to various locations. Many went into the damp London tunnels. After the war, the British Museum, lucky enough not to be bombed, reassembled the collection. After two years stored in high humidity, the objects were severely damaged with metal corrosion, mold and salt efflorescence. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (United Kingdom) (DSIR) hired Scottish Alexander Scott (chemist) (1853-1947), as director of scientific research in what became the British Research Laboratory in 1920. In 1922, conservator and archaeologist, Harold Plenderleith (1898-1997), became the first full time chemist affiliated with a museum laboratory. Together they started the first scientific conservation in the United Kingdom while studying the instability of the rapid deterioration. In 1934, Harold Plenderleith published “The Preservation of Antiquities” which contains vital information on the conservation preservation of metals and the Agents of Deterioration we know today. In the 1930s and 1940s, institutions in western Europe and the United States recognized the need for prevention of artifacts before repair and did extensive studies. Several large museums were adding research laboratories to their institutions. In 1931, the International Museums Office of the League of Nations, held their first conservation conference on scientific method applications in Rome. Foreshadowing the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in 1946 with its first general conference held in Paris in 1948. In preparation of WWII the museums again put the art into the underground tube tunnels but this time crates were stacked to allow air circulation. The British Museum commissioned a secret climate-controlled tunnel in Aberystwyth to store the artwork during the war. Moving and re-moving art and artifacts to stable and healthy environmental conditions permitted the deterioration to be minimal compared to WWI. Plenderleith who treated the artifacts after WWI, found no damage to the British Museum's collection when they returned from the controlled tunnel environment. The United States preservation efforts, after the Pearl Harbor bombing, were unorganized and haphazard. Several museum directors believed in preservation conservation. George L. Stout, founder of the first conservation laboratory in the United States and one of the Monuments Men in Europe, was determined to create a standard of long-term preservation conservation. In 1949, his lecture for the American Association of Museums conference in Chicago, “Long-range Conservation” raised the question of “Why?” rather than “What? do we conserve. This began the spread of a collective consciousness. As a result, in 1950, the International Institute for Conservationof Historic and