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is made to insure practical and enforceable regulations. The cooper- 
ation given by industry in the formulation of industrial standards 
is of tremendous value not only in the preparation, but in their en- 
forcement. 
APPROVAL OF DEVICES 
Another important duty of the Research Section is that of approving 
jevices. This work is divided into two parts. First, there are the 
jevices required to be approved by the regulations of the Department. 
[n other words, some parts of machines or equipment are considered 
so hazardous that the Department should control the types of guards 
placed on the machines. The regulations are, therefore, so written as 
to permit only approved guards to be installed on such machines or 
aquipment. The duty of approving the devices falls upon the Industrial 
Board, but this Board, through the very nature of its structure, must 
depend on some other agency to conduct the necessary investigations of 
such devices, and so refers them to the Bureau of Industrial Standards. 
The Research Section makes a complete study of the device to determine 
if it meets the requirements of the regulations, whether it is practical 
and dependable, and whether the reputation of the manufacturer is such 
as to guarantee that the device will continue to be manufactured ae- 
aording to specifications. 
The second type of approvals covers all other devices submitted to 
the Department in order that it may be in a position to advise indus- 
iries as to the practicability of the device and whether it will satisfac- 
torily perform the work it is intended to do. There is no legal backing 
to the approval and industries are not required to use such approved 
devices. The approval simply places the Department in a position of 
being able to tell inquiring industries where they can purchase a device 
that will satisfactorily take care of a particular guarding problem. 
The investigation procedure is the same as for Industrial Board ap- 
provals but no report of the investigation is made to the Board. 
Lists of these two classes of approvals are prepared by the Research 
Section and are available for distribution. 
GENERAL RESEARCH 
Realizing that the inspectors who have the duty of enforcing the 
regulations cannot be expected to interpret them to others as well as 
the organization that prepared them, this Bureau prepares, in the form 
of what is known as departmental bulletins, standard instructions con- 
serning the enforcement of the regulations, explanations of the mean- 
ing of particular rules, and illustrations of the methods of applying the 
rules to particular conditions. This work not only enables the inspector 
to give the industries in his district a proper explanation of the mean- 
ing of these regulations, but it insures that the inspection force labors 
as one man in its general enforcement work and in a way intended by 
the regulations. 
This Bureau also makes special studies concerning accident-preven- 
tion work for the purpose of preparing data that will be helpful to the 
industries of the Commonwealth, may be useful in supplementing regu- 
lations. or simply be of an advisory nature.