOLLOMON. At the moment he is meeting with a government standardization body having to do particularly with the business of the basic standards upon which all these measurements are based; that is, the meter, the foot, and so forth.

Mr. CONABLE. Yes, I see. That is all.

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Hollomon, regarding your remarks about standards development within Government, about 15 years ago we had quite a go-around in Washington when a committee headed by Congressman Hébert of the Armed Services Committee held what was popularly known and written about as the Chamber of Horrors. It was shortly after unification, when they brought in certain items of common interest used by the three military departments of the Defense Department. A light bulb that the Army used was carried under one nomenclature, maybe slightly different than one that the Navy used, and the Air Force came in with a third. Such common items as blankets were involved. It took a whole paragraph to describe a tenpenny nail, but we had the same nails described by different numbers. As a result of this study, the Defense Department has since pretty well standardized all items of common usage, and at a savings of millions of dollars to the Government. I don't think the Armed Services Committee is very proud of the fact that it had to force the Defense Department to do this, but it did it in a very dramatic way.

Isn't this what exists with other branches of the Government?

Dr. HOLLOMON. Yes. We have the GSA, which does much of the purchasing, and there are other Government agencies which have special functions. What we would attempt to do is not force the standardization, but to provide knowledge to everyone of what everyone else's standards are. What a man entering a new business wants to know is what standards do my products have to meet and if he has to go to a dozen different places to find this out, it puts him at a great disadvantage. The Federal Government writes standards when standards already exist which are perfectly appropriate. If you don't know if one exists, that puts you in the position of having to develop your own.

Mr. ROUSH. Dr. Hollomon, doesn't the Department of Commerce, particularly the National Bureau of Standards, have the authority now to promote participation in these international meetings so as to deal effectively with the problem of standardization? Don't you have the authority now to set up a clearinghouse? In other words, why is it that we need new legislation?

Dr. HOLLOMON. The National Bureau of Standards has generic authority to cooperate with other Government agencies and with private organizations in the establishment of standard practices incorporated in codes and specifications. We do not have the authority to give grants which we asked for in this legislation, and the reason we asked for the grant authority is that we believe that the situation with respect to international standardization is one in which the responsibil ity should lie with those institutions who take that responsibility; that is, such as the USASI, and they should determine what can de done with it. We believe it is not a question of the Government providing a service, but supporting an internationally oriented organization.

Secondly, while we have a clearinghouse responsibility we have limited our clearinghouse activities to Federal technical documents or translations of foreign documents, not standards.

Mr. ROUSH. With regard to our participation in many of these international standards conferences, isn't this a function or activity which the Bureau of Standards could perhaps best perform?

Dr. HOLLOMON. Some of its technical people ought to be involved in the participation, in voluntary standards operation and in some cases being the representative of the United States in the international activities where we have the technical competence. We do in fact furnish a number of people in the secretariats of these particular foreign operations. We furnish them, however, to assist in the voluntary process that takes place outside the Government.

Now, there are many cases we just don't have the expertise, or the competence to participate.

A very real difference exists in this country than in any other country in the world. Most every country has an agency or a quasi-government agency that does this job. In Germany, as I remember, it is a government agency essentially that does this.

We have chosen another route. We have chosen the route that the job will be done privately. The support that the Government has given to this private operation has to date wholly been in furnishing people who will serve in committees.

Mr. ROUSH. Then the United States is unique?

Dr. HOLLOMON. We are so far as I can tell, the only country in the world that operates this way.

Mr. ROUSH. Has this uniqueness worked to our detriment?

Dr. HOLLOMON. It has in a sense worked to our detriment because of two things. One is that the other countries see in international standardization a general public interest and have supported it with public funds. I believe that in part has been the reason why we have not participated to the degree which is appropriate.

Secondly, their government operations is much more closely tied to their trade policy. In other words, what standards they set as government agencies is much more closely attuned to what they want to sell and where they are going to put their emphasis.

Mr. CONABLE. Do you mean you don't initiate at all? You send people from the Commerce Department or from the Bureau of Standards to these meetings only if someone else starts the process? You don't call people together and say we ought to get in this sort of deal?

Dr. HOLLOMON. No. We separate two different things. We are talking about harmonizing existing standards of various countries. This is done by the initiative of USASI, which is a member of the international standardization organization, not by government initiative. We may take initiative government to government on some trade barrier and we may send our technical people to such a process. The private initiative is taken by the voluntary standardization activity of this country. If we see a problem and it isn't being done we try through the ASA to get it done, but it is not the National Bureau of Standards' direct responsibility by law.

Mr. ANDERSON. Doctor, I can see how this would work in a communications sense. You mentioned that none of the international standardization organizations were formed by virtue of the treaty organizations.

Dr. HOLLOMON. That is right.

Mr. ANDERSON. The U.N. is not involved in this matter?

Dr. HOLLOMON. I think the ISO is loosely affiliated. I don't believe there is any formal connection with ISO. I don't believe that is the