“The writer cannot recall all the doubts, fears, optimism, and enthusiasm felt in turn by different members of the organization during the fabrication of those first 20,000 masks. We were performing an important task for the War Department. Night became day. Dewey, Lewis, Henderson, Gibbs, and others stepped from one train to another, and we used the telephone between Washington and St. Louis or Boston as freely as we used the local Washington telephone. “We thought we could improve on the English box respirator on various points. We made the canister larger, and have been glad ever since that we did. We thought the English mouthpiece was too flexible and too small, and made ours stiff and larger, and were sorry we made the change. We tested the fillings against chlorine, phosgene, prussic acid, etc., and had a canister that was all that was desired for absorbing these gases. But, alas, we did not know that chloropicrin was destined to be one of the most important war gases used by the various belligerents. Further, it was not fully appreciated that the rubberized cloth used in making the facepiece had to be highly impermeable against gases, that hardness as much as anything else was desired in the make-up of the soda-lime granules in order to withstand rough jolting so that the fines would not clog the canister, and raise the resistance to breathing to a prohibitive figure. Neither was it appreciated at that time by any of the allies, that the gas mask really should be a be a fighting instrument, one that men could work hard in, run in, and wear for hours, without too serious discomfort.