EVEN THE WAVES ARE STANDARDISED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 256, 19 May 1944, Page 12

EVEN THE WAVES ARE STANDARDISED

"The Listener’? Learns About A Trade-emark:

[RE sign which we reproduce here may soon become familiar to the New Zealander as an indication that the article or commodity carrying it has fulfilled certain requirements which have been defined by the New Zealand Standards Institute. Ht has atready appeared on school Stationery, and manufacturers of some other goods have applied tor it, too. It is.the symbol of a development which has been found to be of great importance in other countries in the speeding up and multiplication of war industries, and which could have some significance in New Zealand peacetime economy.

N New Zealand, as in other countries, an institute was founded some years ago to arrange for standardisation of engineering materials and practices, and the idea very quickly spread to other phases of industry, for reasons which are obvious to anyone who has moved from one house to another and found it necessary to ,buy new plugs for the radio, the toaster, the iron, and the heater. The Standards Institute quickly became recognised by the Government as a

national necessity, and now it operates as a division of the Department of Industries and Commerce, without power as yet to enforce standards, but with authority to make reports and. recommendations that could become law if the Government found them necessary. In the last few weeks the Institute has released for the first time a standard mark (reproduced on this page) which will probably become familiar to the buyer of retail goods before many months have gone by. The Listener decided to call on the secretary (L. J. McDonald) to find out what is involved in the

spreading of the Institute’s activity, and what meaning the new mark will have for the purchaser of an article bearing it. "Look at the Waves" It is putting it tamely to say that Mr. McDonald believes in the future of standardisation. He will argue its possibilities; its "far-reaching implications," with a gleam in his eye, and dispose of popular misconceptions about it with ready examples. "What is a dictionary but a standard specification for language so that words will mean the same to everyone?" he asks. "And think of the standardisations in Nature. Look at the waves." "But standardisation doesn’t mean sameness," he says. "It doesn’t mean uniformity in aesthetic values, where everybody wants to preserve individuality. Standardised furniture, for example, doesn’t mean the same chairs for everyone. It simply means that certain basic universal factors in materials used and methods of manufacture, can be outlined by a committee representing the trade and other interested parties, and agreed to as being essential to an acceptable product, and then the Standard mark can be fixed and the buyer will know what he’s getting. "Then women’s hats. You might imagine they’d be the last thing to standardise. But it’s a question of quality (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) not design. It would be possible to classify them on the basis of raw materials and sound manufacture, and to list preferences with regard to colourfastness, rain-resistance, stitching, and so on, and a woman would then know what she was getting. Measurement of Quality "Take cloth. What is the use of knowing you’re getting a true yard if you’ve got no protection on the matter of quality, as you have in the matter of Weights and Measures? With the new synthetics coming on the market a set of authorised standards will become all the more necessary, because there is no limit to the variations that can occur in quality, strength, and weight of fibre, and so on, whereas there were limits in the case of natural fibres, and a woman could tell good from bad. "Prices at present are not necessarily an indication to value, as you know. If a draper has a couple of lengths of cloth, almost the same, to all appearances, and

he marks one a. few shillings higher than the other, your wife may be disposed to trust him and prefer the more expensive one. If he changes the tickets round, she may still prefer the higher price. With standard marks and well defined classifications, we could give the purchaser some authentic guidance." "Wouldn’t you be taking away the soul of the common trader’s business? Is he ready to co-operate with a Department that has no power to insist?" "We can soon show him the advantages." "You have had this new standard mark out for a few weeks now. Have you had many applications for permits to use it?" "Not as many as a dozen yet, but it’s on school stationery already, and shortly it will be on some brands of footwear, furniture, fire-extinguishers, and of course electrical plugs and sockets. Inevitable "But it’s got to come everywhere after all, standardisation is only an extension of the principle of measurement, from quantity to quality. If you. think about it for a moment you'll realise that every step forward in material progress has been linked up with some advance in the science of measurement. Express trains wouldn’t be running ten times as fast as George Stephenson’s Puffing Billy if we hadn’t learned how to measure more and more finely, and it hasn't only been a matter of measuring distances or quantities either. We've been able to build battleships with thinner armour-plating that has the same effect, simply because it has become possible to measure quality accurately, and, as I’ve said before, measurements of quantities are going to be useless unless we can measure quality too. (continued on next page)

~ EVEN. THE WAVES ARE STANDARDISED (continued from previous page) "When I say it’s got to come, I’m thinking of competition with overseas manufacturers. In the States, production costs have been brought down by spectacular percentages, by simplifying and standardising production and distribution. Obviously we’ll have to do the same, if our own products are not going to be expensive in comparison with imported equivalents." How It Is Done We asked Mr. McDonald how the Institute goes about its work. First, it appears, the initiative comes from out-side-a responsible person or body sug-: gests that a standard specification should be framed for which may be anything from corsetry-making to a code of bylaws for "means of egress" in buildings, from pale boiled linseed oil to a test for the "obscuration" value of curtain material, from black nuts and bolts to a fitted cistern for the decontamination of anti-gas oilskin clothing. In fact, for almost anything where there are likely to be two ways about it. Then the Institute calls together all the parties likely to be affected, representatives of manufacturers’ employees, retailers, local bodies, consumer interests, government departments, and so on. It

acts in a secretarial capacity, prepares the agenda by consultation with experts near at hand, and assists in the deliberations. Finally a _ specification will be drafted and published, and, if it refers to a retail product, it defines the criterion by which the applications for use of the new standard mark will be judged. Many British Standard specifications have been adopted, with modifications where necessary. What America Does In America, needless to say, standardisation is being.vigorously developed. It forms the core of the War Production Board’s policy. But there is one very interesting phenomenon which is linked to it, and which has no parallel in New Zealand. A nonprofit organisation called Consumer’s Union publishes monthly reports and an Annual Buying Guide, which gives the member-subscriber unbiased accounts of the value of all sorts of retail goodsfrom electric shavers to toothpaste, from portable radios to ginger ale. One copy we saw in the Standards Institute Library had a photograph of (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) several tubes of téothpaste, some well known here, captioned "2 dollars 75 cents worth of toothpaste-7 cents worth of chalk." (A pile of chalk beside the tubes appeared to occupy almost the same space.) On the same page were detailed reports of various brands of toothpaste. Another copy showed two brands of talcum powder, indistinguish-

able, the report said, except as to scent, but one costing 40 times as much as the other, The expensive one came in an elaborate package, with an _ alluring name, the cheap one in a simple but attractive carton. When tests were made on 105 women who had no means of telling which was which except by their noses or skins, it was found that 63 preferred the cheap powder, 34 preferred the expensive one, and 8 had no preferehce. Consumer’s Union Reports listed many other brands in order of cost per ounce, and pointed out "misleading statements" on the labels, such as "Antiseptic, neutralises acids," or "Helps combat skin irritations caused by bacteria." If the Standards Institute of New Zealand cannot prevent foolish people from preferring expensive things, it could perhaps assist the ordinary purchaser by making it possible for him to judge commodities alongside a "standard" embodying the minimum (or more) of acceptable requirements. As long as the initiative is coming from the trades and industries concerned, it is unlikely that the Institute will perform the function Consumer’s Union performs in Amgrica, but in the meantime the New Zealand consumer can watch ‘with interest the appearance of the Standard mark and judge its value as it comes more into use. —