Beckman and his company were involved in a number of secret projects. There was a critical shortage of rubber, which was used in jeep and airplane tires and in tanks. Natural sources from the Far East were unavailable because of the war, and scientists sought a reliable synthetic substitute. Beckman was approached by the Office of Rubber Reserve about developing an infrared spectrophotometer to aid in the study of chemicals such as toluene and butadiene. The Office of Rubber Reserve met secretly in Detroit with Robert Brattain of the Shell Development Company, Arnold O. Beckman, and R. Bowling Barnes of American Cyanamid. Beckman was asked to secretly produce a hundred infrared spectrophotometers to be used by authorized government scientists, based on a design for a single-beam spectrophotometer which had already been developed by Robert Brattain for Shell. The result was the Beckman IR-1 Spectrophotometer.