Dr. Frank Wolff, Jr., verifier of weights and measures at the Office of Weights and Measures (OWM) in the Coast and Geodetic Survey since 1897, came to the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) at its founding in 1901. At OWM, Wolff became involved with problems of electrical measurement. That Wolff had to send most of his electrical measuring equipment to England and Germany for verification underlined the need for a national standards laboratory with the capability of verifying standard-measuring instruments beyond those needed for measurements of length, mass, and capacity.