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DiliSfiFy, Invention aOTlflsiU'cli

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Popular

Research Narratives

Fifty five-minute stories of research,

invention, or discovery, directly

from the ^'men who did it,^^

pithily told in language

for laymen, young

and old

COLLECTED BY THE

ENGINEERING FOUNDATION

29 West 39th Street, New York

and for it done into a book

WILLIAMS & WILKINS COMPANY

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
1924

n I

Made in United States of America

COMPOSED AND PRINTED AT THE

WAVERLY PRESS
By THE Williams & Wilkins Company

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, U. S. A.

TABLE OF NARRATIVES

No. Caption Date Page

1. Isolated Research: Its Handicaps Jan. 15, 1921 1

2. Fatigue of Metals Feb. 1, 1921 4

3. Utilizing Low-Grade Ores Feb. 14, 1921 7

4. Electric Welding Mar. 1, 1921 10

5. Early Uses of Nickel Mar. 15, 1921 14

6. An Ammonia Gas Story Apr. 1, 1921 16

7. Making Explosions Beneficial Apr. 15, 1921 19

8. The Ruggles Orientator May 1, 1921 22

9. The Centrifugal Creamer May 15, 1921 25

10. Nitrogen June 1,1921 28

11. Light in Water June 15, 1921 31

12. Thermionics July 1, 1921 33

13. Radioactivity July 15, 1921 37

14. Wrought Tungsten Aug. 1, 1921 40

YJ 15. The Gas-Filled Incandescent Lamp Aug. 15, 1921 43

f 16. Radium Sep. 1, 1921 46

^ 17. Helium Sep. 15, 1921 49

^ 18. Direction by Two Ears Oct. 1,1921 52

-^ 19. Whittling Iron Oct. 15, 1921 54

- 20. Maleic and Fumaric Acids Nov. 1, 1921 56

21. Separating Minerals by Floating Nov. 15, 1921 59

22. American Optical Glass Dec. 1,1921 62

23. American Glass for Safety Dec. 15, 1921 65

^24. Glassware and Warfare • Jan. 1, 1922 68

/ -J 25. Measurement of Illumination Jan. 15, 1922 71

26. Outwitting the Marine Borers Feb. 1, 1922 74

27. Tight Flexible Joints for Submarine Pipes Feb. 15, 1922 77

y 28. A Serbian Herdsman's Contribution to

^ Telephony Mar. 1, 1922 80

. 29. An Early Rotary Electrical Converter Mar. 15, 1922 83

/) 30. What Matter is Made of Apr. 1, 1922 86

31. Teredos and Tunnels Apr. 15, 1922 89

iii

\^^11

TABLE or NARRATIVES

No. Caption

32. A Farmer's Phenological Records May

33. The Naval Tortoise Shell May

34. Compressed Air for Underwater Tunnel

Construction June

35. The Discovery of Manganese Steel June

36. A Story of Velox July

37. Pattem-Shop Research July

38. Smelting Titaniferous Iron Ore Aug.

39. The Birth of Bakelite: Its Growth Aug.

40. Palladium Sep.

41. Alchemistic Symbols Sep.

42. Temperatures of Stars Oct.

43. Kinematic Models of Electrical Machinery. . . .Oct.

44. Measuring Molecules Nov.

45. Titanium Products and Their Development. . .Nov.

46. Brighter than the Sun Dec.

47. Decomposing the Elements Dec.

48. Malleable Iron Jan.

49. The Upper Critical Score Jan.

50. Wood and Moisture Feb.

Index of Subjects and Persons

Dat

Page

1922

15,

1922

15,

1922

102

1922

105

15,

1922

109

1922

112

15,

1922

114

1922

117

15,

1922

120

1922

123

15,

1922

126

1922

129

15,

1922

132

1922

135

15,

1922

138

1923

141

15,

1923

144

1923

147
150

HOW SCIENCE GROWS

By Edwin E. Slosson

Director of Science Service, Washington

Botany took a boom in this country in 1858 when Asa
Gray pubHshed a Httle book called "How Plants Grow."
It was an epoch-making work for previous text-books had
dealt most with description of the dried specimens in the
herbarium or at any rate with the fully formed flower. You
could hardly tell a book on botany from a book on miner-
alogy except by the title on the back.

But when the people caught the idea that the plant was
a growing thing, somewhat similar to themselves, they
waked up to the fact that plants were interesting to watch.
The wide-awake realtor knows this trait of human nature
and he sets up a sign by the railroad station reading ''Watch
BoomviUe Grow!"

Director FHnn of Engineering Foundation knows human
nature too and so he has got out these ''Research Nar-
ratives" which present science as a growing vital thing, not
as a cut and dried set of algebraic formulas. He has put
personality into these sketches. One of the reasons why
science is caviar to the general public, is that it has been so
conscientiously depersonalized. The effort is constantly
made to reduce science to a set of mathematic formulas,
free from all taint of time, place, and personality, bearing
no trace of its erratic history and early gropings in the dark.

This is quite a proper procedure for the development of a
science, no doubt, but it has an unfortunate effect that in
ehminating the human element we have eHminated ^ the
human interest. Chemically pure sucrose is a beautiful
product, a triumph of technology in which the chemist may
well take pride, but it is not so tasty as maple sap or cane

VI RESEARCH NARRATIVES

juice. It has lost its vitamins. To put a modern high-grade
textbook in the hands of the ordinary reader is like feeding
decorticated rice to a soldier. It gives him mental beriberi.
I hope I shall not be misunderstood as saying anything
against the chemist's constant efforts to achieve a higher
degree of purification. Perfect purity is a noble aim even
though it be asymptotically unattainable to human beings.
There was once a little girl who prayed '^O God, make me
pure; make me absolutely pure like Royal Baking Powder I"
Now it does not do any harm for baking powder to be pure
because it gets mixed with so many other things, but if the
flour is absolutely pure, and the fat and the salt and the
water, well, somehow the bread is not so nutritious as it
might be.

I am not sure that even in a textbook a bit of history or a
few personalities would be out of place, though they might
give the student the idea that the principles of the science
have been worked out by slow degrees and much blundering
by fallible human beings instead of being handed down in
perfect form on tables of stone like the Ten Commandments.
But anyhow, I am sure that for the general reader it is best
not to refine too highly but to leave in a little of the human
alloy.

These little ' 'Research Narratives" in their original leaflet
form were convenient to stuff into one's pocket and to stow
into one's head. But because they were so handy to carry
about and to give away, I have never been able to keep a
complete file of them. So I am glad to see them in a more
permanent but no less portable form. I have stolen more
ideas from them than I have publicly acknowledged for they
often contain technical and personal information hard to
find elsewhere. Textbooks, monographs and encyclopedias
contain the past and public data of science but these "Re-
search Narratives" bring news from the terminal tip of its
fast-growing shoots.

ENGINEERING FOUNDATION

In 1914, Ambrose Swasey, of Cleveland, Ohio, offered the
four American societies of Civil, Mining and Metallurgical,
Mechanical, and Electrical Engineers the nucleus of an
endowment for a joint research organization. This was the
beginning of Engineering Foundation. It was created ''for
the furtherance of research in science and in engineering,
or for the advancement in any other manner of the profession
of engineering and the good of mankind."

Many years ago, Mr. Swasey and his friend, Worcester R.
Warner, established the Warner and Swasey Company, which
has built fine machine tools, great telescopes and precision
instruments. He was one of the organizers of the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers, later its president, and is
now an honorary member of that society, of the American
Society of Civil Engineers and of other important bodies in
the United States and abroad. Recently he was awarded the
John Fritz Gold Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the
engineering profession in America. Ambrose Swasey was
born on a farm in New Hampshire in 1846 and is still a leader
in good works. To him these Narratives are dedicated.

Research, invention and discovery are vital to the progress
of modern peoples. Scientists and engineers, however,
habitually write in language Vv^hich conceals fascinating
achievements from the uninitiated. That a nation may
advance, its intelligent citizens at least must have an apprecia-
tion of the gains made by science and a realization of the need
for more knowledge of nature — for research. To promote
interest in these subjects Engineering Foundation began in
1921 the semi-monthly printing of very short stories in lay
language from original sources. Here are the first fifty.
When there are fifty more — a year hence — there may be
another book.

- i.

/^'fe

iriiwii^ijiiiti iiVi*^

'■'S^''''^^

Ambrose Swasey
Founder of Engineering Foundation

ISOLATED RESEARCH: ITS HANDICAPS

The Story or Mendelism

Gregor Mendel was an Austrian monk who became
interested in botanical research. About the year 1860, he
studied in the gardens of the monastery at Briinn the laws
of heredity as displayed in the common vegetable pea plants.
This study led him to the discovery of the wonderful doctrine
of the inheritance of unit characters among plants and ani-
mals, which doctrine has since become famous as the Men-
delian theory, or MendeHsm. Yet, owing to an unhappy
mischance in the course of his researches, he lost confidence
in his results and almost failed to transmit their message to
the world.

Mendel hit upon a sound method of attacking the problem
of plant inheritance, by selecting a single, but easily recog-
nized, quality for his investigation; namely, plant stature.
He crossed tall peas with dwarf peas, and watched the hybrid
offspring in its subsequent generations of normal propagation.
The hybrids were all tall in the first generation. But in
subsequent generations, one-quarter of the plants bred true
as tall peas, one-quarter bred true as dwarf peas, and half
developed variations, or were uncertain. To account for
this remarkable tall behavior of the first generation, he
invented the notion that a quality like tallness may be
^'dominant" and shortness ''recessive" thereto; while the
germ cells, or ''gametes," are nevertheless transmitted faith-
fully by each member of the race. A large literature and

2 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

field of research has been developed along these lines, since
Mendel's time, both in plants and in animals.

Mendel having satisfied himself as to the behavior of peas
in the matter of tall and short inheritance, after many genera-
tions of peas in his monastery garden, aspired to repeat his
results and check his deductions among other plants from the
outside world. There were, doubtless, hundreds of different
plants available. He happened to choose the hawkweed, a
common plant of the dandelion family. Why he selected this
particular plant is not known. Unfortunately, however,
this plant is one of the very few that obey in reproduction a
very special law, in that they are self-fertilizing, or subject to
' 'parthenogenesis." In all probability, Mendel did not
know of this condition; but it was sufficient to make a failure
of his attempt at crossing two varieties. Apparently his
theory was refuted by these rebellious flowers.

It was only a chance of perhaps one in a thousand that
Mendel selected for his control experiment a parthenogetic
flower, on which his efforts would necessarily be futile. On
almost any other flower but this, he would probably have
succeeded. His failure so discouraged him that instead of
announcing his results to the principal botanical and biolog-
ical societies, he communicated only a modest paper on his
garden-pea researches to a small local society in 1865; so that
it was not until about 1900, or more than a generation later,
that the Mendelian doctrine became known to the scientific
world.

One moral to this story is that there is certainly an element
of luck in the affairs of men, and that Mendel certainly had
bad luck in his choice of a control experiment for checking
scientific results.

ISOLATED RESEARCH 3

Another moral is that researches may be in many cases,
but not all, with advantage, conducted associatively, as
distinguished from individually. If any scientific research
council could have been apprized of Mendel's garden-pea
results, the prosecution of further investigations would have
been dealt with by group methods, and no single mis-
chance of the hawkweed type would have stolen away their
confidence. The world would then have known of this
principle thirty years sooner. It is in research, as it is in
other things of line : V union fait la force.

This narrative was contributed by Arthur E. Kennelly, A.M., D.Sc,
Professor of Electrical Engineering, Harvard University and Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology.

FATIGUE OF METALS
A Story or Cooperation

Do the metals get tired? In school-days we "orated"
about tireless ''steel-sinewed" athletes. Now, forsooth, the
word "fatigue" is being used by men of science as the most
suggestive name for certain kinds of failures of steel and
other metals. Metal of apparently excellent quality breaks
without warning in crank-shafts of airplanes, in parts of
steam turbines, in other rapidly moving machines, in mem-
bers of bridges subjected to vibration and frequent changes
of stress. What are the causes? How can such failures be
avoided? What are the limits of endurance of various metals
under many repetitions of stress?

Answers to these questions became especially important
during the war, and particularly in connection with military
aviation. A committee of engineers and scientists organized
by National Research Council and Engineering Foundation
undertook a study. The problem proved complex and its
study costly. But lives and property are in jeopardy through
lack of knowledge. Therefore, the study has been con-
tinued. After the armistice, the Division of Engineering of
National Research Council turned to Engineering Foundation
for financial assistance. The Engineering Experiment Sta-
tion of the University of Illinois had been connected with the
early study and had the men and some of the facilities needed
for further research.

In October, 1919, the three organizations mentioned en-
tered into an agreement for two years, Engineering Founda-

FATIGUE OF METALS 5

tion undertaking to provide $30,000 in installments as
needed. A limited line of experiments was inaugurated.
Certain manufacturers contributed test specimens of steel.
Special machines were constructed and methods devised.
Under known conditions many specimens are being subjected
to milUons of repetitions or changes of stress. Information
of practical importance is emerging from the accumulating
records of hundreds of observations.

In the fall of 1920, the General Electric Company re-
quested an extension of the program of tests to cover certain
nickel steels in which it is interested as a builder of steam
turbines. To meet the expense, the Company offered
$30,000. A supplementary agreement was undertaken and
the new work has been started. The company gets, inciden-
tally, the benefits of the experience already gained, the
special facilities developed, and the general supervision of the
committee of expert metallurgists and testing engineers,
organized for this research by National Research Council
and Engineering Foundation.

Other users and producers of wrought or cast metals can
secure valuable information at relatively small cost, by
taking advantage of the existing staff and facilities for
expanding this research in fields of peculiar interest to them.
Each group of special tests helps in the understanding of the
general problem.

This cooperative research is an example of one of the most
effective uses for the funds of Engineering Foundation. By
a relatively modest expenditure, the Foundation initiated
the tests and carried them far enough to demonstrate their
usefulness to the industries concerned; through the affiliation
between the Foundation and the Research Council, the

6 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

advice of the leading men of science in this field is con-
tributed for the determination of methods and the interpreta-
tion of results. Similar procedure can be applied to other
kinds of researches.

Engineering Foundation is willing to function in this
manner to the extent that the resources put at its disposal
will permit. It could use larger funds than it now has.

Based upon information from Prof. H. F. Moore, Engineering Experi-
ment Station, University of Illinois, Urbania, 111., in charge of the re-
search on Fatigue Phenomena of Metals.

In 1924, this research is being continued. The number of cooperating
companies has increased. Valuable results have been gotten. Three
interesting technical reports have been published. Other laboratories,
also, are investigating this important subject.

UTILIZING LOW-GRADE ORES

An Iron Story

This is the Iron Age. An Aluminum Age may follow; but
its sun is far below the eastern horizon.

Iron is essential to the present high degree of usefulness and
independence which the United States enjoys among the
nations of the world. Necessary production and improve-
ment of iron and steel depend upon research by metallurgists,
chemists, physicists, engineers and geologists.

Each year there are consumed in the United States about
75,000,000 tons of iron ore. Methods of smelting now in
vogue demand ore containing 50 per cent or more of iron.
Known deposits meeting this requirement are being rapidly
depleted. To be sure, they will last many years. But what
next? One answer is : New deposits of rich ore may be found
in our country; but the search has already been diligent.
If found, rich ore bodies may not be advantageously situated
in respect to transportation, blast furnaces or steel mills.
A second reply is: Import; there are rich ore deposits in
other countries, some of which are already controlled by
Americans. Some objections are obvious, especially in
times of national defense, when iron is most needed.

A third solution of this problem has long been sought by
scientists and inventors. Large sums of money have been
devoted to experiments. Success at length seems assured.
What is it? The economic utilization of low-grade ores.
There are vast deposits of such iron ores conveniently situated
as to transportation and existing iron and steel industries.

8 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

Mr. D. C. Jackling and associated engineers, members of the
American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers,
after exhaustive research, followed by experiments on a
semi- commercial scale, have developed a practical process.
Five years of hard work were necessary, in which all previous
knowledge was utilized, and hundreds of thousands of dollars
were spent.

Large quantities of low-grade ores are of the magnetic
variety. It is to such ores that the new process applies.
There are estimated to be many billions of tons. These
ores are to be quarried in huge quantities, crushed and
ground, and then the iron-bearing particles separated from
the remainder by electro-magnetic methods. This selected
portion is sintered (partially fused so as to form masses) and
crushed to convenient size. A rich concentrate results, in
acceptable condition for the blast furnace.

Extended experience in mining and working these lean ores
will, doubtless, bring improvements, and, with continued
research, great economies may be effected. This benefici-
ating of low-grade iron ores, so as to make them usable, must
be accomplished if the United States is to continue to hold its
position as a steel producer on the present scale. The
studies have not been confined to any single ore deposit.
Ores from many localities have been put through the tests.
Machinery and methods of great value to the iron and steel
industry, as a whole, have been developed. The first unit
(costing $4,000,000) of a large plant for the concentration of
these low-grade ores is under construction in Minnesota.
The cost of the complete plant has been put at $60,000,000;
its capacity would be 100,000 tQn§ of rock daily, yielding
40,000 tons of concentrates,

UTILIZING LOW-GRADE ORES 9

Research is sometimes costly; but wisely directed, it pays.
The whole world is benefited.

For the information in this Narrative Engineering Foundation is
indebted to Mr. W. G. Swart, Mining and Metallurgical Engineer,
Duluth, Minnesota.

ELECTRIC WELDING

From Lecture Room to Industry

In 1877, Professor Thomson delivered at the Franklin
Institute, Philadelphia, five lectures on electricity. The
object of the lectures and the demonstrations, which latter
were numerous and many of them original even to the
employment of special apparatus constructed by the lecturer,
was to show clearly that electricity, of whatever name, was
the same, differing only in tension (as it was termed) and in
the current flowing, or quantity (the old term), in steadiness
or in wave-like character. In those days, the text-books
divided the subject into statical and dynamic electricity, with
sub-divisions such as f rictional electricity, voltaic electricity,
magneto electricity, electromagnetism, thermo electricity,
and animal electricity. The well-known Ruhmkorff coil, or
spark coil as it is now called (as when used for the ignition of
automobiles) , was employed to step up a battery current to a
high-tension discharge which would charge condensers, such
as Ley den jars.

Having made such demonstrations, the lecturer conceived
the idea of reversing the process, charging some large Leyden
jars by a power-driven static machine, and then arranging
to pass the discharge of this large Leyden jar condenser
through the fine wire, or secondary winding, of the ignition
coil. The primary of such coil (which was, of course, of heavy
wire) had its terminals disengaged and put lightly into
contact. It was found on the discharge of the condenser
through the fine wire that these heavy primary wires stuck

ELECTRIC WELDING 11

together permanently. They had been welded by the
passage of a practically instantaneous discharge of a very
heavy current. In modern language it may be said that the
condenser current, which was one of extremely high voltage
and small flow (perhaps only a fraction of an ampere), had
been transformed down, producing in the primary a current
of only a few volts, but of great strength in amperes, so that
the instantaneous local heating of the ends of the primary
coil, which were in contact, brought them to the point of
fusion, and union took place.

Such an observation made by one who was paying little
attention to possibilities might have escaped notice. Not
so with the lecturer. He at once saw the possibilities of
transforming a high- voltage current down to reduced voltage,
and causing thereby the union of metals. He had, in fact,
the conception, in a crude way it is true, of what finally
became his process of electric welding. Prevented by many
demands on time from carrying this simple suggestion
further, he constantly bore it in mind, and on the inception of
the business which afterwards became the large Thomson-
Houston enterprise, he discussed the possibility of proceeding
with electric welding.

In 1885, the opportunity came to complete the conception
of the earher days. An alternating-current generator being
at disposition, it was only necessary to construct an induction
coil, or transformer, in which the primary was of many
turns adapted to the output of the generator, while the
secondary had only very few turns, but the section of which
was so large that a great flow of current was possible. Con-
nected to the heavy secondary terminals was a set of clamps
for holding pieces of metal to be welded. The projecting

12 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

portions of these metal bars were brought together with
some pressure and the current turned on by closing the switch
in the primary, there being arrangements for regulating the
amount of primary current flowing. The very heavy, low-
voltage current in the secondary immediately heated the
metal pieces at their junction, so that they softened and
united. Thus were the first electric welds made, and thus
also the original suggestion during the scientific demonstra-
tions at the Franklin Institute bore fruit, finally becoming the
basis of the enormous extension in welding now existing.
The modest apparatus was soon followed by welding trans-
formers for large work; those were the first transformers in
which the secondary constituted only a single turn, a charac-
teristic of most of the welding transformers of today.

In the early days of the American Electric Company, in
New Britain (afterwards the Thomson-Houston Company,
with works in Lynn, Massachusetts) , it was found impossible
to get any considerable lengths of insulated copper wire for
the winding of field magnets of the dynamos being con-
structed, without having to suffer the risk and inconvenience
of numerous brazed joints irregular in outhne and liable to
cause puncture or leakage between layers, and breakdown.
Professor Thomson, remonstrating with the wire manufac-
turers, was told that it was a necessary consequence of the
production of copper wire, which was made from rolled sheets
by shearing them into very narrow strips of almost square
section and then drawing these through dies to make them
round. One can well imagine that such wire would not be
free from slivers sticking through the insulation, and this
was often the case. But each strip, as explained by the
manufacturer, could not exceed nine pounds; a coil of 200

ELECTRIC WELDING 13

pounds would have at least 22 joints. The ends of each
nine-pound strip were tapered, or scarfed, while the wire was
bare, and then hard-soldered with brass and the joints
roughly filed (not drawn) subsequent to joining; then the
whole was wrapped with cotton insulation, with the result
that every joint was a lump of varied contour, which had to
receive, in winding on a field magnet, reinforcements of
insulation. Every sliver, too, had to be sought out and rein-
forced with insulation, or removed, but the chief objection
was the numerous rough joints. Professor Thomson had
enjoined the copper wire manufacturer to weld his joints and
then draw the wire. The answer was, ''Oh, copper cannot
be welded, — that is impossible," The rejoinder was, ''Oh
yes, it can. I have a method which will do it." These
words were made good later, when in the construction of
large lengths of copper wire the electric welder was employed
to unite copper to copper, the pieces so united being after-
wards reduced in section by the drawing process. Of course,
copper welding by the Thomson process is now, and has been
for many years, a common operation.

This Narrative was contributed by Dr. Elihu Thomson, Consulting
Engineer, General Electric Company, L3nin, Massachusetts.

EARLY USES OF NICKEL
The Accidental Element in Research

Before nickel in alloy steel was an established fact, it was
introduced in a rather unusual manner.

In the early eighties a paper on possible uses of nickel
steel for naval ordnance was read in London and found its
way to Washington. At that time there was a bad yellow
fever epidemic in New Orleans. Attempts to stamp out the
disease by known methods proved ineffectual. Someone
suggested that, as the yellow fever germ could not live at a
low temperature, the epidemic might be stopped by isolating
the patients and keeping them at a sufficiently low tempera-
ture. A hospital ship equipped with refrigerating apparatus,
moored in the Mississippi River, was the plan decided upon.

Some studies of refrigerating machinery showed that one of
the difficulties was to get a metal which would withstand the
corrosive action of ammonia gas. The" committee of Con-
gress which had the matter in charge decided that the new
alloy known as nickel-steel was the best metal. Thereupon
bids were sent out for nickel. It was found that the world
supply of nickel, which up to that time had been used princi-
pally for coinage, was so limited that some new supply would
have to be found to meet the demand for this hospital ship.

Colonel R. M. Thompson, at that time proprietor of the
Orford Copper Company, had on his hands a so-called copper
ore, from the Sudbury district of Canada, which he found
contained a substantial amount of nickel. There were no
known methods about 1880 for separating nickel from copper

EARLY USES OF NICKEL 15

as found in these ores. Here was an ore which contained the
nickel the Government wanted for the hospital ship, but no
way to get it out. Having, however, the courage of his
convictions, Colonel Thompson went to Washington and
agreed to supply the nickel.

A small blast furnace, through which these ores were
smelted, was tried with every known flux which could be
brought to Bayonne, N. J., with no results. Finally it was
agreed that the general accumulation of miscellaneous ores,
fluxes, and other materials would better be cleaned up before
any further attempt was made. In the process of cleaning
up Colonel Thompson had pointed out to him by one of his
superintendents a pot of metal which had separated v/hen
dumped. No serious thought was given to this incident,
but it was sufficiently suggestive to lead to sampling. The
result showed the nickel in the bottom and the copper in the
top.

The question then was. Which and what of the ingredients
put through the blast furnace, in the process of cleaning up,
were responsible for the result?

By a process of elimination the proper combination was
established. This separating process was known from that
time on as the "Orford Process."

This Narrative was contributed by Mr. A. J. Wadhams, Assistant
General Superintendent, The International Nickel Company, Bayonne,
New Jersey.

AN AMMONIA GAS STORY
A Simple Solution of a Safety Problem

Research does not always involve tedious experimentation.
When helpful knowledge of former research is available, and
men cooperate, problems are sometimes quickly solved.
Necessity for research often arises in the ordinary practice
of engineering. The solution of a problem for one purpose
may be useful in many others, if properly recorded. But
records to be useful must be accessible. The technical and
scientific societies and journals and our libraries can be
helpful, if utihzed; also the Research Information Service of
the National Research Council.

Ammonia in some forms is, with impunity, used daily for
many household purposes, but ammonia gas in quantity is
deadly. Nevertheless, this gas is extensively employed for
refrigerating and other processes. It may be safely used, if
rightly controlled. Some years ago many fatal accidents
occurred due to safety valves on ammonia pipes discharging
the gas into the operating rooms of refrigerating plants,
hotels and manufacturing establishments. As a conse-
quence, Massachusetts and New York passed laws requiring
safety valves to have a discharge pipe through the roof of the
building, the pipe to extend ten feet above the roof, if the
adjoining building were higher.

In New Yt)rk state one of the first problems encountered
under the new law was the piping in the sixty-storied Wool-
worth Building on lower Broadway, New York City. There
were but few data available by which the size of the ammonia

AN AMMONIA GAS STORY 17

discharge pipe could be figured, because little was known
about the difference of pressure required to put a given quan-
tity of super-heated ammonia gas through a long pipe, the
pipe being open to the air at one end. Experiments were
then made to deduce a formula for the flow of ammonia gas
in a pipe open to the air. What quantity would flow through
a pipe of given length and diameter, under a given pressure
at the entrance end of the pipe? Similar experiments were
made on the discharge of steam. From these data it became
evident that a 2-inch safety valve had to have a 6-inch pipe
to discharge, even with 5 pounds pressure above the atmos-
phere at the entrance of the pipe, the quantity of ammonia
gas that would pass through the 2-inch safety valve.

The old idea then came into the minds of two engineers
working on the problem, that the flow of steam from 275
pounds absolute pressure into the air was practically the same
in quantity as the flow of steam at 275 pounds absolute
pressure into a chamber where the pressure was 150 pounds
absolute. This led to the design of an ammonia safety valve
discharging against back pressure. The question was:
What was the upper limit of back pressure that an ammonia
valve could discharge against?

Other series of tests were made to determine this minimum
pressure. It was found that the flow into a reservoir where
the back pressure was 0.585 times the entrance pressure
(that is, somewhat more than half the entrance pressure)
was exactly the same as the flow into a reservoir where the
pressure was atmospheric. As a result, a safety valve was
designed which would discharge against back pressure.
Tests on this valve showed that the theory was correct.
Ammonia safety valves as built to-day are made in such a

18 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

way that they are capable of discharging against this high
back pressure.

This, of course, means that the discharge pipe in cases like
that mentioned, instead of being six inches in diameter, can
be of a very much smaller size, since the entrance pressure
in this pipe is now approximately 150 pounds instead of five
pounds above the atmosphere. The resulting economy and
convenience are obvious, as well as the satisfactory solution of
this detail problem in the safe use of ammonia gas.

Information for this Narrative was furnished by Professor Edward F.
Miller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

MAKING EXPLOSIONS BENEFICIAL

Research as a Sociological Factor

Both physical and social eruptions occurring suddenly and
with violence are ''explosions." Commonly the word sug-
gests uncontrolled action with disastrous consequences.
Many kinds of physical explosions have been brought so
thoroughly under control by science, that they are utilized
continually in commerce, in industry and in sport, — for
quarrying and tunneling, for internal combustion engines,
and for firearms, — not to mention war. Science has not yet
brought social explosions under control, nor made their
energy beneficial. Research in social energy is repeatedly
suggested to Engineering Foundation.

"The engineer who surveys the social structure finds that certain
recognized laws of evolution by which species of plants and animals
come into being, grow, prosper, decline, or become extinct, are equally
applicable to mankind, not merely in the abstract and in the remote
past, but in the United States, in 1921. We are witnessing acute, rapid
action of these laws, but it has attracted little effective attention, because
engineers and business executives have been too busy, and have con-
sidered these matters no affair of theirs. The public, who are people
not of science but of precedent, have tried to explain the social trans-
formation by the theory that man is a free, individual agent, that mental
or social action is but loosely associated with industry, and that the
discontent and uprising of classes and nations are merely annoying
manifestations of general perversity, which can best be cured by ethics,
force of arms or imprisonment. They witness effects and draw no con-
clusions as to causes. They merely try to suppress effects.

" In the engineering world, disagreeable or disastrous effects serve as
warnings. They call attention to forces which must either be eliminated

20 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

or diverted to useful work, and they incite study and investigation by
the engineers, to disclose the causes of the phenomena. When these are
found and understood, they often prove revolutionary in the benefits
derived from them, when rightly used.

"In the earliest days of the kerosene lamp, there were many explo-
sions, due to gasoline, which the imperfect distillation processes of that
time left in the kerosene. To prevent these explosions the oil was more
carefully rectified. Huge volumes of gasoline accumulated, for which
there were few minor uses. But some engineering genius, remembering
the force generated by the explosion of an old-style kerosene lamp, which
blew husband and wife into the street — the first time they had been out
together in over two years, as she testified — set to work and applied the
newly discovered domestic power to the gasoline engine. One result
was the automobile, now the fifth American industry."

Mr. Jordan's achievements in chemical research give
weight to his suggestion. Social research must include
psychiatry, which in industrial application is probably almost
unknown to leaders of manufacturing and commercial
corporations. Under the title "Mental Hygiene of Industry,"
Engineering Foundation supported Dr. E. E. Southard in a
limited research in this field, which was stopped in the initial
stages by his sudden death in February, 1920. The Founda-
tion cooperated also, with National Research Council in the
recent establishment of the Personnel Research Federation.
American Engineering Council, under the leadership of
Herbert Hoover, its President, is studying the waste resulting
from lack of solution of personnel problems, — waste due to
strikes, intermittent employment and unemployment.

Social explosions, like physical explosions, are of various
magnitudes. Some affect only small units of a working force,
others shake our greatest nations. Their causes are various;
some of these causes may be discovered and disasters pre-
vented. The energy which is manifested in social explosions

MAKING EXPLOSIONS BENEFICIAL 21

may in some measure be controlled ''for the good of man-
kind," as has the energy of gasoline and nitro-glycerine.

The quotation is from an unpublished paper on "Social Engineering,'*
by H. W, Jordan, Research Chemist, Semet-Solvay Company, Syracuse,
New York.

THE RUGGLES ORIENTATOR
A Device for Ground Training of Aviators

On January 19, 1918, W. Guy Ruggles presented to the
Naval Consulting Board a device for the training of aviators
in the sense of equilibration. From the time an aeroplane
leaves the earth until it returns to the earth, it is sustained by
a mobile medium and is capable of motion in every conceiv-
able direction. Therefore, the piloting of an aeroplane in-
volves a problem in physiology somewhat different from the
customary activities of man while on earth.

Just what the man in a falling, spinning aeroplane might
be called upon to do in his efforts to recover a normal flying
position became more intricate as 'the problem was studied.
Ruggles became convinced that the semicircular canal system
of the inner ear, generally referred to as the static labyrinth,
played a very important part in functioning those muscles
which a pilot uses in guiding his aeroplane. This was sub-
stantiated by careful perusal of the work and experiments of
famous otologists.

These scientists, by dehcate surgical operations, estabUshed

the fact that an animal whose semicircular canals had been

removed was unable to direct its movements intelligently;

and, furthermore, that while animals so operated upon might

in time learn to direct their movements intelligently on the

ground, they could not while in space. Spinning dancers

and skaters, by practice, rotate with considerable velocity

without noticeable dizziness, and trained acrobats perform

feats of equilibrium totally impossible in the early stages of

training.

THE RUGGLES ORIENTATOR 23

Ruggles believed that if means were available, the student
aviator might so develop his faculties of equilibration and
muscular control that the piloting of an aeroplane might be
mastered with a minimum of danger. The static labyrinth,
being an entirely involuntary organ, operating through the
involuntary system, when under the excitation of unaccus-
tomed spinning motions and unusual positions, until more
completely developed and trained, causes involuntary muscu-
lar actions entirely beyond control.

As built, the apparatus was an amplified gimbal. It
had a rectangular frame in which a tubular steel ring about 9
feet in diameter rotated about a vertical axis. Within this
a smaller ring was mounted for rotation about a horizontal
axis, and within this a still smaller ring for rotation about an
axis at right angles to either of the others. Within this
third ring was a section of the fuselage of an aeroplane for
the student aviator, consisting of a seat and control members.
By this arrangement it was possible by the movement of the
foot bar and the joy stick to operate the motors, so that the
student aviator would be given a turning motion in any of
the three planes of direction. In addition there was provi-
sion for a falling motion in the vertical plane. Progressive
motion was not incorporated on account of the fact that
human faculties do not sense a uniform motion. The falling
motion, however, was of vital importance, for the labyrinth
contains as a part of its mechanism six small otoliths, which
sense the acceleration in the beginning of each falling motion
and are responsible for the most violent muscular reactions
of the involuntary system.

Rotational possibilities were made to include rates from a
very few turns a minute to a maximum of thirty. While this

24 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

maximum would be faster than the rotational possibilities of
an aeroplane in ordinary maneuvers, it had been proved that
the static labyrinth of the ear becomes accustomed to a rapid
turning movement and is never affected by a movement
slower than the one to which it has become accustomed. A
control station was also established outside the apparatus by
means of which the instructor might take the control away
from the man inside and operate any or all of the motors to
rotate the student.

The length of time to develop the Ruggles device may be
taken as an indication of that required to develop devices in
war time. It was not ready for inspection before July, 1918,
so that if an inventor is given a reasonable time to develop
a device before he presents it to the Government, of, say, six
months, and it takes six months under war conditions to
get out a full-sized working model, it can be readily under-
stood why so many devices were just about ready to be used
at the time of the armistice, November 11, 1918, war having
been declared April 6, 1917.

The claims made in regard to the advantage that could be
gained from training aviators on the ground before they took
.their first flight seemed to be borne out by tests on student
aviators by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in
Boston, Mass. The flying records of men who had been
trained in the Ruggles orientator seemed to show that men
who operated the orientator successfully were more likely to
become aces in aviation.

By Lloyd N. Scott, formerly Liaison Officer to Naval Consulting Board
and Secretary of War Committee of Technical Societies.

THE CENTRIFUGAL CREAMER

From Laboratory to Factory and Farm

In 1876 while teaching in the Central High School of
Philadelphia, Professor Thomson had been using before his
classes the whirling machines and models, common in cabinets
of philosophical apparatus for illustrating "the central
forces." He had been telling his classes of the applications
in the steam engine governor, centrifugal drying machines
used in laundries, and the centrifugal draining machines used
in sugar refineries. While whirling a vessel containing a
liquid in which there was a sediment, he was struck with the
promptness with which the sediment settled to the outside
of the vessel, and it occurred to him that the applications of
the phenomena of centrifugal force might be considerably
extended, as in the clearing of clayey or muddy liquids, or
liquids having materials in suspension; the separation of
fluids of different densities, especially the removal of cream
from milk, which, of course, was carried out on a large scale
by other methods. With Professor E. J. Houston, who
assisted, it was believed that if a continuously operating
machine could be devised for separation, especially of cream
from milk, a notable step in advance would be made. Such
a machine would involve the feeding in of the milk while the
machine was kept at high speed, and the delivery of cream
and the skimmed milk from separate outlets.

Experiments were carried on energetically with special
apparatus. During these experiments the form of centrifuge
now so common in physiological laboratories, for the separa-

26 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

tion of bacteria from cultures and for other concentrations,
was invented. It consisted of an upright shaft revolving
at high speed with a cross-head to which was slung by joints
receivers for vessels containing the materials to be treated,
generally a liquid. When the machine was at rest these
vessels hung upright, but when revolving they separated,
and finally stood out at high speeds in a practically horizontal
plane. Numerous experiments with different substances
were made with this apparatus, and the extreme celerity of
separation was noted. Attempts were even made to concen-
trate dense solutions of salts, but without any special result.
This type of apparatus found application through a friend
of the inventor to the concentration of photographic emul-
sions, this friend being a manufacturer of photographic
materials.

The development of this type of centrifuge was, however,
incidental only to the further and greater application for
cream separation. In the meantime inventions which had
before then been made in this particular field were looked up
carefully; but no example was found of any such machine
having been produced, which could be kept running at steady
speed, receive a stream of liquid, such as milk, and deliver the
streams of separated materials, such as cream and skimmed
milk. When the inventor's ideas were sufficiently crystal-
lized they were made the subject of an application for
patent, which finally issued, after a contest in the Patent
Ofiice, under the title '^Centrifugal Creamer," dated April 5,
1881. One of the contestants in the Patent Office was the
famous engineer, De Laval, who had before this period de-
veloped and patented an intermittent type of centrifugal
creamer, in which the machine was stopped between charges

THE CENTRIFUGAL CREAMER 27

and the charge removed before the reception of another.
De Laval apparently made the same invention indepen-
dently later, and in applying for patent found that Thomson
& Houston were ahead. This resulted in his conceding
priority to these inventors, and a combination of interests
soon followed which led to the production and exploitation on
a large scale of the earliest types of centrifugal separators
used in creameries. Naturally the business grew, and the
centrifugal type of creamer became essential to every dairy
or creamery.

The immediate suggestion of this valuable invention came
from teaching and laboratory research which had been under-
taken to extend the knowledge of centrifugal action. This,
coupled with close observation and an understanding of the
needs of the arts and industries, is what often leads to impor-
tant advances.

This Narrative was contributed by Dr. Elihu Thomson, Consulting
Engineer, General Electric Company, Lynn, Massachusetts.

NITROGEN

Its Capture and Utilization

That nitrogen compounds are essential to human Hfe, and
that nitrogen gas constitutes four-fifths of the atmosphere of
our planet, are items of common knowledge. For fertilizers,
for explosives, for food, for dyes, for innumerable necessaries,
modern industry demands nitrogen compounds in huge
quantities. Because of the abundance of nitrogen in the
air and the relative scarcity of usable compounds in the earth,
many have been the endeavors to obtain nitrogen or its com-
pounds directly from the atmosphere. The difficulties are
great, but research has produced more than one successful
method. One of the well-known processes bears the name of
Haber, a German chemist, who achieved it by patient and
expensive research along lines scientifically indicated, making
ammonia as an intermediate product.

In 1785 Cavendish observed and recorded the production
of nitric acid on the passage of an electric spark through the
air, and through the work of Bradley at Niagara Falls
this led directly to methods for the fixation of atmospheric
nitrogen.

It had been observed that at atmospheric pressure, the
quantity of ammonia formed by the combination of nitrogen
and hydrogen gases was extremely small, even at a tempera-
ture believed to be requisite for rapid reaction between the
two gases. At higher temperatures still less ammonia formed.
Theoretically, quantities of ammonia vastly larger should be
formed if the gases could be subjected to great pressure as

NITROGEN 29

well as high temperature during the reaction. But these
gases have so little inclination to become intimate that a
real provocation is needed to get them together. A ''teaser"
is used for this purpose, which the chemists for lack of a
better name call a catalyst. A catalyst takes good care to
see that it does not itself get involved in the reaction which
it starts. The catalyst chosen for this case was the rare
metal, uranium.

The hydrogen needed in Haber's process is obtained by
decomposing water, which in the form of steam is forced into
a furnace containing red hot coke; the nitrogen is gotten from
liquid air.

Germany simply had to have an unlimited source of nitro-
gen supply within her own borders as an industrial safe-
guard, as well as a military necessity, before she could start
a great war. Haber was backed by one of the powerful
and wealthy German chemical corporations. For years his
research went on, seeking practical methods and developing
apparatus of industrially adequate capacity. Many millions
of marks were spent, but the result was of priceless value.

Nearly twenty years ago, Thomas A. Edison was experi-
menting with the reduction of iron by hydrogen for his storage
battery. During these experiments, he observed that a
large quantity of ammonia developed, but gave this occurrence
no special thought; the ammonia simply was troublesome.
Lloyd N. Scott, formerly Liaison Officer to the Naval
Consulting Board, records that in May, 1917, when Mr.
Edison was President of the Naval Consulting Board, and
when our country was searching for a process for obtaining
nitrogen for war uses, Mr. Edison recalled his previous experi-
ments and thought that some use might be made of the pro-

30 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

duction of ammonia in that way. Mr. Edison then set up his
old apparatus and found that by mixing lampblack with the
reduced iron the passage of nitrogen and hydrogen over the
mixture produced ammonia continuously in large quantity
and at low pressure.

Other processes have been invented by Americans.

Based on information from various sources.

LIGHT IN WATER
Total Reflection by Animalcules

It is natural to suppose that light penetrates clear water as
it does glass. The Prince of Monaco, one of the greatest
students of marine life, has shown, however, that there are
myriads of animalcules in sea-water and that they cause
almost total reflection of a beam of light projected into the
water. Therefore, water is not like glass in its transmission
of light.

In connection with submarine detection studies, Mr.
Elmer A. Sperry, member of the Naval Consulting Board,
made some elaborate experiments on projecting light through
water, from which instructive results were obtained. An
electric light was used having a sixty million candle-power
beam, which could be seen through air for 62 miles (150
amperes, 75 volts, condensed and directed by a 36-inch
projector).

This Hght was placed in the bottom of a steel well resem-
bling a boiler 25 feet long, with an opening in its side near the
bottom 40 inches in diameter, in which a plate-glass window
one inch thick was sealed. There were several tons of lead
in the bottom of the well so that it would sink vertically to
any desired depth. It was hung by a bale from a crane on a
large barge.

The Hght was first tested in the muddy waters of the New
York Navy Yard, at a depth of 10 or 15 feet below the sur-
face. There was a total reflection of light, but this was
attributed at that time to the great muddiness of the water.

32 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

A luminescent sphere approximately 80 feet in diameter sur-
rounded the window. This luminescence was wonderfully
brilliant and acted like a fog to obscure vision. Brilliancy of
luminescence seemed to be about the same at all points of
the sphere, even exactly back of the well in the rear of the
window through which the light was projected.

Experiments were then made in clear ocean water near the
easterly end of Long Island. Here also it was found that the
beam of light could not be projected through the water as had
been hoped, and that a globe of luminescence was produced
as in the experiments in the New York Navy Yard. The
globe of luminescence was visible through this comparatively
clear water for possibly a quarter of a mile, and it could be
used for the purpose of silhouetting mines, anchors, cables and
other objects of this nature, against its white background with
very great distinctness, up to this distance of a quarter of a
mile.

The results of these interesting experiments with so powerful
a light are a real contribution to our knowledge of the art of
projecting light through water. They indicate the impracti-
cability, in most situations, of projecting light to any great
depth into water in such a way as to be an aid to divers
employed on ordinary under-water operations, or for other
purposes.

Based upon information from Lloyd N. Scott, formerly Liaison Officer
to Naval Consulting Board, and Secretary of War Committee of Technical
Societies.

THERMIONICS

The Movement of Electricity Under Ineluence of
High Temperature in Vacua

Effective illustrations of the immense value of research are
found in the application of the work of a few University
laboratories in the development of thermionic discharge and
the laws governing it to the problems of telegraphy, te-
lephony, rectification of currents and radiology. The com-
mercial values involved represent at present unquestionably
hundreds of millions of dollars, and yet for at least ten years
this field was developed exclusively by research men in uni-
versity laboratories with no immediate motive other than the
discovering of the laws of nature. — R. A. Millikan, Professor
of Physics, University of Chicago. (1924, California
Institute of Technology.)

Although thermionics is the latest branch of electrical
science to be adapted to the service of man, its history dates
back two hundred years.

In 1725, nearly one hundred years before the discovery of
the phenomena of electromagnetism which form the basis of
most modern electrical developments, DuFay discovered that
the space in the neighborhood of a red hot body is a conduc-
tor of electricity. In 1887, Elster and Geitel found that an
electric charge can be made to pass through vacuo from a hot
body to another body in its vicinity. This phenomenon had
been observed by Edison in 1884, who noticed that a dis-
charge passed between the positive and negative ends of the
filament in an incandescent lamp. It was not, however, until

34 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

1902 that the laws of thermionics were worked out by
Richardson who examined the current flowing between a
heated filament and a surrounding cylinder. The experi-
ments were carried out in a high vacuum and the variation of
the current with the temperature of the filament was deter-
mined. It was found that the phenomena observed could be
quantitatively explained on the assumption that free elec-
trons, or small particles of negative electricity, are boiled
off from the heated metal.

In recent years a number of valuable devices have been
invented which depend for their action on the passage of an
electric current between a hot and a cold electrode in an
evacuated vessel.

In the thermionic rectifier one of the electrodes is a filament
which can be heated by an auxiliary current and the other is
a metal plate. These electrodes are sealed into a glass bulb
which is exhausted to a high vacuum. Since the electrons
emitted by the filament are charged negatively, current can
pass through the tube in one direction only and the device
acts as a rectifier of alternating currents. When used for the
rectification of signaling currents, as, for example, the weak
currents received by a wireless antenna, it is known as a
''detector," and was first used for this purpose by Fleming in
1905. Thermionic rectifiers readily lend themselves to the
rectification of high voltage currents, and the General
Electric Company has made tubes capable of rectifying 250
milhamperes at 100,000 volts.

In a modified form known as the "Tungar rectifier" the
current in the tube is increased by the admission of argon into
the bulb. In the case of the tubes designed to handle small
power, the electrode which serves as a primary source of

THERMIONICS 35

electrons is heated by an auxiliary current; but in the case of
the larger power tubes the auxiliary current is turned off after
the tube gets into operation, the hot electrode from then on
being heated from the effects of the gaseous discharge.

The electrons emitted by a hot cathode have also been
utilized in the Coohdge X-ray tube. X-rays are formed when
electrons moving at high speeds impinge on matter. In the
older forms of X-ray tubes the electrons are obtained from
the electrical discharge through the residual gas. The
variability of the gas content of the tube and the fact that
the electrons are formed at all parts of the tube make it
impossible to obtain as uniform results as with the Coolidge
tube, in which very high vacua are used, the electrons being
obtained from a heated cathode. The use of these tubes
has very greatly increased the precision of the X-ray art.

In 1907, DeForest discovered that the current between the
hot and cold elements in a vacuum tube could be influenced
by varying the potential of a third electrode placed in the
tube. It was shown by him that with the proper special
arrangement very small potentials applied to the third
electrode were capable of producing comparatively large
changes in the current flowing through the tube. This
device De Forest proposed as a wireless detector, and he
named it the "audion." It is primarily an amplifier of
electrical currents, and consequently can also be used as a
generator of alternating currents when connected in suitable
circuits. During the war it came to be the basic element
in wireless communication and was made in very large
quantities.

In this country the development of the audion into a
reliable structure has been largely due to the research depart-

36 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

ments of the Bell Telephone System and of the General
Electric Company. The engineers of the Bell Telephone
System have reduced it to a precision instrument for wire
telephony, and it is a basic factor in commercial long distance
telephony. By its use, carrier current multiplex wire teleph-
ony and telegraphy have been accomplished, and it is now
commercially possible to transmit a number of telephone and
telegraph messages over the same pair of wires at the same
time.

Contributed by Dr. W. Wilson, of the Western Electric Company,
Inc., New York.

RADIOACTIVITY

New Conceptions op the Constitution of Matter

In 1895, Rontgen discovered X-rays and pushed ajar a
door into a new realm of science. The very name indicates
lack of knowledge, but X-rays have made a place for them-
selves in the daily experiences of all civilized peoples. Ront-
gen, in his public announcemeni January 6, 1896, made the
world aware of radiations which could penetrate bodies
opaque to light, and after such penetration, or before, could
affect photographic plates, or films, in the same manner as
light. This discovery stimulated search for other manifesta-
tions of this wonderful property of matter.

Among these searchers was M. Henri Becquerel, a French
scientist. . He was looking for something and found a great
deal more. Again the ''accidental" in research! While
studying phosphorescence, he covered a photographic plate
with black paper and on it put a small amount of a com-
pound of uranium. His choice of uranium was as fortunate
as Mendel's selection of hawkweed for experiments in
heredity was unfortunate. After exposure of the phos-
phorescent uranium compound to sunlight, and subsequent
development of the plate, it was found that rays from the
uranium had penetrated the paper and affected the plate,
although the sunlight had not. Thin sheets of metal also
could be pierced, as was revealed by trial with additional
photographic plates. The sun's action on the phosphorescent
body was believed necessary. One day, however, clouds
obscured the sun, interrupting an experiment. The wrapped

38 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

plate, with uranium compound lying on it, was laid away in a
dark place. Weeks afterwards Becquerel developed this
plate and found that it had been affected just as the plates
in the earlier tests had been. What did it? Additional tests
eliminated sunlight and phosphorescence, and proved that
a hitherto unrecognized property resided in uranium. By
use of an uranium compound, Becquerel made a print of an
aluminum medal, bringing out in clear relief the human head
stamped thereon. Thus was radioactivity discovered in
1896. Were there other substances than uranium radio-
active? The search went on. Soon the Curies discovered
polonium, then radium in 1898, and their associate, Debierne,
found actinium also in pitch-blende, the mineral which is one
of the chief sources of radium. In subsequent years, thorium
and its disintegration product mesothorium, and other
radioactive substances and minerals from which they could
be obtained were found. These discoveries put new aspects
upon matter and its constitution. Fundamental, fresh
conceptions were introduced into physical science.

From the delicate, complex apparatus of the modern
physical laboratory, the involved processes of research with
their exacting refinements, and the abstruse mathematical
computations, most technologists turn in despair. Such
things are too time-consuming, and too "impracticable" for
them. Nevertheless, from these researches in pure science
in pursuit of knowledge of radioactivity, there came results
of vast importance, extremely practical in peace and war.

No one could have foreseen the possibility that the in-
finitesimal traces of the previously unknown element radium,
found in the most forlorn quarters of the earth, would in a
few years be turned into a practical tool for therapy and be

RADIOACTIVITY 39

used almost entirely for cancer treatment. It could hardly
have been foreseen that the wrist watches of the soldiers in
the trenches of a world war would have called for some of
this radium, nor could anyone have imagined that this call
would have resulted, through other pure research, in the
disclosure of mesothorium now sold throughout the world at
an enormous price, to take the place of radium in the illumi-
nated watch or an airplane compass dial. From that pure
scientific study, markets expressed in millions of dollars
quickly resulted.

A large life insurance company, as a business proposition,
not long ago contributed $30,000 for aiding the application of
radium to the treatment of cancer, solely because it had
found that to increase the longevity of cancer patients insured
with it, by radium treatment, was to its advantage.

Doubtless, there are just as remarkable, unexpected, and
interesting cases yet to be developed. There is, however,
no short cut. Somebody has had to sweat mentally and
physically to bring such things into existence.

Prepared with assistance of Dr. Willis R. Whitney, Director, Research
Laboratory, General Electric Company, and lectures by Prof. Frederick
Soddy on "The Interpretation of Radium and the Structure of the
Atom."

WROUGHT TUNGSTEN

A Reward of Many Years Spent in Scientific Research

The "impossible" is the thing we have not yet learned how to do.

Until 1904, tungsten had been known for a century and a
quarter only in its unrefined state. Its value as a hardening
alloy had, it is true, been recognized and appreciated. In
1905 and thereafter the metal, mixed with paste and squirted
through dies, had given the incandescent lamp its most
efficient filament; but the brittleness of this filament caused
great embarrassment to electric lamp makers and users alike.

For many years Dr. W. D. Coolidge, of the Research
Laboratory of the General Electric Company, had sought a
process for making tungsten ductile. The feat was regarded
as almost impossible by metallurgists. To make any ordi-
nary metal soft, it is heated to a temperature above its
annealing point and then cooled to room temperature. This
process, however, left tungsten as brittle as ever.

It was eventually found that the only way to make the
metal ductile was to mash the grains out into fibrosity and
thus make it ductile while cold. This was accomphshed by
first heating the tungsten to a temperature below its annealing
point and then mechanically working it with infinite care at
a variety of degrees of heat, each less than the one preceding
it, until it was at room temperature. A similar treatment
would, if applied to ordinary metals, destroy their ductility.

A process was worked out which, if followed without the
sHghtest deviation, stretched the grains out and the metal was

WROUGHT TUNGSTEN 41

made ductile; but if the working varied from this process,
failure resulted. The tungsten would break at a stroke,
when cold.

Thus, after years of patient labor a triumph of far-reaching
consequence in the field of research was rewarded. The
filament produced had a starthng tensile strength — about
600,000 pounds per square inch for wire one-thousandth of
an inch in diameter. It was so pliable that it could be
wound into any form safely and handled with no thought of
its breaking.

Wolframite is the most important tungsten ore. It is
obtained from both Korea and the United States. Extrac-
tion from the ore is comparatively simple, yielding metallic
tungsten in the form of powder of various density. This
powder is formed into ingots by great hydrauHc pressure —
not by fusion. The melting point of tungsten is about
3350°C., being higher than for any other known metal.
From ingots to fine wire there are many steps, every one
important, in the complicated process.

The tungsten filament has doubled the efl&ciency of in-
candescent lamps and provides a white light of far purer
quality than any lamp heretofore known. It has provided
new targets for X-ray tubes, phonograph needles fifty times
as efficient as any that preceded them, better ignition con-
tacts for automobiles, and many other new articles and
improvements of old ones.

Trained facilities for scientific study and experiment, a
spirit of indomitable perseverance, and the facilities afforded
by a completely equipped laboratory made this achievement
possible.

The story of ductile tungsten is one of the romances of
research — the epic of accomplishing the ' 'impossible."

42 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

''The manufacture of tungsten and tungsten products is a
chemical engineering process that requires very careful
manipulation with hydrogen under dangerous conditions.
Many important mechanical and electrical, as well as
chemical operations are involved. A high degree of ingenuity
in the design and operation of special apparatus is required.
It is a striking example of progress in the development of our
chemical industries." — The Chemical Bulletin, February,
1920.

Contributed by Dr. Irving Langmuir, Research Laboratory, General
Electric Company, Schenectady, New York.

THE GAS FILLED INCANDESCENT LAMP

A Product of Continued Search for Higher Efficiency

Since 1879, when Edison gave the world the incandescent
lamp, men have been working to improve this carbon
filament vacuum light. A better filament was desired.
Research produced tungsten filaments, and the name of a
metal so rare as to be almost a curiosity became a household
word.

The use of tungsten as a filament did not solve all the lamp
manufacturers' problems, although some electrical men held
that with the development of wrought tungsten by Dr. W.
D. Coolidge,of the General Electric Company, lamp develop-
ment had gone its limit. However, the lamp was far from
perfect. A further reduction in the consumption of current
was still desired and bulb blackening, which began as soon as
the current was turned on, impaired the lamp's lighting
power. All sorts of remedies were tried with little success.

Scientists in the research laboratory at Schenectady under-
took a number of fundamental investigations and it was not
until three-fourths of the preliminary work had been done on
a purely scientific basis that the real commercial usefulness
of the results became apparent.

Brittleness of the filament having been overcome by the
development of wrought tungsten, the necessity for prevent-
ing bulb blackening still remained.

Investigations along the lines of better vacua in lamps
showed it was impracticable to determine whether variations
in method or amount of exhaustion caused improvement.

44 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

So studies were made along two lines: 1. The sources of gas
within a lamp; 2. The effects produced in lamps by various
gases.

Research showed that the small amounts of water vapor
present in the bulb greatly hastened blackening. The vapor
oxidized the tungsten, freeing hydrogen in the atomic state.
The oxide went to the bulb and was there reduced to metallic
tungsten by the active hydrogen, releasing the oxygen which
reunited with the hydrogen to form water. Thus the vicious
cycle recurred until the lamp's life was ended.

Early experimenters, Edison among them, had made
numerous trials of a gas-filled bulb but in every case the
experimental gas-filled lamp was decidedly inferior to the
vacuum carbon lamp then in use. However, experiments
showed that if a tungsten filament were heated close
to its melting point in a gas-filled bulb entirely freed from
water vapor, the filament lasted much longer than when
heated in a vacuum, and the heavier the gas used, the more
the evaporation of the metal was retarded. But the addition
of the gas to increase the life of the filament meant an addi-
tional heat loss.

It was found, however, that the presence of a dense gas,
such as nitrogen or the hitherto unused argon, in the bulb,
reduced the rate of filament evaporation to about one per
cent of what it was in a vacuum at the same temperature.
The convection currents in the gas carried the deposit of
tungsten nitride to the top of the lamp, where it interfered
little with the lamp's lighting powers.

By using a large filament, or a coil of small filament, the
heat loss was overcome by the higher temperature, and better,
whiter light was produced.

GAS-riLLED INCANDESCENT LAMP 45

Thus, through careful and exhaustive research we have
today a lamp whose gleam far outshines the rather feeble glow
of the early incandescent light, and the old lamp is a thing
of the past.

Contributed by Dr. Irving Langmuir, Research Laboratory, General
Electric Company, Schenectady, New York.

RADIUM

A Substance so Powerful that One Three-Thousand-
Millionth or A Grain Can Be Identified
Easily

On account of Madame Curie's recent visit, radium and
radioactivity have acquired a new interest. Radium is
found only in uranium ores. Uranium is the * 'mother" of
radium; radium is formed from uranium by disintegration,
through a series of atomic changes. Radium also disinte-
grates and ultimately forms lead as the final product of the
uranium series. Each radioactive element has a definite
rate at which the change takes place; some are extremely slow,
some rapid. It takes about five billion years for one-half a
given quantity of uranium to change into other products.
Radium A, one of the disintegration products, requires only
3.05 minutes, while one-half of any given amount of radium
changes in 1690 years. Those rates of change are definite
and fixed, and up to the present, no means, either physical
or chemical, have been discovered which can either retard
or accelerate the disintegration rate of any radioactive
element.

During these atomic changes, three types of rays are
given out. The alpha particle is atomic in mass, and in fact
is a helium atom with two positive charges on it. It has a
velocity of from 8,000 to 12,000 miles a second, but owing
to its relatively large mass, it does not penetrate matter to
any great extent. A thin sheet of writing paper will stop
alpha particles, and their range in air is only a few centi-
meters.

RADIUM 47

The beta rays consist of negatively charged electrons
similar to the cathode rays in a Crookes' tube. Their veloc-
ity varies from about 100,000 miles a second up to nearly
that of hght, 186,000 miles a second. The mass of the beta
particle is about 1/1600 that of a hydrogen atom; it repre-
sents the negative particles out of which all matter is built up.

The third ray given out in radioactive changes, the
gamma ray, is very similar to X-rays. Both are vibrations
in the ether of very short wave length, but the gamma ray
has a much shorter wave length than the X-ray, and is much
more penetrating. It is the gamma ray which is almost
exclusively used in treating cancer by means of radium, the
alpha and beta rays being screened off by one or two milli-
meters of lead, through which the gamma rays can penetrate.

Any element, therefore, is radioactive which spontaneously
gives rise to changes of one element into another with the
elimination of alpha, beta, or gamma rays.

For many years radium was exclusively produced from the
Austrian ores at Joachimsthal. Later, radium was obtained
from pitchblende deposits in Cornwall, and from autenite
deposits in Portugal. About nine years ago, officials of the
Bureau of Mines found that the carnotite deposits in south-
western Colorado and eastern Utah represented the largest
bodies of radium-bearing ore in the world. At the present
time, the United States produces much more radium than
all the rest of the world together.

From the beginning of the industry in 1913 to January,
1921, approximately 115 grams of radium element have been
produced in this country. Probably not more than 40
grams have been recovered from foreign ores since the
discovery of radium by Madame Curie. This industry

48 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

has assumed an exceedingly great importance owing to the
therapeutic use for radium. Cancer is being continually
cured by the use of radium. All cancer, however, cannot be
so cured, and it requires a skilled surgeon who thoroughly
understands the proper dosage in order to get favorable
results.

A NEW THEORY OF RADIOACTIVITY

Beyond the gamma rays there may exist rays of light
much more penetrating, which it is possible to conceive of
as producing the phenomena of radioactivity. Madame
Curie has proved that these rays cannot proceed from the
Sun. It is quite possible that this active radiation issues
from beneath our very feet, from the hardened center of the
planet itself, that the earth is constantly emitting ultra-X-
rays, which are so much more penetrating than either X-rays
or gamma rays, as to be able to traverse a thick layer of
rocks, and that these ultra-X-rays produce various forms
of observed radioactivity. — Jean Perrin, Scientific American
Monthly, August, 1921.

Contributed by R. B. Moore, Chief Chemist, Bureau of Mines, and
published by permission of the Director of the Bureau.

HELIUM

One of the Rare Gases or the Atmosphere-Helium,
Neon, Argon, Krypton and Xenon

Helium is in the air in the proportion of one part in 185,000
by volume; neon, one part in 60,000; argon, one part in 104;
krypton, one part in 19 million, and xenon, one part in 190
million. These gases are all inert, do not react with other
elements, and for this reason probably more than for any
other, they have excited great interest among chemists. Next
to hydrogen helium is the lightest gas known, having twice
the density of hydrogen.

Helium has been liquefied by Professor Onnes in Leyden.
The liquid boils at — 268.75°C, which is very close to abso-
lute zero, that is, — 273°C. Onnes is the only one who has
liquefied helium, and he used the small amount of liquid
obtained to determine some of the properties of matter at this
extremely low temperature. What has been done is signifi-
cant enough to make it very desirable to have liquid helium
in quantity so that further experimental work along this line
may be carried out.

Helium is found in the gases of many mineral springs. It
is also found in natural gas in a large number of localities in
the United States, particularly in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas
and Ohio. About four hundred million cubic feet of helium
is going to waste each year from this source alone.

Since helium is not inflammable and has 92 per cent, of
the lifting power of hydrogen, during the war, it became of
great military value. The plan was to substitute helium for

50 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

hydrogen in balloons and dirigibles, and thus make it impos-
sible to bring these vessels to earth by means of incendiary
bullets. Such a change would make tremendous progress in
aeronautics, for both commercial and war purposes.

With this object in view, the U. S. Government has experi-
mented on the extraction of helium from natural gas in
Texas, and during the war three experimental plants were
built and operated. At present one of these experimental
plants is still being operated and a large production plant has
been constructed at Fort Worth. It is hoped that the
Government will support these plants on account of the
fact that the United States is the only country in the world at
the present time which has sufficient helium in its natural gas
for war and commercial purposes.

The origin of helium in natural gas is uncertain. During
radioactive changes, helium is thrown off in the form of the
alpha particle, which is a helium atom with two positive
charges. However, we are not acquainted with sufficient
supplies of uranium or thorium ores to account for the
large volumes of helium present in natural gas in this country.

If the helium does not come from radioactive changes, it
might have come from the sun, if the earth was really
thrown off from the sun. The chromosphere, or surrounding
envelope of the sun, consists of incandescent hydrogen and
helium. It is possible that the viscous mass of the earth in
passing through the sun's atmosphere picked up sufficient
gas to account for the helium now found below the earth's
crust.

The price of helium before the war was approximately
$2000 a cubic foot. It is believed that in the new plant at
Fort Worth hehum may be produced for a little less than 6
cents a cubic foot.

HELIUM 51

DISCOVERY OF HELIUM

Janssen, during a solar eclipse in 1868, detected new lines
in the spectrum of the sun's atmosphere, but did not assign
them to a new element. Sir J. Norman Lockyer also
observed these lines the same year, and suggested the name
'^Helium'' (sun element). Sir William Ramsay, in 1895,
first identified helium on the earth as the principal con-
stituent of the gaseous mixture given off on heating cleveite,
a mineral found in Norway. Helium was found later in
several other minerals and in the earth's atmosphere. It has
so far resisted all attempts to cause it to combine with other
elements. Helium is one of the products formed in radio-
active changes. Onnes liquefied helium in 1908, and found
it next to liquid hydrogen the lightest liquid known, specific
gravity 0.122, at approximately 4 degrees absolute, or 269
degrees below zero Centigrade.

Contributed by R. B. Moore, Chief Chemist, Bureau of Mines, and
published by permission of the Director of the Bureau.

DIRECTION BY TWO EARS

Saving Ships by Hearing Magnified Underwater Sounds

In 1917, the Atlantic seemed likely once more to become
a barrier of separation instead of a ferry for commerce be-
tween the Americas and Europe. Shipbuilders and ship
destroyers were having a thrilling race. But it was far more
important to save ships; for replacement of bottoms did not
compensate for loss of essential cargoes, nor for indispensable
lives. Submarine detection was the problem. Once de-
tected in good season, means of destruction could be used.

British, French and American scientists cooperated upon
the problem and numerous solutions were found. Most
effective among these was an American development of a
French idea. Lenses of glass for concentration of light rays
are familiar objects; but how many persons have seen a sound
lens? Such a lens, or device for bringing incoming sound
impulses together at a focal point, was the important element
in the detector mentioned. In the improved device a large
number of sound receivers were placed in two rows, one on
each side of the keel of the ship, near the bow. The sound
impulses coming into all of the receivers on one side, travelled
in tubes of just such lengths as to unite in the same phase at
the mount of a tube leading to one ear of the observer, while
all the sound impulses received by the other row were brought
together by a similar way at the other ear.

Man, hke many other animals, has two ears, in order that
he may the more accurately determine the directions from
which sounds come. The binaural sense, unaided, can deter-

DIRECTION BY TWO EARS 53

mine direction of sound within five to ten degrees. The hand
of a time-piece changes its direction six degrees when it moves
one minute on the dial. With the aid of the acoustical form
of the detector, submarines could be heard one to ten miles
away, dependent upon conditions of weather and speed, and
the direction could be determined within one or two degrees.

An electrical form of detector of still greater sensitiveness
is being developed for peace rather than for war, because
submarines are no longer a menace, but icebergs and fogs still
invade the sea lanes. Any effective means for preventing
collisions in fogs, with other vessels or with bergs, could save
property of great value and many lives. The avoidance of
the loss of one great liner alone would be worth all the cost.

When the French official report about the detector as
originally invented was secretly read to the Anti-Submarine
Board, of our Navy, one of our leading physicists, Colonel
Robert A. Millikan, was in the group. He took the problem
of improvement to a party of scientists gathered in a hotel at
the Naval Experiment Station at New London, Connecticut.
For two days, ten men focused their thoughts on the subject
and produced a number of modifications of the French device,
one of which was so successfully developed, as described
above. It may yet make the fog as little to be dreaded as
was a German submarine after a depth bomb had done its
work.

Prepared from information supplied by Colonel Robert A. Millikan,
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

WHITTLING IRON

Some Irons Are Softened by Saline, Acidulous and
Alkaline Waters

In 1545, the Mary Rose capsized off Spithead, England.
She carried some wrought-iron guns and cast-iron shot.
After 292 years in the sea, on being brought into the air
the shot gradually became red hot, then fell to pieces. A
similar fate overtook the Royal George in 1782 in the same
locality, and 62 years later some iron guns were recovered
from the wreck. After 133 years' submergence, some cannon
and shot were brought up from the Edgar, also. It is re-
corded that the cast iron from the latter two vessels was
generally soft, so that it could be cut with a knife, resembling
plumbago. Wrought iron on these ships was not so seriously
injured. While in this soft state, some of the old cannon were
taken carefully to the Tower of London. In the Minutes of
the Proceedings of the (British) Institution of Civil Engineers,
about eight years ago. Major General Pasley records that
after a time these cannon resumed their original hardness.
The same authority declares that iron parts of pumps
immersed in mineralized waters were similarly affected.
Another authority states that the old guns mentioned were
again fired. Cast-iron piles along the English coast likewise
deteriorated.

In the Transactions of the American Society of Civil
Engineers for 1915, Marshall R. Pugh narrates that "the
cast-iron guns from some ancient pirate ship were brought
up from the ocean depths off Holyhead in 1822, after the
lapse of a century. They were quite soft, but hardened so

WHITTLING IRON 55

much on exposure to the air that they were used to fire
salutes to King George IV when he passed through Holyhead
on his way to Dublin. These old guns were said to have
given louder reports than any others!"

Old sea tales might be multiplied. Modern shipbuilders,
too, state that in repair work, cast-iron parts exposed to
sea-water are frequently found in the condition described, at
least in spots.

Iron pipes along the seaboard are so deteriorated by salt
water as to need replacement, in some places, within a few
years, whilst in other places a generation or even two may
pass. This deterioration appears to be more rapid in tidal
marsh land than in seaways. It has been learned, also, that
coal ashes and certain industrial wastes deposited on the land,
through leaching, cause the same unfortunate results. Like-
wise, pipes and other iron objects in alkaline, acid or sahne
soils, in many localities suffer deterioration. All kinds of
iron are not affected, nor is the action uniform.

Narratives of such troubles could be written for many parts
of our country and other countries. A little knowledge has
been gained about this form of corrosion, and some methods
for avoiding it partially have been developed. However, it
is still a menace to many iron objects, jeopardizing valuable
property, and, indirectly, human lives.

A more thorough investigation than has ever been under-
taken is demanded. Engineering Foundation is endeavoring
to organize a research that will get valuable results. Infor-
mation concerning the trouble must be countered by scientific
knowledge of causes and means for avoidance or resistance.
Manifestly, it is undesirable to have iron in pipes or structures
become soft enough to be whittled with a jack-knife and in
extreme cases, as soft as putty.

Based on information from various sources.

MALEIC AND FUMARIC ACIDS

A Chemical Romance: Discovery or Catalytic Oxida-
tion OF Coal Tar Products

Eight years is a long time to seek an objective and then
find something else. Happy is the man whose disappoint-
ment is delightful! About 1912, Doctors J. M. Weiss and
C. R. Downs, in The Barrett Company's laboratories, began
the quest of direct methods for production of the highly
efficacious disinfectants, such as Pyxol. Their sources are
the acids in coal tar. But the yield from American tars was
very small as compared with Scotch blast furnace tars, be-
cause of differences in industrial processes.

As a first step toward independence of foreign supplies,
endeavor was made to produce tar acids directly by using
iron oxide as the catalyst ("chemical parson") to cause the
desired union between creosote oil and air, mixed at high
temperatures. Failures led to substitution of benzol for
creosote oil with the idea of producing the simplest tar acid,
phenol (carbolic acid). So small a quantity of phenol re-
sulted that the process was not practical.

Then thirty to forty substances were listed for trial as
catalysts. Vanadium oxide was the third one tried. In a
short time crystals were found in the condenser tube, but
they were not phenol. Tests showed that these crystals were
maleic acid, a basic substance from which many valuable
products can be made. Benzol, a ring compound (so-called
from the shape of the chemical diagram representing its
composition), had been changed to maleic acid, a straight-

MALEIC AND FUMARIC ACIDS 57

chair compound, a transmutation never before directly
accomplished.

A vast new field was opened. But laborious work for
several years by chemists and engineers was expended in
developing practical, economical methods and apparatus for
commercial manufacture. Success has been achieved. Pre-
vious to this synthetic production, probably no laboratory in
the world had ever possessed a pound of maleic acid. It was
derived from certain fruit juices and sold in small quantities
at prices approximating those of gold and platinum. It was
then a curiosity — not a base for articles of commerce.

By treating with an inexpensive acid, maleic acid is
changed to fumaric acid, its isomer (chemical ''twin" of
opposite sex), formerly also of great rarity. From one or the
other of these acids can be made cream of tartar, new drugs
and dyes, mahc, aspartic, lactic and other acids. Some old
drugs and dyes can be cheapened by their aid.

It was also discovered that by this process of catalytic
oxidation, many other chemicals could be derived directly
from benzol and other coal tar ingredients.

Both maleic and fumaric acids are white crystalline solids;
the former is very soluble in water, the latter almost insoluble.
Benzol dissolves only a trace of either. Maleic acid solution
corrodes most metals except platinum and silver. Solid dry
acid, however, may be kept in metal containers. Fumaric
acid has almost no taste, maleic acid has a sour, bitter, very
disagreeable taste. Yet these two acids, so different in
properties, are of the same chemical composition, varying
only in internal structure. Mere heating changes maleic into
fumaric acid.

58 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

This is another case of an unexpected result of research
and an example of cooperation. The work involved many
men.

Prepared from information supplied by Dr. J. M. Weiss, Manager,
Research Department, The Barrett Company, New York.

SEPARATING MINERALS BY FLOATING

A Metallurgical Process Discovered by a Woman

Ores are heavier than water. Nevertheless, one method
for separating the valuable portion of certain ores from the
gangue depends upon the fact that the former can be made to
float while the latter sinks. More than sixty years ago, it
was observed that oil had a selective companionship for metal
sulphides, but not until a woman investigator discovered
additional facts was the flotation process for concentration of
ores developed. The long-accepted story ran somewhat as
follows :

Miss Carrie J. Everson, a school teacher in Denver, who
had an assayer for a brother, one day washed some greasy
sacks in which samples had been sent to him. Customary
violent agitation of the water incidental to washing very
dirty fabrics caused sulphide particles of ore coated with
grease from the bags, to float as a scum. Following up this
occurrence. Miss Everson discovered: that acid, added in
small quantity to the pulp (pulverized ore) , greatly increased
the selective action of the oil; that the oiled mineral could be
separated from the gangue by thorough agitation of the mass
and by allowing the sulphides to float as a scum, while the
gangue escaped at the bottom of the vessel. Other inventors
improved the process and about the end of the 19th century
rapid advance began which caught the attention of mine
operators.

But the foregoing story is not correct. However, facts
unearthed by the Colorado Scientific Society are quite as

60 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

romantic* Carrie Jane Billings, born at Sharon, Mass.,
August 27, 1842, married on November 3, 1864, William
Knight Everson, a physician practicing in Chicago. He
prospered and became interested in mining ventures. About
1878, he put $40,000 into the Golden Age Mining Company,
of which the once illustrious Brick Pomeroy was promoter.
It proved a bad investment. In an endeavor to save some-
thing from this financial catastrophe, Mrs. Everson took up
the study of mineralogy. She had previously been in-
terested in science along with her husband and had become
proficient in chemistry. In 1879-80 the Doctor spent some
time in Mexico for his health. During his absence, Mrs.
Everson discovered the ''chemical affinity of oils and fatty
substances for mineral particles." On his return. Dr. Ever-
son assisted in the research. August 4, 1886, a patent was
issued to Mrs. Everson for a separation process based on
their experiments. On account of the Doctor's failing health,
the family removed to Denver, where he died January 20,
1889.

Unable to commercialize her patent, Mrs. Everson became
a professional nurse in order to support herself and young son.
She continued her investigations, nevertheless, and was
joined by Charles B. Hebron, a chemist from New York, who
went to Denver about 1891. He interested a Mr. Pischel, of
Denver, who helped finance further experiments. March
22, 1892, a patent was issued to Mrs. Everson and Hebron,
but when success seemed assured, Hebron and Pischel
quarreled and the project was abandoned.

* See Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, January 15, 1916, for
report of the committee, George E. Collins, Philip Argall and Howard C.
Parmelee.

SEPARATING MINERALS BY FLOATING 61

Mrs. Everson, in the course of efforts to have her invention
put to use, met Thomas F. Criley. He and John L. Everson,
her son, developed the process onalarger scale in an old stamp
mill at Silver Cliff, Colorado. Developmental work was done
also in Baker City, Oregon, and at other places. But all
attempts to get financial rewards for her long and technically
successful research proved unavailing.

Concluding that the industry was not ready for her process,
she packed away her papers, and in 1909 removed with her
son to California. Here she lived, forgotten by mining and
metallurgical men, while law suits involving millions of
dollars were fought through the courts by later claimants to
the flotation process. How important her testimony might
have been! But she was not traced until 1915. Meanwhile
fire had destroyed her cottage and with it her papers, in
December, 1910; her patents had lapsed, and she had died
November 3, 1914, at San Anselmo and was buried in Mt.
Tamalpais cemetery. What a pity that Mrs. Everson was
not found sooner and that her papers had not been kept in a
safe deposit vault or other fireproof repository!

Flotation became of great importance in treating sulphide
ores of copper, zinc and other metals. Plants costing mil-
lions of dollars have been built in the United States and
other countries. Metals of great value have been recovered
with profit from waste piles left by processes which made less
complete recovery. The Everson invention failed of com-
mercial success not because it did not contain all essential
principles of flotation, but because it was in advance of the
metallurgical needs as then realized.

AMERICAN OPTICAL GLASS

Science Superior to Tradition and Trade Secrets

Prior to the World War, the U. S. A. had produced only
negligible quantities of optical glass. Generations of research
to produce glass that would satisfy the exacting requirements
had culminated in the work of two German scientists, through
whose successes supremacy in the industry went to the Prus-
sian city of Jena. Methods of manufacture were protected
by secrecy. From this source came most of the high-grade
optical glass used in America until very recent years. When
German commerce was barred from the seas, and England
and France needed all the glass they could produce, America
had no alternative but to make her own. At various times
subsequent to 1890, a few American glass makers had
endeavored to produce optical glass; but the German glass
was so excellent and cheap that there was little inducement
to develop the industry until the war changed conditions and
added large and urgent special demands.

Commercial manufacturers at once attacked the problem,
each guarding his trade secrets. The U. S. Bureau of Stand-
ards, perceiving the exigency, began experimental work in
the winter of 1914-15 at its Pittsburgh laboratory. The
Geophysical Laboratory, of the Carnegie Institution of
Washington, laid aside other researches and concentrated its
attention upon optical glass. Later the Council of National
Defense became interested through the Naval Consulting
Board, and the U. S. Geological Survey assiste'd by finding
sources of raw materials. Cooperation was established

AMERICAN OPTICAL GLASS 63

among all these parties at interest, although there was passive
resistance at first in defence of trade secrets. A demonstra-
tion of the efficiency of science broke down this resistance;
from analyses of 110 German glasses, a method was worked
out in two or three weeks by which batches of glass could be
computed so accurately in advance that with an experimental
melt and one or two large melts, glass of a desired quality
could be made. This was a most important advance. The
method is very useful and the manner of its development
indicated to the disciples of secrecy that science could be
superior to technical skill, based on experience alone.

Improvements were made also in the melting pots, and in
the methods of stirring the molten glass, machines being
substituted for the hand labor thought indispensable at Jena.
In furnace operation, the cycle was shortened from two and
a half days to 24 hours. In annealing, the Germans took
four weeks to cool the glass very gradually from 465°C. to
370° C. America greatly reduced this period — to three days
in some instances. Rolling optical glass into sheets and
other innovations were successfully introduced. Percentage
of usable glass in gross product reported by Germany ranged
from 15 to 20; toward the end of the war, the average at one
large American plant exceeded 23 per cent. The quality
equaled Jena. In 1914, the U. S. A. imported practically all
its optical glass; in 1918, it had become an exporter.

To comprehend the magnitude of the achievement nar-
rated, one should understand that optical glass is not mere
glass. Good optical glass must be homogeneous, both
chemically and physically; must be as free as possible from
color, have a high degree of transparency, extreme stability
against weather and chemicals, and large measure of tough-

64 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

ness and hardness, in addition to definite refractive prop-
erties. For success, there must be had right raw materials,
good pots, special pots for special batches, temperature con-
trol, correct stirring. Thorough knowledge of physics.
chemistry and engineering were found to be more than
equivalent substitutes for experience in optical glass making,
German tradition to the contrary notwithstanding.

Based largely upon information gathered by Harrison E. Howe for
"The New World ot Science," edited by Robert M. Yerkes.— The
Century Co., 1920.

AMERICAN GLASS FOR SAFETY

Achievements or the Collaboration or Science with
Industry

Time was when each railroad had its own signal colors, —
greens ranging from blue-green to yellow-chrome-green,
yellows from reddish yellow to green-yellow not far removed
from some of the yellow greens. About 1900 there were
32 different shades of green used in American railway
systems. At least one glass manufacturer carried a dozen
or more sizes and styles of lens in each of these 32 shades.
The situation was similar for other colors. To correct this
dangerous confusion, the glass-making chemist called to
his assistance the physicist and the physiological psy-
chologist. After years of collaboration, there resulted for
each color a universally adopted hue which affords maxi-
mum light transmission and maximum distinctiveness. The
standard green, for instance, gives more light than other
greens, and is less likely to be mistaken for yellow or blue.

An American glass-maker discovered that selenium could
be made to produce a clear red of almost any depth, with
the great advantage for railway signals that it transmits
practically all the red rays, and, except some yellow, nothing
else. Other red glasses transmit other parts of the spectrum
in addition to red. Selenium ruby is used universally by
American railways for danger signals, and tons of the com-
paratively rare element are thus consumed annually.

With the standardization of the green and red in hues
which would not be mistaken for yellow it was possible to

66 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

develop a yellow signal. The introduction of yellow elimi-
nates white or clear as a fixed signal. A white light means
broken glass and indicates STOP. By re-designing the
semaphore lens and employing the high transmission colors,
the intensity of the color signal has been greatly increased.

American glass-makers also introduced the low-expansion
heat-resisting glass for railway lantern globes. A train-
man's lantern is not unlikely to rest tilted on a brake ratchet
or broom handle with the flame playing directly against the
glass. Suddenly the lantern is carried out into the rain or
snow, the overheated glass breaks, and the signal fails,
jeopardizing life. For thin-walled chimneys a glass of low
expansion had been successfully used abroad. It did not,
however, meet satisfactorily the severe conditions to which
the thick- walled railroad lantern globe was subjected. A
glass was developed in this country lower in expansion than
any previously made in commercial quantities. The low
expansion globes, both colorless and colored, are safe and
are practically the only ones now in use.

There has been a demand for a glass, which while absorb-
ing as little of the visible spectrum as possible, would pro-
tect the eye from the short-wave-length ultraviolet. Amer-
ica has produced such a glass of a very pale but brilliant yel-
low, which almost completely absorbs the ultraviolet but
transmits the visible light.

Another American glass transmits ultraviolet and absorbs
the visible light. This ultraviolet has been called the
invisible purple. If all other light be excluded from the
room, the radiation from a mercury arc lamp transmitted
by this glass, causes in the eye a puzzling and weird sensa-
tion of haze, owing to the fact that the eye cannot bring the

AMERICAN GLASS FOR SAFETY 67

rays to a focus as it can those of the visible spectrum. The
weirdness is heightened by the ghastly appearance of eye-
balls and finger nails, which like other fluorescent sub-
stances, such as uranium glass, anthracene, rhodonite and
willemite, change the ultraviolet to visible light, which they
radiate.

For protection of operatives in electric arc welding from
the radiation, which if not guarded causes serious burns of
the skin and injury to the eyes, welders' glasses have been
developed which absorb not only ultraviolet but also infra-
red and such excess of the visible light as causes glare. The
light transmitted by these glasses is in the yellow-green of
the spectrum, in which visual acuity is highest.

A special pale green glass absorbs only the infra-red and
transmits most of the visible light and in thickness of only
2 milHmeters absorbs 95 per cent, or more, of the invisible
heat rays. A piece of carbon paper so held in the rays from
a projection lantern as to take fire almost at once is pro-
tected indefinitely if this glass be interposed. Spectacles of
this heat absorbing glass have a surprisingly comfortable and
cooling effect in high temperature work.

[information on which this Narrative is based was supplied by Mr.
Eugene C. Sullivan. Vice-President, Corning Glass Works.

GLASSWARE AND WARFARE

Industrial Benefits Salvaged from War's Necessities

During the war, various new glasses were developed to
meet exigencies. One was a glass for X-ray shields, which
had about one-third the protective power of metallic lead
of the same thickness. It formed part of a portable X-ray
outfit used effectively at the front lines. Colored glasses
for marksmen, for naval-gunners and for aviators, sextant
glasses and special Fresnel ship lights were other develop-
ments for warfare.

As long ago as 1902, high grade chemical glassware was
made in this country, but it took the urgency of war to
bring it to a par with the best foreign ware. To-day, accord-
ing to tests of the Bureau of Standards, better chemical
glassware is made in this country than was ever imported,
as to resistance to chemical attack, in power to withstand
sudden cooling, and in mechanical strength. Army medical
authorities found American flasks for preparing typhoid
toxine far ahead of any flasks ever obtained abroad.

All organisms for the typhoid vaccine are grown in KoUe
flasks. These flasks must be made of a glass that resists
heat and mechanical shocks, is low in alkali, and the flasks
must be flat so that they can be stacked. Until the Euro-
pean war began, all of these flasks were made in Germany.
When the war cut off the supply from Germany, an American
glass company had to make them. The American-made
Pyrex glass is low in alkali, and resists heat and mechanical

GLASSWARE AND WARFARE 69

shocks better than did Jena glass; the flasks being made in
iron molds, are uniform in shape, are flat, and stack well.

When Army medical men began using the lipovaccines, it
was necessary to have narrow-mouthed jars for grinding the
bacteria in a ball mill. All large jars were made of porcelain,
but a narrow-mouthed porcelain jar had not been made in
this country. Pyrex glass appeared ideal for this purpose,
as jars made of it would stand heat sterilization and me-
chanical shocks, and the glass would not be ground off by
the constant pounding of the steel balls. Pyrex glass
grinding jars were made that would fit the standard ball
mill frames made in this country by Abbe. In this way it
became possible to prepare the lipovaccines on a large scale.

The glass baking dish is a purely American device made of
a glass possessing the qualities necessary for high-grade
chemical ware. Unexpectedly, baking takes place more
rapidly than in metal, due to the fact that glass reflects
but a few per cent of the oven heat which is radiated upon
it, while a metal utensil reflects 90 per cent, or more.

During the war, the glass chemist had his glass melting
pots to look after as well as his glass. German clay had
been considered essential. When it could no longer be
obtained, American clay batches which had previously been
worked out were used. These American clay pots are giving
fully as satisfactory service.

Potash glass was considered essential for incandescent
electric bulbs, of which hundreds of millions are used an-
nually. Glass chemists had developed non-potash glasses,
but the uncertainties involved in the change were thought
to outweigh the advantages until the war by excluding
foreign potash made action imperative. Non-potash glasses,

70 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

after several years, are giving better results in some respects,
and except for certain special purposes a return to potash
glass for bulbs is doubtful. This non-potash bulb glass,
however, like the potash glass, contained 20 per cent or more,
of lead. Even at its pre-war price, lead was an expensive
glass-making material. Another drawback is the tradition
among glass workers, that lead glass must be melted in pots.
Pot melting is the old, inefficient method, supplanted by the
modern tank adapted to the use of automatic conveying
machinery for materials, and to machine methods of working
the glass. In 1916, a tank-melted bulb glass was successfully
introduced which contained neither potash nor lead, and
its use has extended until a large proportion of lamp bulbs
are now made of comparatively inexpensive materials,
by efficient labor-saving methods adapted to large-scale
production.

America's success in producing optical glass is so widely
known that it needs only to be mentioned here. Its story
was told in Narrative No. 22. America had achieved results
in glass chemistry before the war, but the stimulus of ne-
cessity arising from the shutting off of foreign supplies,
brought about more than ordinary progress. This country
is now fully abreast of others, and in some respects has
gone ahead, producing ware of better quality, at no increase
of price to the consumer.

Information on which this Narrative is based was supplied by Mr.
Eugene C. Sullivan, Vice-President, Corning Glass Works.

MEASUREMENT OF ILLUMINATION

A Defense for Human Eyes

There are bright lights in your factory, office, store.
Probably you pay a large monthly bill for them. But are
the machines, the typist's desks, the goods on the counter,
well illuminated? A little box will tell you. It is called a
''foot-candle meter."

Measurement of the candlepower of artificial light sources
has occupied the attention of scientists and engineers for
many years; methods and apparatus are well known. Only
recently, however, has there been popular recognition of the
fact that illumination is the quantity of real importance
and that it, as well as candlepower, can be measured by
practical engineering methods. Years ago Preece and
Trotter in England produced an instrument. Scientists in
Germany also produced a number of instruments, the best
known of which is the Weber photometer, but in this country
its use was practically confined to a few laboratories. More
recently, in England, photometers for this purpose took the
form of small, convenient apparatus, using a miniature
incandescent lamp as a standard of reference, but capable of
nothing more than relatively low precision. In Germany,
quite generally, illumination photometers used flame sources
for reference, but the photometric arrangements were such
as to give a higher sensibility.

The first practical illumination photometer, brought out
by Sharp and Millar, of Nevv^ York, in 1907, used an incan-
descent electric lamp as a comparison lamp and a Lummer-

72 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

Brodhun cube as a photometric device. It was precise and
sensitive, and moderately convenient to carry about. A
small and lighter instrument was subsequently brought out
by Macbath. These photometers were universal in their
application, being capable of measuring illumination, candle-
power and the brightness of surfaces. However, they, and
all previous illumination photometers, operated on the theory
that a white diffusing surface, either reflecting or transmit-
ting, was available and could be used, which scattered all
the light incident upon it in conformity with Lambert's
cosine law; that is, that the brightness of the surface fell
off as the direction of the incident rays varied from the nor-
mal to a grazing incidence exactly in proportion to the cosine
of the angle of incidence. No surface is known for which
this is true. All diffusing surfaces fail to effect perfect
diffusion of the light which falls upon them at high angles
of incidence, and therefore if the illumination is measured on
this assumption, the measured value will in general be lower
than the true value.

This difficulty was overcome by the construction in 1915
by Sharp and Little of the ''compensating test-plate." In
this device the diffusing surface looked at is illuminated not
only from its front by the direct illumination, but also from
the back in such a way that the added light from the back
quite exactly compensates for the deficiency of brightness
due to the lack of diffusion. It is now possible to measure
illumination with all the precision required.

A more recent instrument, much simpler and more con-
venient, but far less accurate, is a little box, long as com-
pared with its cross-section, with an incandescent lamp at
one end and its top covered with a sheet of glass on which

MEASUREMENT OF ILLUMINATION 73

is fastened the equivalent of a series of little Bunsen photo-
metric discs, stretching from one end of the box to the other.
The under sides of these discs are illuminated by the lamp;
this illumination falls off very rapidly with the distance
from the lamp. The upper sides of the discs are subjected
to the illumination to be measured. One end of the row of
discs is illuminated more brightly on the outside, whereas
the other end is illuminated more brightly on the inside.
Therefore one end of the row appears as positives and the
other as negatives. By inspection the disc can be found
where the illumination on the inside is equal to that on the
outside; that disc is apparently uniformly illuminated, and
the illumination value is read from a scale alongside the
discs.

This '%ot-candle meter" has come into extensive use.
It enables an unscientific observer to gain an approximate
knowledge of the value of an illumination by simple inspec-
tion. It has popularized illumination measurements and
has directed attention toward the importance of correct
illumination. Advantages are obvious, particularly in the
lighting of factories, workshops and schools, where good
illumination is essential for industrial production and for
defense against misuse of that most wonderful of all instru-
ments, the human eye.

Information on which this Narrative is based was supplied by Clayton
H. Sharp, Ph.D., Technical Director, Electrical Testing Laboratories,
New York.

OUTWITTING THE MARINE BORERS

Mighty Destroyers of Wooden Marine Structures

Port charges on ships and on goods landed could be re-
duced one-third if the expense caused by the destructive
marine borers could be eliminated, is the estimate of a
responsible harbor-engineer of a prominent port of the United
States. A large element in the cost of sea-borne freights is
the protection of wooden structures in salt and brackish
waters against attacks of marine borers.

These borers attack commercial timbers in all seas, and
are especially active in tropical waters. They destroy the
sheathing of wooden ships and scows, pipe lines and tanks
for salt water, spars and buoys, rafted timber, wooden
piling and submerged wooden structures from mid-tide level
to the mud line. They shorten the lives even of structures
protected by impregnation with the creosotes used to-day.
Borers lie in wait to attack treated timbers maltreated in
erection, damaged by marine hazard, or incompletely in-
filtrated with preservative. Resin-filled knots, checks, dog-
holes, or crevices are sure to afford avenues of entrance for
some inquisitive borer searching for a home, and others
follow in his wake. Untreated piles in heavily infested
waters may last but a season, while planking, pipe lines and
tanks may be riddled in six weeks. The most destructive
borers, Teredo navalis and Limnoria lignorum, will work
near the mouths of sewers where there is tidal change, and
in the presence of many industrial wastes.

OUTWITTING THE MARINE BORERS 75

There are many kinds of borers adapted to different
environmental conditions, attacking wood in different ways.
Some are highly modified moUusks related to the clam, but
worm-like in appearance, from a few inches to four feet in
length. These are the ship worms and pile worms, species
of Teredo and Xylotria, which enter wood through minute
holes which they excavate as larvae on the surface. As they
grow they enlarge their burrows, using their growing shells
as boring bits, until the wood is completely riddled, though
no external evidence of the damage is visible until the pier
collapses. Some molluscan borers retain their clam-like
appearance. One of these, Martesia, attacks creosoted
timbers with impunity and others (Pholas) bore into certain
rocks.

Molluscan borers spread as eggs or as larvae, float for
several weeks with currents or tides, and might be carried
in ballast water or tanks of vessels for long distances.
Eventually they settle down and burrow for shelter into
wood. They breed generally in mid and late summer in
enormous numbers and some of them spread widely from
infected centers. Several hundred larvae may settle on a
single square inch of exposed wood.

The most notorious of these borers is Teredo navalis, the
pile worm of European waters, which in historic times has
periodically devastated European coasts. It thrives in
brackish waters and survives periodic exposures to low
salinities or even to fresh water; hence in dry seasons it
invades estuaries and harbors as salinities rise. Such an
invasion occurred in San Francisco Bay in recent years,
causing extensive destruction of untreated piling. The loss
was estimated at $15,000,000. A revival of attacks in

76 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

Dutch and Scandinavian waters suggests a pandemic of this
marine pest.

Adequate protection of marine structures calls for a
program of correlated investigations of the chemical, en-
gineering, and biological phases of the complicated problems
centering about wood and concrete in sea water and means
for protection by creosote and other preservatives. To
this end the National Research Council has appointed a
committee of engineers, chemists and biologists to col-
laborate in a carefully directed study of these problems of
far-reaching significance in the cost of commerce. Who will
help to advance the attack?

Contributed by Prof. C. A. Kofoid, University of California, member
of the San Francisco Bay Marine Piling Committee of the American
Wood-Preservers' Association.

Note, March, 1924: The Committee on Marine Piling Investigations
has just completed an important part of the program which it planned.
A valuable illustrated report of about 500 pages is being printed by
the National Research Council.

TIGHT FLEXIBLE JOINTS FOR SUBMARINE PIPES

A Water Supply Problem

Nature made Staten Island a part of New Jersey, but
Man attached it to New York City. Consequently, when
demands for water from the public supply exceeded resources
on the Island, Catskill Mountain water brought 120 miles
had to be gotten from the nearest part of the "Greater City";
but The Narrows, two miles wide, the deep entrance to
the harbor, lies between, with fast-flowing tides and heavy
commerce. Many kinds of pipe and methods for laying
them were considered. A heavy 36-inch cast-iron pipe with
ball-and-socket joints was selected. Conditions "too numer-
ous to mention," precluded effective employment of divers.

The problem narrowed itself to making a pipe which,
beginning at Brooklyn, could be put together, Hnk by link,
like a chain, and "paid out" from a barge into the water to
sink to the bottom of the dredged trench as the barge was
moved, a few feet at a time, across The Narrows. The
joints must be strong, but quickly made. They must be
water-tight when made and so remain in spite of the bending
and pulHng to which they would be subjected as the pipe
line was "paid out" and settled to its bearing in the trench.

The inside of each socket was turned and polished ac-
curately to a spherical surface. A narrow band on the
opposite end, or spigot, of each pipe was turned to a spherical
surface to fit the inside of the socket. So far only careful
foundry and machine work was required. How should the
joint space between the spigot and socket be filled?

78 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

Molten lead is the common material for water pipe joints ;
but lead shrinks appreciably as it cools. Ordinarily this is
remedied by calking, i.e., making the lead flow slightly after
it is cold by blows from a hammer on a steel calking tool,
thus filling the space tightly. Calking, even with powerful
pneumatic hammers, failed to cause the lead to flow far
enough back in the flexible joint to keep it tight after bending
but a little. ''Lead wool," calked in, a strand at a time,
was tried; very tight joints could be made, but they would
not bend readily enough and besides consumed too much
time. Several alloys of lead, which like type metal would
swell slightly on cooling, were tried, but none proved suitable.
Other schemes were tried.

One day, while experiments on full-sized pipes were in
progress in a shop near Philadelphia, the engineer in New
York had a long-distance call: would he permit sixteen |-
inch holes to be drilled through the socket of the pipe in a
ring around it? A foreman had suggested that such holes
be drilled and threaded so that slugs of cold lead could be
forced in with strong steel screws until the shrinkage space
was filled. His father, as superintendent in a refrigerating
plant, made leaky joints in ammonia pipes tight by drilling
small holes in the couplings and forcing bird shot in by means
of ''set screws." Permission was given at once. A trial
showed that the method had merit. By long and careful
experimentation details were perfected.

Two rows each of sixteen holes f inch in diameter, were
drilled around the socket of each pipe. After approximately
250 pounds of lead had been cast into each joint on the
barge, 144 lead slugs If inches long and t\ inch in diameter
(total weight 26 pounds), were forced into the shrinkage

FLEXIBLE JOINTS FOR SUBMARINE PIPES 79

space by means of steel screws operated by a special tool,
and with them flake graphite and grease, as a lubricant.
At first each joint was tested as made with water under
100 pounds pressure, but these joints were so uniformly
tight that tests were discontinued. After the pipe line had
been completed, which required two seasons with a winter's
interruption, a 40-day test under 110 pounds pressure
showed a leakage of only three quarts per minute from more
than eight hundred joints. This is only saying in more
words, that the pipe line was absolutely tight. Submarine
pipes have commonly been very leaky.

By Alfred D. Flinn, formerly Deputy Chief Engineer, Catskill Aque-
duct, for City of New York.

In 1924, the City is laying a second pipe line across The Narrows,
of the same design, but 42 inches inside diameter.

A SERBIAN HERDSMAN'S CONTRIBUTION TO
TELEPHONY

An Example of the Inborn Spirit of Research

Conspicuous among hundreds of inventions which have
brought America's telephone systems to their high devel-
opment are those of Dr. Michael Idvorsky Pupin. They
are highly scientific in character and based upon the wave
transmission of sound and electricty. When the Edison
Medal was presented to him in February, 1921, by the
American institute of Electrical Engineers, he told how he
first became interested in sound transmission.

Although for many years an American citizen by adoption,
Michael Pupin was born in a village near Belgrade, Serbia.
At the age of twelve he began summer vacation service with
other boys as assistant to the guardians of the villagers'
herd of oxen, and at the same time his studying in Nature's
own laboratory of the wave transmission of sound. Day-
time duties were light; the hot sun and the hungry flies
kept the wise ox in the shade. At night the cattle grazed.
Moonless Serbian nights are so dark that the sky seems black
even when the stars are blazing. Objects fifteen or twenty
feet away cannot be seen. Only a few miles distant was the
Rumanian border, and between lay extensive corn fields.
When the wind blew from the corn fields to the grazing
grounds, the pleasant fragance tempted the cattle; but in
the corn lurked many cattle thieves. The oxen must be
kept out of the corn; on the dark nights, however, they
could be followed only by sound.

A SERBIAN herdsman's CONTRIBUTION TO TELEPHONY 81

Now, among the arts of the herdsmen in which the boys
were trained, was the art of listening through the ground.
A knife with a long wooden handle was stuck in the ground.
One boy who was being trained would put his ear to the
handle and listen, while another boy, thirty or forty yards
away, would strike his knife similarly stuck in the ground.
The first boy would have to tell the direction and guess the
distance. This first lesson in wave transmission set young
Pupin thinking. He soon observed, as herdsmen before
him had, that sounds from the knife carry much farther
through hard solid ground than through plowed ground.

The long nights of watching afforded much time for ob-
serving sounds and thinking about them. In the darkness
the world seemed to have disappeared and the only signs
of its existence were the messages of the low sounds from
the grazing herd, the distant village clock, the rusthng corn.
Thoughts started in the lad's mind on those Serbian plains
continued to evolve as he went from the village school to
the academy at Prague; when he ran away from the un-
bearable confinement of the academy, after the freedom of
the plains, and came to America, and as he made his way
through many difficulties to a higher education in the sciences
in the universities and laboratories of America and Europe.

Finally those germs of thought bore fruit in many scien-
tific discoveries and inventions having to do with wave
transmission, especially of sound and electricity. Among
these inventions was the Pupin "loading coil," which
greatly advanced the possibilities of successful long-distance
telephony. A few years ago, when Chief Engineer Carty,
of the Bell Telephone System, stretched his wires from the
Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific coast of the United States,

82 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

and President Theodore N. Vail, of ''A. T. and T.," first
made a human voice heard across a continent, there were
Pupin coils at intervals of eight miles in that transcontinental
line. In the whole world to-day there are more than three-
quarter of a million Pupin coils in use in telephone lines, of
which 600,000 are in the United States.

Based on information supplied by Dr. M. I. Pupin, Professor of Elec-
tro-Mechanics, Columbia University, New York.

AN EARLY ROTARY ELECTRICAL CONVERTER

The Solution of a Welding Problem

Hermann Lemp, who has been a prolific inventor in the
electrical field narrates that he first heard the name of
Edison in his native Switzerland, while experimenting with
a phonograph in a factory at Neuchatel. At the first Inter-
national Electrical Exhibition in Paris, in 1881, be saw
Edison's first steam-driven dynamo and its hundreds of
incandescent lamps. Although but nineteen years of age,
he decided to go to the country where such wonderful
progress was being made. Before the end of the year, he
was at Menlo Park, on Edison's staff.

In 1887, Lemp joined the technical staff of the Thomson-
Houston Electric Company. Professor Elihu Thomson and
E. W. Rice asked him to devote all his time to the com-
mercial development of electrical welding, which he did for
seven years. The welding of electric street railway rails
together in place led to the construction of a large rotary
converter, probably the first one of magnitude. Now such
machines for changing alternating electrical current to direct
current, or vice versa, are common equipment in power
stations and manufacturing plants. While working on the
problem of providing alternating currents from a direct-
current trolley wire, the ''happy thought" which took form
in a rotary converter, came to him like a flash.

(But, "gentle reader," remember that back of every
lightning flash is a charged cloud, and consider that back
of apparently sudden discoveries and inventions, there must

84 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

have been a stored mind. Ex vacuo nihil. Thorough prepa-
ration in the sciences is more than ever before necessary to
useful research and successful invention. — Ed.)

Lemp's first plan for solving this problem was to couple
a 500-volt direct-current motor to an alternating-current
dynamo of 150 kilowatts capacity. While considering the
size of the necessary apparatus, he came upon an article
describing a novel electrical generator by Shuckert & Com-
pany, of Germany, which, engine-driven, had besides the
usual commutator supplying direct current, slip rings from
which alternating currents were collected. It occurred to
Lemp that the engine was unnecessary, that the direct-
current generator might be operated as a motor and that the
alternating current could be taken from the slip rings. Since
the company's welding transformers had been standardized
on 50 cycles frequency and 350 volts, when the rotary con-
verter was connected to a standard 500-volt trolley line,
the alternating side gave 350 volts, suitable for the standard
welders.

To try out the principle, a Thomson-Houston bipolar,
direct-current motor of 500 volts was taken from stock; its
armature was replaced by one of 250 volts, to increase speed
and frequency; one of the commutator segments was
grounded to the shaft, and the opposite segment was con-
nected to a slip ring shrunk over a strip of mica laid on the
commutator. The whole took about a day's time, and a
standard welder when connected to this rotary converter
operated perfectly.

This was an unusual engineering experience, to have two
existing standard electrical systems coordinated by an
intermediary without requiring all sorts of adapters, special
transformers, and other apparatus.

EARLY ROTARY ELECTRICAL CONVERTER 85

The first welding train, built by the Johnson Company,
of Johnstown, Pa., contained a 150-kilowatt rotary converter.
Recently, Mr. Lemp learned that this original rail-welding
equipment was still working in the streets of Lynn, Massa-
chusetts, after having made 250,000 welds.

It is not pretended that this Narrative records the genesis
of the rotary converter. It simply relates how one engineer,
without previous knowledge of the work of others, solved
his problem in rail welding by making a machine of ^the
rotary converter type.

Based on information supplied by Hermann Lemp, Engineer, Erie
Works, General Electric Company.

WHAT MATTER IS MADE OF
A Modern Conception

A new picture of stuff is being painted. Fortunately for
simplicity, instead of seventy or eighty, as with the atoms,
we have but two new units — the positive and the negative
electron. The myriads of complications which correspond
to all the differences in matter about us, must reside in
the arrangements or combinations of these two simple
components.

Such names as electrons and atomic structure do not
convey to the mind inherent relationship with radio, radium
and X-rays; but a proper view of matter as it is now under-
stood can most readily be pictured by getting the connection
among some such group of present-day subjects. We are
now forced to look at all matter as composed of identical,
small, electrical charges, which determine the nature of
chemical elements and compounds by their numbers and
arrangements. An atom — the ultimate particle of a particu-
lar substance — becomes more like a solar system than like
a solid. The volume of the atomic space is mainly un-
occupied, but through it the forces act which are attributable
to electric charges within.

Becquerel,* who found that a certain uranium ore emitted
an invisible ray capable of passing through black paper
and still affecting a photographic plate, was partly respon-
sible for our new views. Soon afterward the Curies dis-

* See Narrative Number 13.

WHAT MATTER IS MADE OE 87

covered radium, and this was shown later to be a naturally
decomposing atom. Several other decaying elements were
also found. During decomposition small electrical quantities
were continually discharged.

Similar discharges had already been observed in other
fields, but were not understood. For example, when the
filament of a lamp is heated in a high vacuum, negative
electrical charges are emitted and current thus crosses the
empty space. This had early been noticed by Edison. It
was not until after the discovery of radium that the true
nature of these "electrons" was perceived.

When these little units of negative electricity flow within
a wire, they constitute the electric current. When, by high
temperature, they are emitted from a metal, they are called
thermions. When they pass through a gas with sufficient
velocity, their impacts decompose molecules, and the greatly
augmented flow of the resulting charged particles produce
the common electric arc. When they flow through a vacuous
space, under the influence of a high electric force, they are
called cathode rays. When their motion is stopped by
impact in the surface of a solid, the sudden change of motion
starts an electro-magnetic wave, — an X-ray (just as a drum
beat sets up a sound wave in air), and when they surge up
and down wireless antennae, they produce the long wireless
waves through space.

When constituent electrons are arranged in the groups
called atoms, all properties seem determined merely by
geography, or orientation. Apparently such old established
things as chemical activity and valence are due to the
number of electrons which occupy the outer surfaces of the
groups. The shooting electrons of the cathode ray, stopped

88 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

by the platinum or tungsten target, produce the X-rays,
which by reflection in crystalhzed matter, disclose its atomic
arrangement and thus lead to better understanding of many
physical properties.

Since decomposing elements emit electrons, since heat
drives them from filaments, since gases and air yield them
on impact in arcs, since statically charged bodies carry them
and lose them (as a car gains or loses passengers) , it is logical
that all electric currents are attributed to their motion, all
static charges to differences in concentration, and all matter
to balanced combinations of them.

Contributed by Dr. W. R. Whitney, Director, Research Laboratory,
General Electric Company.

TEREDOS AND TUNNELS
One of Nature's Engineering Suggestions

Among the little marine animals which destroy wooden
piles and other underwater parts of waterfront structures,
probably the best known are the several varieties of ship-
worms, so-called, although they are not worms but mol-
luscs. Commonly they are all comprehended in the name
Teredo, in spite of the efforts of biologists for correct dis-
crimination. Teredos bore long tunnels in wood, using their
two tiny shells as excavating tools and shields for their
heads. As the head advances, the body grows, excreting a
calcareous Uning for the tunnel. The "tail" maintains con-
nection with the surface of the pile and can close the entrance
when danger is sensed. From head to tail there is a passage
through the body for the discharge of the borings into the
open water. So much for Nature's prototype!

The story of the invention of the tunnehng shield by which
tunnel work in underwater or water-bearing ground, has
been greatly simplified and its scope correspondingly en-
larged is an interesting chapter in the history of modern
engineering. Marc Isambard Brunei was born in France,
April 25, 1769. His father, a farmer, intended him to
become a priest. A strong leaning toward mathematics
turned the boy in another direction and he served in the
French Navy for six years. In 1792, when he returned to
his native land, he found the Revolution in full swing.
As he was an ardent Royalist, he came to New York and
practiced land surveying and canal engineering, and also

90 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

made plans for the military defences of the Narrows of
New York Harbor.

In 1799, he went to England where he spent the remainder
of his life. He designed and built in 1803 a complete set of
wood- working machinery for the Naval Dockyard at Ports-
mouth. In 1812, he reorganized the system of wood-
working at Woolwich and Chatham Arsenals. He was
interested in steam navigation, in shoe-making machinery,
in mechanical knitting. In 1818, he took out a patent
(No. 4204) entitled "Method of forming tunnels or drifts
under ground."* In his specifications and drawings he
describes what is in essence the modern tunnel shield, to
form a protection for the workers, thrust ahead by the
pressure of hydraulic rams upon the finished lining. "The
body, or shell, of the tunnel may be made of brick or masonry,
but I prefer to make it of cast iron," — thus foreshadowing
the many miles of cast iron lining which have been built
since his day.

This masterly engineer was not above going to a lowly
"worm" for help and advice. His shield embodied a form
of mechanical excavator. "The combination of mechanical
expedients by means of which I performed the same, I
denominate a Teredo, or auger, from its great analogy to
that instrument, and also the vermes, known under the
name of Teredo Navalis. This insect is capable of per-
forating the toughest timber by the power and organization
of its auger-like head worked by the motion of the body
enclosed within its tubular cell, which cell may be supposed
to represent a tunnel."

* Quotations are from original patent application.

TEREDOS AND TUNNELS 91

When it is considered that the body of the Teredo makes
a closed dry chamber at the working face and that it deposits
a continuous calcareous lining as it extends its tunnel, the
analogy is remarkable.

Like many another genius, Brunei's financial acumen was
not great, and in 1821 he was imprisoned for debt. His
friends released him by payment of £5000. The latter
part of his life was devoted more to civil engineering projects
than to those of mechanical engineering and his great and
crowning work was the construction of the Thames tunnel
crossing that river between Wapping and Rotherhithe. He
used a shield for this work, but one of an entirely different
type from that described in his patent of 1818. The work
was on a huge scale for that time with the appliances and
methods then at hand. This tunnel was rectangular in
section, 23 feet high by 37 feet wide, or equal to a circle
nearly 33 feet in diameter, which is larger than any sub-
aqueous tunnel since built. The river broke in several times,
and the work was not finished until 1843. Helped by his
son, Isambard Kingdom Brunei, he conquered each disaster
as it came. The anxieties and the days and nights spent
in the tunnel proved too much. He suffered a paralytic
stroke in 1843, another in 1845 and died in London, Decem-
ber 12, 1849.

Contributed by B. H. M. Hewett, of Jacobs & Davies, Consulting
Engineers for the Hudson River and other tunnels.

A FARMER'S PHENOLOGICAL RECORDS

A Tale or Remarkable Individual Research with a
A Sad Sequel or Loss Due to Isolation

Thomas Mikesell, of Wauseon, Ohio, was a western boy
with a high-school education. On return from service in
the Union army in the Civil war, he engaged in farming,
and became interested in weather phenomena, especially
their relation to the growth of plants. Beginning in 1883,
for thirty years, he kept the most complete, accurate and
extensive records of a phenological nature which have ever
been undertaken, including rainfall, temperature and other
weather conditions, carrying them on in conjunction with
his regular farm operations. This work was undertaken
purely through a scientific interest in the subject, in a
modest manner and without the slightest idea that the
results might later prove almost invaluable.

For more than 150 species of plants Mikesell kept accurate
records, with scarcely a single observation missing in thirty
years, of every phase of plant growth from the time the
buds started until the plant was divested of leaves in the
fall. Similar records were kept of the times of migration,
dates of nesting, and other life incidents, for a large variety
of birds. A few years ago, J. Warren Smith, then local
Weather Bureau official, who had learned of the existence of
these records, obtained from Mikesell permission to copy a
considerable portion thereof. They were published by the
United States Government and have attracted wide atten-
tion. They have been used as materials for many scientific

A farmer's phenological records 93

investigations in relation to agriculture and plant economics,
and formed perhaps the most important basis for the formu-
lation of certain rules promulgated during the late war to
assist farmers in determining dates of planting and seeding
which would insure maximum crop yields during the war
period.

Although the portion of Mikesell's phenological records
published by the Government comprise many closely printed
quarto pages, yet they represent but a small fraction of the
complete series of observations. It is said that Mrs. Mike-
sell strongly opposed her husband in the conduct of these
researches, deeming them a waste of time. Shortly after
Mikesell's death, an effort was made to recover the remain-
ing records for publication, only to learn that they had been
destroyed! An irreparable loss.

Mikesell attempted but few deductions from his data,
yet his work was a scientific research of the highest order in
that no essential detail likely to be needed for future deduc-
tions from the data appears to have been omitted. It is
at once apparent how much may be accomplished by an
enthusiastic individual in scientific research, but it is even
more apparent that there should be some organization
standing behind the individual to encourage him and afford
means for publication of the results obtained from time to
time, thus making them earlier available and also avoiding
the possibility of lamentable losses such as occurred in this
instance.

This tale will recall to readers of these Research Narratives
the temporary failure of Gregor Mendell (Narrative No. 1,
'The Story of Mendellism") and the loss of valuable records

94 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

which befell Mrs. Everson (Narrative No. 21, "Separating
Minerals by Floating"), both of which might have been
avoided through connection with suitable organizations,
had such organizations existed or been accessible in their
times. — Editor.

By Robert E. Horton, Consulting Hydraulic Engineer, Voorheesville,
N. Y.

THE NAVAL TORTOISE SHELL
Development or the Defensive Element or Warships

John Stevens, of Hoboken, New Jersey, is credited with
first proposing metal armor plates for ships' sides. During
the war of 1812, he offered the U. S. Government plans for a
vessel with her guns protected by inclined armor. More
than a generation passed before his idea was used. Al-
though the United States probably was the first country to
start construction of armored ships, France put the first
vessels of this type into commission. October 17, 1855, the
first ironclad squadron ever seen, the Devastation, the Love
and the Tounante, silenced the Russian forts at Kinburn.

Sixty years ago, in the waters of Virginia, the Merrimac
and the Monitor fought a battle which sealed the fate of
wooden warships, already made obsolete. A revolving tur-
ret for naval vessels had been patented by Theodore R.
Timby, of Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1842, but never used.
Captain John Ericsson, by his invention, combined a
turret, heavy iron armor, and 11-inch Dahlgren guns into a
new fighting machine which looked like "A Yankee cheese
box on a plank." It stopped the big ironclad, which had
been almost equally revolutionary the day before in its
destruction of some of the finest wooden warships in the
American navy.

Already competition between armor plate on one hand
and guns and projectiles on the other hand was keen. Devel-
opments in the metallurgy of steel and advances in mechani-

96 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

cal and naval engineering soon brought the beginning of the
evolution of modern war vessels.

By the mid seventies, wrought iron armor had reached its
limit. Rifled guns and improved projectiles had won. Then
came steel armorplate. Competitive tests at Spezia, Italy,
in 1876, with plates 22 inches thick conclusively demon-
strated the superiority of steel, and the manufacture of
wrought iron armor ceased thereafter. Compound armor,
with a hard steel face welded to a wrought iron back gained
favor, but was completely outclassed in a test at the An-
napolis proving ground in September, 1890. Homogeneous
and nickel-steel plates then had some success in competition
with the guns.

About 1888 while H. A. Harvey, of Newark, New Jersey,
was visiting the Washington gun factory, Captain Folger,
the superintendent, suggested that he apply to armor plates
his method for hardening tool steel. Harvey soon devised a
surface-hardening process, to which his name became at-
tached; it affects the steel to a depth of about one inch to
one and a half inches, according to the time given to the
treatment. An armor plate made by Schneider & Co., of
France, Harveyised in America, was tested at Annapolis on
March 14, 1891. Although cracked, it stopped and shat-
tered the projectiles. The Secretary of the Navy immedi-
ately signed a contract for Harveyising the armor for U. S.
men-of-war. Surface-hardened plates came into general
use. Harveyised plates are so hard that they cannot be
machined; they can only be ground. Hence, the plates had
to be shaped and necessary holes drilled before hardening.

After adopting Harveyised armor plate, the U. S. Navy
experienced difficulties in certain details of construction

THE NAVAL TORTOISE SHELL 97

because of the impossibility of drilling holes into the hard-
ened surface. On the sample Harveyised plates submitted
the problem was thought solved by covering with clay dur-
ing the carbonizing process, the local spots desired to remain
soft. Such spots were painted white. Commercial plates
when delivered on board ship, though painted white in spots,
proved to be hard all over. Diamond drills, oxy-hydrogen
flame and other means were tried unsuccessfully. Her-
mann Lemp, who was then in the laboratories, of the Thom-
son-Houston Company, at Lynn, Massachusetts, narrates
that after a few trials, he learned that the problem was not
so much how properly to heat a spot in the plate as how to
cool it gradually below the ''chilHng poilit" by gradually
removing the heating source which was done by slowly dimin-
ishing the electric current used to heat the spot to be drilled.
After this treatment, spots and strips in armor plates could
be drilled and tapped with ease. Commercial apparatus
was promptly furnished to the Cramps' shipyard in Phila-
delphia and to the Union Iron Works at San Francisco,
permitting the speedy finishing of the Massachusetts and
the Oregon, the first Harveyised battleships. England
wrestled with another problem. The oblong port holes for
large guns in their conical turrets could not be cut after
Harveyising and would warp out of shape if cut before
Harveyising. Reluctantly soft nickel-steel armor was tem-
porarily specified for these turrets. By moving slowly the
electrical annealing apparatus along a designated line,
thereby withdrawing gradually the heating source from any
particular spot, a strip could be annealed permitting the
cutting of the port holes after Harveyising. Thus, also. Sir
Wilham White was enabled to issue his order that all her

98 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

Majesty's ships should be Harveyised from stem to stern.
These anneaUng sets were supphed to every country pos-
sessing a navy.

In 1921, the nation that so often led in advancing naval
offensive and defensive armament gained the cooperation
of the other great naval powers in calHng a halt. Inciden-
tally, the arts of peace have gained much from naval "neces-
sities," but the cost has been very great.

Based on information from various sources.

COMPRESSED AIR FOR UNDERWATER TUNNEL
CONSTRUCTION

A Means for Making Practicable Many Difficult
Foundations and Tunnels

Many a bridge pier, many a tunnel and the foundations
for many a modern ''skyscraper" would have been impossible
but for the use of compressed air. The story of the inven-
tion of compressed air equipment is another interesting
chapter in the history of modern engineering. The char-
acter who conceived the application of air under pressure to
tunnels in order to keep the water from flowing into the
workings, was, possibly, even more picturesque than Brunei,
inventor of the tunnel shield, to whom Narrative No. 31
was devoted.

Thomas Cochrane, the son of Archibald Cochrane, Ninth
Earl of Dundonald, was born in Scotland, December 14,
1775. Like Brunei, Cochrane served in the Navy; he went
to sea in 1793 and remained in service until 1851, becoming
an admiral. He acquired a deserved reputation for skill
and daring and took a leading part in several severe and
successful engagements. He was elected to Parliament and
made a mark as a radical reformer of everything and every-
one, excepting himself. Like Brunei, he got into the meshes
of the law; it was on a charge of fraud on the Stock Ex-
change, in which he speculated heavily. He, his uncle, and
some others were convicted, fined and imprisoned for one
year. It came natural to a man of his temperament to
escape from prison. He was recaptured, but regained his

100 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

liberty on payment of £1000. In the intervals of fighting
at sea, denouncing abuses and speculating on the Exchange,
he was busy with scientific invention.

Among many inventions, mostly having to do with the
propulsion of ships, he took out a memorable patent (No.
6018) on October 20, 1830, described an "Apparatus to
facihtate excavating, sinking and mining."* It is not too
much to say that the entire process of placing a tunnel or
shaft under compressed air for the purpose of holding back
the water and thus making the work easier, or possible, is
here exactly foreshadowed and described. "An iron cylinder,
or shaft, is first sunk vertically to the level of the intended
tunnel. The shaft is fitted with an air-tight top and ante-
chamber, or lock, by means of which men may enter the
shaft without escape of air. Air is pumped into the shaft
and kept at a continuous pressure. The men enter the
lock, close the outer door and open communication with the
shaft, by which the pressure in the antechamber becomes
that of the shaft, upon which the shaft door may be opened
for the men to enter."

"After the tunnel has been excavated for some distance,
a partition and double doors may be put up to retain air
more highly compressed within the tunnel, and similarly
several such compartments may be made by which the strain
on the various doors may be distributed."

There is but little doubt that the tremendous difficulties
of Brunei with the Thames tunnels must have inspired
Cochrane with the idea of the application of compressed air
to such work, and it is said that Dr. Colladon, a noted
physicist of that period, called Brunei's attention to Coch-

* Quotations are from original patent application.

COMPRESSED AIR FOR TUNNEL CONSTRUCTION 101

rane's proposal. Brunei did not adopt the idea. It was
not until 1879 that Cochrane's plan was put into effect, at
two widely separated places, at New York by Haskins for
his Hudson River tunnel, and on a much smaller scale by
Hersent at Antwerp. Lord Dundonald died in London,
October 30, 1860, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

His idea was, doubtless, derived from the diving bell which
had been known since the days of Alexander the Great and
Julius Caesar, and which was a source of much interest all
through the Middle Ages. A bell was invented by Kleingert
in 1798, by which the diver was supplied with air at a pres-
sure corresponding to the depth of water, and Brize-Fradin
in 1808, made improvements in the ventilation of diving
bells, cooling the compressed air with ice and using caustic
soda to absorb the exhaled carbon dioxide gas.

Without compressed air, the tunneling shield and the
caisson, many of our most remarkable civil engineering
works would have been impracticable. The caisson is only
a vertical modification of the tunnel shield, used for excavat-
ing the foundations of bridges and buildings.

Mr. Clemens Herschel quotes Eliot C. Clarke as authority
for the statement that he worked in the Detroit tunnel
under air pressure about 1872 or 1873. It is recorded by
still another authority that this railroad tunnel w^as begun
in 1872 and abandoned in 1873. — Editor.

Contributed by B. H. M. Hewett, of Jacobs & Davies, Consulting
Engineers for the Hudson River and other tunnels.

THE DISCOVERY OF MANGANESE STEEL

Its Metallurgical Paradoxes

Hadfield's discovery of manganese steel as a result of re-
search practically started the study of alloy steels. Before
him, Mushet had, indeed, worked out empirically a self-
hardening steel for metal-cutting tools, but it gave no such
impetus to research in the field of useful metals. As a young
man Hadfield started experimenting in his father's steel
foundry to see if he could find a hard steel suitable for tram-
car wheels. He melted his mixtures in crucibles and tested
his products by the means then at hand, — the file, chisel,
forge, magnet, and hardening and tempering. These were
enough to enable him when he first made an alloy coming
within the definition of maganese steel to reahze that he was
dealing with a new metal.

Before his time, everyone who had tried the effect of in-
creasing manganese in steel had found that the steel was made
harder and less ductile with each increase, so that if 2.5 per
cent were present the product was too hard and brittle to be
of any use. The highest proportion ever added had been
3.5 per cent, which made the steel even more brittle. Natu-
rally it was believed that more manganese would merely
result in still greater weakness.

Hadfield, however, took nothing for granted but tried
everything and as a result found the new alloy which, when it
contained about 13 per cent of manganese, and was properly
heat-treated, had maximum combined properties of strength
and toughness. He told his father, Robert Hadfield, and his

102

DISCOVERY or MANGANESE STEEL 103

superintendent, Mr. Mallaband, about his discovery. They
were naturally skeptical and told him that he would better
repeat his experiments. He did so with the same result and
then they began to take notice.

Here was a high-carbon steel which in several ways was the
opposite of what would be expected by any one familiar with
iron. A magnet would not attract it, and when heated to a
bright orange heat and cooled quickly, as by immersion in
cold water, it was given extraordinary ductility. There
were other less notable features but these were enough to
excite astonishment.

Naturally, the first attempts to adapt the new hard metal
were for cutting purposes, particularly for metals, but experi-
ments in that direction came to naught. The great field for
this steel, resistance to abrasion, particularly by earthy
materials such as rocks and ores, was not fairly recognized
until ten years after the steel was first made.

The discovery, as the result of systematic research, of a
metal having such unique properties as manganese steel,
started other steel-makers to see whether additional useful
alloys could be found. As a result of these activities, which
eventually extended throughout the civilized world, many
alloy steels have been developed of exceeding importance,
which have advanced materially the useful arts and particu-
larly the conquest of distance on land, in the air and under
the sea.

This discovery also argues strongly for research even with-
out a definite object. Hadfield was searching for a hard steel
for another purpose. He had no idea of finding a non-mag-
netic or water-toughening steel. So anyone has a chance of
finding something new and useful in any systematic investi-

104 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

gation or research which explores any unknown field of
knowledge.

As usual the inventor's reward was in this case an extremely
small part of the benefit of manganese steel to the world.
Years passed before the various uses for the steel were found.
Everyone disbelieved when told of it. Trials for the various
purposes had to be made to show its fitness. The develop-
ment of the business side called for the hberal expenditure
of time, effort and money. The life of the patent, fourteen
years, is too short a time to enable the inventor of anything
of such extreme novelty to be suitably recompensed in a
business way, though he may, as Sir Robert has, find satis-
faction in having forwarded the weKare of the world in so
great a degree.

Contributed by Henry D. Hibbard, Consulting Engineer, Plainfield,
New Jersey.

A STORY OF VELOX

Overcoming Difficulties by Research and Perseverance

Numerous Americans are, or have been, photographers of
one variety or another. To most of them the name Velox is
famihar. Few, however, know of the years of hard work, the
patient research, the repeated discouragements, the slow
process of education which preceded success. As far back as
1883, L. H. Baekeland, who was an enthusiastic amateur
photographer, while still a student in the University of
Ghent, invented this process. He was graduated in 1884, and
a few years later won the first prize in chemistry in a competi-
tion among the alumni graduated within three years from the
four Belgian universities. This prize included a traveHng
scholarship, which brought him to the United States in 1889.
Here he made acquaintanceships that led to professional
engagements in the manufacture of photographic films and
papers.

In 1893, with Leonard Jacobi, he estabHshed the Nepera
Chemical Company in Yonkers, New York. They began on
a small scale the manufacture of photographic papers. Other
investigators had substituted silver-chloride for silver-
bromide emulsions, but without change of process — namely,
precipitation and ripening, followed by washing. By com.-
mitting "photographic heresy" in omitting the washing
entirely, Baekeland found he could make a silver-chloride
which was relatively insensitive to yellow rays, and could
be manipulated by candle or gas light, if not brought too near.
As to speed, the new paper was incomparably inferior to

105

106 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

bromide paper or ordinary chloride of silver paper. But he
realized the important fact that by exposing quite close to the
artificial light, and developing at a safe distance (a few feet)
this apparent defect could be turned to great practical
advantage.

Do not imagine that everything went smoothly. In 1893
came the famous business panic. Then there was more than
the usual share of technical troubles. For instance, while
excellent paper could be made in temperate weather, it be-
came practically hopeless to do so in hot summer days. The
remedy seemed easy — to rectify the temperature by artificial
cooling, but this had not the desired effect. After a while
special scientific investigation disclosed the fact that the
troubles were due not so much to temperature as to the
moisture in the air. This led to installing a refrigerating
system over which the air could be drawn first, so as to ex-
tract its moisture by precipitating it as ice, after which the
dried air could be sent over heated pipes so as to raise its
temperature to the proper degree before it entered the paper
coating machinery.

Manufacturers in Europe, where the moisture in the air
does not vary to such extraordinary extent, had scarcely any
conception of the difficult problems encountered in the
United States, where in winter the air is so dry as to cause
electric sparks, while in the summer the air is often so satu-
rated that many objects condense humidity at temperatures
as high as 76 degrees Fahrenheit. Photographs made with
inferior processes may last many years if kept in Europe,
but frequently deteriorate here in a few weeks in summer.
A simple test distinguished which kind of prints were most
likely to fade. By cutting a photograph in two and exposing

STORY OF VELOX 107

one-half in a jar to the fumes of ammonium-hydrosulphide a
few hours showed the same amount of fading as would have
been produced under ordinary conditions after months or
years.

Upon these experiments was based the manufacture of
several sensitized papers which could be unhesitatingly recom-
mended as giving permanent prints. One of these papers
was called Velox on account of the speed with which the
prints could be made independently of weather conditions.
Baekeland was firmly convinced that this process had a great
future. Unfortunately, the public did not think so at all.
In fact, it was disappointing to notice how every photog-
rapher, amateur or professional, was wedded to the older
processes and would have nothing to do with the method
about which he felt so enthusiastic. His best friends and
others did not hesitate to tell him that there was no chance
whatsoever for this new method, because "it was so much
simpler and easier to print in the sun, " to which everybody
was accustomed.

Later he realized that most of these people knew too much
and never gave themselves the trouble of even glancing at the
printed directions; they were, like so many other persons,
past learning anything new. Finally, success came from the
most unexpected quarters. A new generation of modest
amateurs began to read and follow directions. To the dis-
gust of their more experienced friends who "knew it all,"
they showed excellent prints on the new paper, better in
several respects than experienced men had produced with
older processes. It required four years of hectic work and
strenuous introduction before the business began to show
slight profit. Two years more, and the enterprise began to

108 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

prosper rapidly. In 1899, it was sold, at a good price, to
the Eastman Kodak Company, sixteen years after the begin-
ning in Ghent.

Prepared from information supplied by Dr. Leo Hendrik Baekeland,
New York.

PATTERN-SHOP RESEARCH

Early Development of Hydraulic Turbines

Poet and painter familiarized the populace with the pic-
turesque water wheels along the streams of many countries,
which but a generation or two ago, drove the machinery of
small mills. For the most part, those wheels were of low
efficiency. From them to the turbines of tens of thousands of
horse-power which harness Niagara and many another "big
drop," is a long step in water-power development. Poets
have not yet learned the song of these new giants, with their
aUies, the modern electric generator and the high tension
transmission line, nor have painters yet made them pic-
turesque. They are, none the less, full of poetry of
achievement.

Early in the 19th century, French inventors produced tur-
bines in which the water flowed in a direction generally paral-
lel with the axis of the rotating part, or runner, and turbines
in which the water flowed outward or less radially through the
runner. These simpler types could be used only for rela-
tively small capacities and slow speeds. Then came the
development in America of the inward flow type, the work
of no one inventor. Samuel B. Howd, of Geneva, New York,
patented such a turbine in 1836, which closely resembles the
most modern types in its principle. While more compact and
giving a higher speed than the French turbine, it was still a
wheel of smaU capacity. James B. Francis, of Lowell,
Massachusetts, improved its mechanical construction and
efiSciency.

109

110 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

Probably the greatest achievement of any one man in
advancing the development of the hydraulic turbine was
that of John B. McCormick, of Indiana County, Pennsyl-
vania. He had a little sawmill on a small stream, and could
run only a pondful at a time. The wheel was too large and
used water so rapidly that it drew down the pond quickly and
so curtailed operations. As in many other old sawmill
wheels, there was no satisfactory way of reducing the quantity
of water used. Like most early turbines and those of the
present day as well, the water passages through the runners
or buckets, as they are called, were narrower at the outlet
than at the inlet to the wheel. McCormick conceived the
idea that by still further extending the buckets he would make
the outlets still narrower, thus choking the discharge, reduc-
ing the quantity of water used, and conserving the pondage.
To accomplish this he rivetted sheet iron extensions on to the
outlets of the buckets, keeping the same form as the original
passages but making them longer, narrower and more curved.
To his great surprise and gratification he found not only that
the quantity of water used was reduced, but that in spite of
using less water, the power of the wheel was considerably in-
creased. This led him to further experiments.

About 1870, McCormick found .that by extending the
bucket vanes of an inward flow turbine downward and out-
ward, making them ladle or spoon shaped, he was able
greatly to increase the outlet openings of a turbine of a given
diameter. At the same time, the length or depth of the inlet
openings was proportionately increased, thus greatly increas-
ing the capacity without increasing the diameter of the run-
ner. Since the speed of a turbine decreases as the diameter
increases, he thus produced a turbine of much greater capac-

PATTERN-SHOP RESEARCH 111

ity without reducing the speed. It was also found that the
use of curved vanes providing for downward and outward
flow, as well as inward flow through the runner, increased the
efficiency since the water left the wheel in a direction opposite
to that of the motion of the runner and so dropped away from
the runner with little absolute velocity.

Not being able to analyze his intricate problem mathe-
matically, McCormick depended upon his aptitude for
mechanics, his keen observation and a sense of the action of
the water in passing through the wheel. He worked on his
wooden patterns with his own hands, making them express
the results of his latest observations on trials of his wheels
at the testing flume in Holyoke, or their preformance in ser-
vice. By trial and modification, he steadily advanced the
efficiency of his turbines. His work was almost revolution-
ary. He laid the foundation for the great advances of recent
years.

McCormick's designs were, however, arbitrary and each
size or pattern was worked out by long and costly experimen-
tation. Although the theory of the hydrauUc turbine had
been evolved mathematically many years before, it was never
successfully applied to the design of turbines to meet specific
conditions until after the advent of hydroelectric power trans-
mission. The next step in advance consisted in the modifica-
tion of the combined-flow, or McCormick, turbine largely by
means of theoretical deductions so as to adapt it to speeds,
capacities and other conditions different from those for which
the experimental designs were made. Furthermore, the
growth in the size of units made the McCormick method of
pattern-shop research no longer practicable.

Based upon information supplied by Robert E. Horton, Consulting
Hydraulic Engineer, Voorheesville, New York.

SMELTING TITANIFEROUS IRON ORE
Prospector and Researcher

This story begins with a prospector. Most stories dealing
with mining and metallurgy can be traced back to the pioneer
who seeks his fortune amid the wild hills and rocks.

In 1913, a prospecting party in Canada, searching for gold,
ran across some peculiar looking iron ore. They recognized
it as titaniferous ore; but that did not satisfy them. Being
prospectors trained in science, they followed up their work in
the field with work in the laboratory. Qualitative tests for
radium, molybdenum, nickel, and cobalt gave traces at most.
When it came to vanadium, a beautiful violet-blue color
demonstrated the presence of that rare metal. Then the fun
began.

Being impecunious, these prospectors got financial backing,
went off to the woods in the Spring, and staked out four miles
of claims along their iron range. They hired an accomplished
analyst, who sent them telegrams that reeked with vanadium.

With ore running from two to five per cent of the precious
metal, its price at six dollars a pound, and millions of tons of
ore in sight, things seemed too good to be true. They were.
Samples of ore were sent to half a dozen consulting chem-
ists, and the opinion of these was unanimous — there was no
vanadium to be found, or at best only traces.

The war provided a merciful hiatus.

Not content with the judgment of their analysts, the
prospectors, now reduced to two in number, tackled their
problem again in 1919. They remembered very clearly that

112

SMELTING TITANIFEROUS IRON ORE 113

violet-blue color. They searched for and found a reliable
method of analysis for vanadium in the presence of titanium
(Cain's method); then, after a long study of the old reliable
Periodic table, discovered a brand new method of smelting
iron ore. They mixed titaniferous ore with sand as flux, ran
it through an electric reducing furnace, and got pig-iron con-
taining all the vanadium in the ore (a highly satisfactory
quantity), and a beautifully fluid slag. This was confirmed
in large-scale experiments, and then followed up by two years
of research under the auspices of the Advisory Research Coun-
cil of Canada. This research established the chemical con-
trol of the operation. Now steps are being taken to apply the
process commercially.

Thus, there is demonstrated, once more, the usefulness of
research. Without it, the world's huge deposits of titan-
iferous iron ore would remain unused for decades, or for cen-
turies, or forevermore. With it, we may get vanadium alloy
steel for our automobiles at half its present price. And when
cost is greatly reduced, new uses for a material are commonly
found.

Contributed by W. M. Goodwin, Editor, Canadian Mining Journaly
Garden vale, Province of Quebec.

THE BIRTH OF BAKELITE: ITS GROWTH

An Adventure with Synthetic Resins

Bakelite was born of formaldehyde and phenol, but it was
only through very scientific matchmaking that this union was
brought about. Other substances may be used, for example,
cresol and hexamethylentetramin. Formaldehyde in react-
ing upon phenol does not necessarily give bakelite. It is
only under very special conditions, now well established
by the research work of Baekeland, that this substance can
be obtained. In fact, when formaldehyde is let to react on
phenol under ordinary conditions, almost anything may
happen but the formation of bakelite.

A number of investigators worked in this field but without
producing any result which gave promise of commercial
success. One, for example, obtained insoluble, irregular
masses which he could not control. Baekeland sought a sol-
vent for this worthless product, hoping to make a varnish
superior to all existing varnishes. After many attempts, he
had to give up the quest.

Then he changed his tactics. If nothing could be done
with the substance after it was once produced in a flask, he
would generate the substance right on the spot where he
wanted it, inside the fibers of wood. He encountered endless
difficulties. Certain classes of wood instead of becoming
harder, became softer. He also noticed that chemical reac-
tions in these capillary conditions proceed in a very different
way than in a flask, for the reason that the chemical dynamics
in capillary spaces are considerably disturbed. The carbolic

114

BIRTH OF BAKELITE: ITS GROWTH 115

acid (phenol), before it had time to react upon the formalde-
hyde had every opportunity for destroying the fibre.

This led to a long systematic laboratory investigation.
When he was through he had established practically all
important facts on which are based the industrial processes of
bakelite. Under certain conditions, he could separate the
process into steps; one of the first steps was the production
of a certain intermediary substance which, although it had
the general appearance of a resin on account of its brittleness,
its solubility and its fusibility, differed radically from the
natural resins by the fact that as soon as heated at a certain
temperature it changed into an entirely different body in-
comparably harder and stronger than the original resinous
material and which, furthermore, looked like natural amber
although it was much stronger and no longer melted if heated,
and was insoluble in all known neutral solvents.

He discovered also the important fact that the presence of
ammonia, or another base, in suitable proportions, will surely
make the reaction go the right way toward the production of
the infusible product, while with the presence of an acid, the
formation of permanently fusible resins will be favored in
case the amounts of carbolic acid are preponderant; that
furthermore, the use of a suitable base in proper quantities
gives an easy means of controlling the reaction at whatever
phase is desirable.

The mechanical properties of these infusible condensation
products were enormously improved by the introduction of
fibrous substances, for example, wood fibre or asbestos.
Many other facts were estabUshed by his work. He not
only pointed out unmistakable methods for producing every
time, at will, either a fusible or an infusible resin, but he gave

116 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

the explanation why in one case one substance and in another
case a different one was obtained when starting from the same
raw materials.

Since he published his patents and read his papers* before 1
the American Chemical Society, there have been started here
and in Europe numerous factories where these processes are
used for the most varied purposes, ranging from a bilhard
ball to wireless, or radio, apparatus; from a self-starter for
automobiles to transparent fountain pens, this range of
varieties embracing switchboards for battleships, moldings
for kodaks, phonograph records, casings for instruments of
precision, armatures and commutators for dynamos and
motors, telephone receivers, railroad signals, grinding wheels,
machine gears, airplane propellers, umbrella handles, buttons,
cigar holders and pipe stems, articles of ornament and many
other varieties.

Prepared from information supplied by Dr. Leo Hendrik Baekeland,
New York.

PALLADIUM

Danger in Discrediting the Unlikely

A single serious error has, in some instances, caused an
investigator to abandon science. The following example is
given by Dr. Thomson: — Chenevix was for several years a
most laborious and meritorious chemical experimenter. It is
much to be regretted that he should have been induced, in
consequence of the mistake into which he fell respecting
palladium, to abandon chemistry altogether.

Palladium was originally made known to the public by an
anonymous handbill which was circulated in London, an-
nouncing that palladium, or new silver, was on sale at Mrs.
Forster's, and describing its properties. Chenevix, in con-
sequence of the unusual way in which the discovery was
announced, naturally considered it as an imposition upon the
public. He went to Mrs. Forster's, and purchased the whole
of the palladium in her possession, and set about examining
it, prepossessed with the idea that it was an alloy of some
two known metals. After a laborious set of experiments, he
considered that he had ascertained it to be a compound of
platinum and mercury, or an amalgam of platinum, made in a
peculiar way which he describes. The paper was read at a
meeting of the Royal Society by Dr. Wollaston, who was
Secretary, and afterwards pubHshed in their "Transactions. "

Soon after this pubHcation another anonymous handbill
was circulated, offering a considerable price for every grain
of palladium made by Mr. Chenevix's process, or by any other
process whatever. No person appearing to claim the money

117

118 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

thus offered, Dr. Wollaston, about a year after, in a paper
read to the Royal Society, acknowledged himself to have been
the discoverer of palladium, and related the process by which
he had obtained it from the solution of crude platina in aqua
regia, incident to his process of manufacturing platinum.
There could be no doubt, after this, that palladium wasapecu-
liar metal, and that Chenevix, in his experiments, had fallen
into some mistake, probably by inadvertently employing a
solution of palladium instead of a solution of his amalgam
of platinum, and thus giving the properties of one solution
to the other.

It is very much to be regretted that Dr. Wollaston allowed
Chenevix's paper to be printed without informing him, in the
first place, of the true history of palladium; most assuredly,
if he had been aware of the bad consequences that were to
follow, and that it would ultimately occasion the loss of
Chenevix to the science, he would have acted in a different
manner. More than once in the course of conversation on
the subject. Dr. Wollaston gave assurance that he did every-
thing that he could do, short of betraying his secret, to pre-
vent Chenevix from publishing his paper; that he had called
upon him and assured him that he himself had attempted his
process without being able to succeed, and that he was satis-
fied that he had fallen into some mistake. As Chenevix still
persisted in his conviction of the accuracy of his own experi-
ments after repeated warnings, perhaps it is not very sur-
prising that Dr. Wollaston allowed him to publish his paper,
though, had he been aware of the consequences to their full
extent, he certainly would not have done so. It comes to
be a question whether, had Dr. Wollaston informed him of
the whole secret, Chenevix would have been convinced.

PALLADIUM 119

An instructive moral may be drawn by a scientific investi-
gator from this example, especially the great danger of being
too strongly impressed with a preconceived idea, and the
duty of not holding an h)^othesis as if it were a fixed truth.
Nothing, also, so effectually destroys the motives for research
and the pleasure of such occupation, as to find, after having
made and published a laborious investigation, that the con-
clusion was all a mistake.

History of Chemistry, vol. ii, p. 216, Thomson. — G. Gore, LL.D.,
F.R.S., in "The Art of Scientific Discovery. "

ALCHEMISTIC SYMBOLS

An Ancient Means for Protecting Knowledge

The pursuit of new knowledge, one modern phase of which
is scientific research, has always met opposition. So strong
was this opposition by the established order in olden days
that it sometimes led to social abasement, torture or death.
Hence the necessity for secrecy and the use of symbols.
In remote centuries, enterprising men began to experiment
with the things that made up their physical surroundings.
By slow stages an art grew which came to be called chemy
and later alchemy. Very early in the days of alchemy, the
commoner substances were represented in writings of the
alchemists by symbols, and likewise many operations of their
art. The origins of these symbols are sometimes easily
recognized; sometimes the symbols seem to have been prod-
ucts of the fancy. Among the most ancient are those used
for the metals; their germ is to be found in the earliest days
of history.

In the misty times of the past, there lived on the great
plain at the head of the Persian Gulf a race whose wisdom
was famed to surpass that of all surrounding peoples. In the
clear atmosphere of that region they watched from the sum-
mits of high mounds the stars and the planets, seeking to
trace a connection between the heavenly bodies and the
affairs of earth. Here, among the Chaldeans, was born
astrology, the mother of astronomy. Here, too, are found
the beginnings of alchemy, which three thousand or more
years later was to develop into the science of chemistry.

120

ALCHEMISTIC SYMBOLS

121

The Chaldeans associated the metals known to them with
the planets, and believed that through their influence the
metals grew in the earth. The planets in turn were closely
connected with the gods and goddesses of the pantheon of
mythology. This threefold association of metals, planets
and divinities seems for many centuries to have been dor-
mant, but was revived by the alchemists, and by them the
metals were always called by the name of the planet. In
gold was typified the bright yellow glow of the sun, in silver,

A Air
Jbk Fire
■"^ST" Water

Q Antimony
as Gold

^^ (Sol. Sun)

"5 Lead

^ (Saturn)

Arsenic

-b

Platinum
(White Gold)

Bismuth

•J

Silver

(Luna. Moon)

Copper

(Venus)

♦

Sulphur

Iron

(Mars)

Tin

(Jupiter)

Mercury

Zinc

Nickel

+ Acid

the soft white light of the moon; in iron, the weapons of
Mars, the war-god; in copper, Venus Anadyomene, rising,
full-formed, in all her beauty from the ocean's foam on the
shore of the island of Cyprus, from which comes the name of
copper. Lead, which, however we may polish it, soon loses
its brightness, was the metal of Saturn, dullest of all the gods.
Tin, known in early times only in bronze, its alloy with
copper, was the metal of Jupiter, who, under the name Bel,
was always associated by the Chaldeans with Venus, called
by them Beltis. Finally in quicksilver was found the fitting

122 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

type of Mercury, fleet-footed messenger of the gods. Some
of these designations have been retained even to the present:
quicksilver is commonly known as mercury, silver nitrate
is called lunar caustic, and saturnine poisoning prevails
among lead-workers.

In the old alchemistic writings we find the names of the
metals very generally written with the astronomical sym-
bols of the planets, and from these symbols has been devel-
oped, through many changes, the present simple system of
one-letter and two-letter abbreviations used in modern
chemistry.

When platinum was discovered, it was first called L'or
blanc (white gold) , and hence to it was given a symbol com-
bining those of gold and silver, platinum resembling gold in
its noble qualities, being unattacked by any single acid,
unoxidizable, fusible with difficulty and of high specific
gravity, and resembling silver in its color. Many other and
more obscure symbols were gradually introduced, until in
one alchemistic manuscript of the early part of the seven-
teenth century no less than twenty-two symbols and thirty-
three distinct names are used for mercury alone.

But, with all its ignorance, as we now consider it, and with
all its deceit, it was out of this maze of alchemy, with its
transmutation of metals and its philosopher's stone, that the
chemistry of to-day was at length evolved.

Abridged from a brochure by James Lewis Howe, Washington and
Lee University, written for Baker & Co., Inc.

TEMPERATURES OF STARS

Degrees of Heat Above Any Known on the Earth

By study of distant stars, knowledge of our own earth and
Sun is being extended. Improvements in the telescope, and
invention of the spectroscope about 1859 by Gustav Kirch-
hoff and Robert Bunsen made possible the determination of
the chemical elements in our own Sun and many others. In
recent years the spectroscope has been applied also to
measurement of temperatures of stars, and there have been
discovered temperatures as high as 10,000°C. far above
any which man has hitherto succeeded in creating. The
highest temperature known to have been produced on the
earth is 5500°C. in the tungsten arc under high pressure, at
Nela Research Laboratory, Cleveland, Ohio.

Many observations on stellar temperatures have been
made by Coblentz at the Lick Observatory, Mt. Hamilton,
California, in 1914, and at the Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff,
Arizona, in 1921 and in 1922. In 1914, he used very sensitive
vacuum thermocouples and passed the star's light through
a tiny water cell. The water cell has the property of absorb-
ing the invisible infra-red rays which are emitted by stars of
low luminosity. Hence, it is a useful device for studying
double stars, like Sirius, which have companions of low
luminosity and for searching for double stars which may have
dark companions.

The transmission screens of water, quartz and different
kinds of glass, adopted in 1921, made it feasible to obtain
for the first time some knowledge of the energy distribution
of stars, and demonstrated what astronomers did not know

123

124 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

before, that the photographic plate, when properly standard-
ized will be a useful adjunct in measuring spectral energy
distribution and temperature of faint stars and nebulai
that cannot be determined by other known means.

Last June, Coblentz made some interesting measurements
on the heat from planets — a subject that is very obscure.
For example, it is thought that Jupiter may be still quite
hot, but his measurements with the water cell showed the
same transmission for rays coming directly from the Sun, as
for rays coming from Jupiter. This means that the atmo-
sphere of Jupiter does not become heated by the Sun's rays
and by internal radiation, and that any heat emitted by the
planet is trapped by the planet.

Again, the water cell shows that of the total radiation
emanating from Mars, 30 per cent is long- wave-length infra-
red radiation, resulting primarily from warming of the Mar-
tian surface by the Sun's rays. In the same manner, it is
found that 80 per cent of the radiation from the Moon is to
be traced to the heating of the lunar surface by the Sun's
rays. The temperature of the lunar surface is probably up
to 75°C. to 100°C. when exposed to full sunlight and that of
Mars may be 10°C. to 25°C. As for the views held by some
of the possibility of vegetation growing on Mars, all depends
upon whether we think of palm trees which grow in our trop-
ics or the mosses and lichens which thrive under our arctic
snow. So, whether or not we believe that vegetation can
exist on Mars, radiometric measurements confirm the con-
clusions arrived at by astronomers that at Martian moon
the snow is melted.

Recently, Abbott and Aldrich using the 100-inch reflector
at Mount Wilson and Langley's spectrobolometer, have

TEMPERATURES OF STARS 125

measured the energy in the spectrum of several bright stars,
and estimated stellar temperature up to 10,000°C. This
confirms transmission screen measurements of 1921, which
simply included wider regions of the spectrum in a single
measurement.

As to the usefulness of it all, and the practical applications,
— that we cannot foretell. It may give us a clue to attain
higher temperatures in our laboratories. The appalhng
size of a star (300,000,000 miles diameter), the gravitational
pressure, the pressure exerted by the light waves, etc., indi-
cate that these high stellar temperatures are owing to dissoci-
ation of the stuff of which matter is made. With this as a
guide, who will assert that man will never be able to attain
higher temperatures than now recorded?

Based upon information from Dr. W. W. Coblentz, Physicist, Bureau
of Standards, Washington, D. C.

KINEMATIC MODELS OF ELECTRICAL
MACHINERY

Reducing a Phenomenon to a System of Simultaneous
Equations

There are two kinds of problems in physics and engineer-
ing, those that can be solved step by step, and those which
must be solved by means of simultaneous equations. Prob-
lems in arithmetic are mostly of the first kind. In engineer-
ing similarly we determine step by step the diameter of a
shaft, then the size of a pulley to go on that shaft, then the
dimensions of the belt to go over the pulley. In the other
class of problems it is necessary to consider simultaneously
the relations of two or more variables. For example, the
required dimensions of the girder members of a large steel
bridge are determined largely by the weight of the bridge.
Stresses and weight are two mutually dependent functions,
neither of which is known at the start. The usual method of
solution is that of successive approximations.

As a boy of eight I insisted to my father that there must
be a shorter way of solving arithmetical problems, than by
long discussions on the theme of ''had the merchant sold
five yards less and received 25 cents more. " He hesitatingly
explained to me how to denote the unknown number of yards
by %, and to write and to solve a first-degree algebraic equa-
tion. At about the same age I wished to discover short cuts
for multiplication of large numbers, so as to have more leisure
for multitudinous enterprises in which an active boy engages.
I discovered some useful rules; the most helpful of these was

126

KINEMATIC MODELS OF ELECTRICAL MACHINERY 127

how to obtain the square of a number ending in 5. Thus to
find the square of 75, multiply 7 by 7 + 1, and write 25 at
the right end. This gives 5625.

As a Junior in civil engineering in Petrograd I became
interested in statically-indeterminate trusses and girders,
because it was a problem which could not be solved step by
step, either arithmetically or geometrically. In the Electro-
technical Institute in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1899, I
became interested in the problem of current and voltage rela-
tions in polyphase systems, on unbalanced loads; again be-
cause it was a problem that could not be solved step by step,
but led to simultaneous vectorial relations. As a designer
of alternating-current machinery and as an investigator of
its theory, I have been repeatedly impressed by the similar
involved nature of the problems. All the principal dimen-
sions of a machine and its performance characteristics are so
interconnected that one has either to use the method of
successive approximations, or to establish and to solve a
system of complicated simultaneous equations.

Then the idea of kinematic models for representing the
performance of electrical machinery occurred to me. A num-
ber of adjustable kinematic elements, such as rods and disks,
may be so connected as to represent a desired equation and
to form a system of any number of degrees of freedom. By
interconnecting two or more such systems and by imposing
constraints, in the form of guides, the number of degrees of
freedom may be limited to two or one, thus giving the
characteristics of synchronous and induction machinery
respectively.

Then followed several years of efforts to realize these ideas
in the form of workable models, first of cardboard, then of
wood, and finally of steel bars with brass fittings. Progress

128 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

was slow until help came from a special research fund donated
to Cornell University by Mr. August Heckscher, of New
York. The following kinematic models have been
completed:

1 . A device for imitating the performance of the electro-

magnetic clutch used in Owen magnetic automobiles.

2. The Secomor, which imitates the performance of a

polyphase series-connected commutator motor.

3. The Indumor, which imitates the performance of a

polyphase induction motor; and its modification,
the Shucomor, which represents the performance of
a shunt-connected polyphase commutator motor.

4. The BlondeUon, which represents the characteristics

of a synchronous generator or motor.

5. The Heavisidion, which represents the operating

characteristics of a transmission line with distributed
capacitance and leakage.

6. The C. P. S.'er (named after Dr. C. P. Steinmetz),

for the automatic addition of impedances in series
and admittances in parallel.

7. An Integraph based on parallel double-tongs, for

mechanical integration or differentiation of a given

curve. This device finds its usefulness in problems

like ''hunting" of machinery, fly-wheel design,

ship stability, etc.

An important possibility from use of kinematic models is

more rapid improvement of electrical machinery, because

the labor of computations for comparative designs is greatly

reduced. It is easier to study a range of combinations or to

see effects of modifications.

By Vladimir Karapetoff, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Cornell
University, Ithaca, N. Y.

MEASURING MOLECULES

A Research in Pure Science Often Has Many and
Unexpected Practical Applications

How large are molecules and what are their shapes? The
layman frequently expresses incredulity as to practical use-
fulness of the refined and abstruse work of scientific research.
Such increduHty is found even among technical men and
other persons whose occupations or fortunes are built upon
the sciences. Attempts to solve problems whose industrial
importance needs no explanation often are unsuccessful until
Science has gone far toward the "root of the matter."
Fundamental facts so gained are frequently of wide
application.

A modern method for separating copper and certain other
metals from some kinds of ores is known as the flotation
process. Finely pulverized ore is mixed with water con-
taining a small quantity of oil which forms a persistent froth
upon agitation. The solid particles of ore are wet with the
oil and these oiled particles adhere to the bubbles of froth.
Thus the ore particles float to the top of the tank containing
the mixture while the non-metallic particles of the ore, not
being wet by the oil, do not adhere to the froth and fall to
the bottom of the tank. The remarkable selective action
of some oils on certain ores and the effects produced by small
quantities of acids and other substances are imperfectly
understood.

Some experiments undertaken by Dr. Irving Langmuir
in the General Electric Laboratory at Schenectady, have led

129

130 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

to the determination of the sizes of molecules of a number of
substances and to the proofs of the fact that molecules could
not be merely smooth, rigid spheres. It appeared that the
dimensions of some molecules differed, the length, for exam-
ple, in some cases, being several times the square root of the
area of the cross-section. It was also evident that the
active atoms, or groups of atoms, in certain molecules of a
liquid when spread upon the surface of a solid or another
liquid, turned in the direction of the surface of contact so as
to engage the atoms or molecules in the supporting surface.
This knowledge helps to explain why certain liquids will wet
each other, and certain solids, but not others — in other words,
will spread in a uniform film over the whole surface of
contact.

These experiments were undertaken solely because of their
scientific interest. Only later was it realized that they had
an important bearing on the process of flotation.

These phases of the subject, it will readily be seen, are of
importance also in the very practical problem of lubrication,
of interest to everybody who runs a machine of any kind.
For in order that he may have sold to him the right kind of
lubricant, or in order that expensive machinery may not be
injured, those who manufacture the lubricants should have
the benefit of the chemist's and physicist's knowledge of the
fundamental principles developed by such research as that
of Dr. Langmuir.

Probably of even wider interest than lubrication, is the
subject of painting and varnishing of surfaces of wood, metals
and ceramics. Persons who are experimenting upon the
nature of paints and other protective coatings for wood, are
finding that Dr. Langmuir 's studies in connection with the
phenomena of flotation are helpful to them also.

MEASURING MOLECULES 131

But how big is a molecule? To use as an example a com-
monly known substance, a molecule of castor oil has a cross
section in square centimeters expressed by the fraction having
209 for its numerator, and 1 with sixteen ciphers after it for
the denominator; its length in centimeters is 5.5 divided by
1 with eight ciphers; — almost too small to be conceived.

Based upon information from Dr. Irving Langmuir, General Electric
Company Research Laboratory, Schenectady, New York.

TITANIUM PRODUCTS AND THEIR
DEVELOPMENT

An Old Metallurgical Project Revived and Extended

About 1830, Archibald Maclntyre, David Henderson and
associates purchased a large tract of land in Essex County,
New York, in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains. This
deposit was brought to their attention by Indians, who had
visited a small forge in Keene Valley, where iron ore was
being smelted. The red men told of a great body of similar
material forming a dam near the head waters of the Hudson
River. The white men accompanied them to this spot, and
having examined the surrounding country carefully, soon
arranged for a purchase totalling several square miles.

Despite the extreme ruggedness of the country and the
fact that these ore deposits were 40 miles from Lake Cham-
plain, these hardy pioneers in 1840 erected a small charcoal
furnace. This furnace was remodelled in 1848, and in 1852
a much larger furnace (11 feet 6 inches X 48 feet) was built
and operated successfully, using titaniferous iron ores carry-
ing as high as 18 to 20 per cent titanic oxide. The operation
of this furnace was continued until 1856, when, for various
reasons, principally lack of transportation, its operation was
discontinued.

This old furnace, still standing, in fairly good state of
preservation, was recently carefully examined by experts.
Their report to the present owners of the property was con-
clusive that no serious difficulties had been encountered in
the smelting of titaniferous ores. The lining shows no sign of
scaffolding; the hearth was blown out clear to the bottom, and
the slag shows evidence of considerable fluidity.

132

TITANIUM PRODUCTS 133

As years rolled by there grew up a prejudice against the
use of titaniferous ores in blast furnace practice, and about
1890 Dr. Auguste J. Rossi, whose name has since become
,well known because of his work on titanium, was engaged to
demonstrate that titaniferous ores could be successfully used
in blast furnace practice under more modern conditions.
He produced an alloy of iron and titanium, which it was
found later was a most efficient deoxidizer and cleanser for
the treatment of steel because of the great affinity of titan-
ium for both oxygen and nitrogen, and also because of the
property of titanic oxide, formed by the oxidation of titan-
ium, of combining with other slags and oxides and increasing
their fusibility, thus effecting their release from the steel by
rising to its surface and combining with the slag. The
present extensive manufacture and use of ferro-titanium is a
result of this pioneer research of Dr. Rossi and indirectly of
the early work of Maclntyre, Henderson and their associates.

Some ten or twelve years ago, in the research departments
of The Titanium Alloy Manufacturing Company, at Niagara
Falls, New York, the extreme opaquing or hiding power of
the white pigment, titanic oxide, when mixed with oil was
noted. It was found, however, that to manufacture titanic
oxide to compete with other opaque white pigments would be
practically impossible. Further research demonstrated that
a composite pigment consisting of only 25 per cent of titanic
oxide thrown down on a base of precipitated barium sulphate,
probably because of the wonderful fineness of the particles
and maximum distribution of the titanic oxide, actually had
approximately 80 per cent of the hiding power of a pigment
consisting of 100 per cent titanic oxide.

This research followed by careful tests to demonstrate the
availabiUty of this composite titanium pigment brought out

134 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

the fact that such a pigment had greater hiding power than
any white pigment known, was exceedingly inert to various
vehicles (oils, etc.) and other pigments, was non-poisonous,
and had many properties which made it unique among pig-
ments. After several years of research development, this
pigment is now being manufactured in large quantities in this
country and Norway.

Already many other uses for the element Titanium have
been suggested and no one can safely predict the limit of this
development, which originated 75 or 80 years ago, when a few
venturesome men attempted the seemingly impossible task
of manufacturing iron in the wilderness.

By Andrew Thompson, General Manager, The Titanium Alloy Manu-
facturing Company, Niagara Falls, New York.

(

BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN
Light of Wires Exploded by Electrical Discharges

By aid of the spectroscope astrophysicists are studying
the sun and the stars. In order to interpret observations
surely, it is necessary to reproduce in the laboratory condi-
tions which give results like those observed through the
telescope. In attempts to reproduce high-temperature
absorption spectra, such as those of the sun and some stars,
J. A. Anderson, of Mt. Wilson Solar Observatory, devised a
method for exploding metallic wires by means of electrical
discharges. He used fine wires two inches long, of iron, cop-
per, nickel and manganin. Spectra were obtained beyond
those previously produced in a laboratory and some striking
phenomena were observed in connection with the explosions.

To furnish suitable current, a condenser was built of
ninety-eight plates of window glass 16 by 20 inches, having
somewhat smaller sheets of tin-foil on each side attached with
shellac. This condenser was charged electrically at 26,000
volts. By discharging the condenser through the wire to be
exploded, about 30 calories of energy were dissipated in one
one-hundred- thousandth of a second. If all this energy had
gone into the two milligrams of wire, it would have raised its
temperature to approximately 300,000 degrees Centigrade.
Actually the flash had an intrinsic intensity of light corre-
sponding to a temperature of about 20,000 degrees, or
approximately one hundred times the intrinsic brilliancy
of the sun. In spite of this high temperature, the apparent
absence of heat effects was weird. When copper wires with

135

136 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

cotton insulation were exploded, in some cases the insulation
was unchanged. Tissue paper wrapped tightly around a
wire was torn to bits, but not burned or even charred. The
extreme brevity of the existence of the high temperature is
the explanation.

If a glass tube with open ends were slipped over the wire,
the explosion broke the tube to fragments, which were
scattered all over the room. If the ends of the tube were
closed with corks and the tube filled with water, the water
disappeared completely and the tube was broken into powder
so fine as to be unrecognizable as glass. With the wire a few
millimeters below the free surface of water in a large glass
jar, the sound-wave transmitted through the water by the
explosion wrecked the jar. In the circuit with the condenser
and the wire to be exploded was a spark gap. The sparks
were very noisy. An observer could not go close with im-
punity unless he protected his ears. This was especially
true when a wire was exploded. The sound-wave then sent
out could be felt as a distinct sharp blow on the face or hands
at a distance of twenty inches or more.

Certain effects accompanying an explosion suggested that
the resultant gases when first formed were at high pressures.
Efforts were made to measure this pressure by various means.
Values of approximately fifty atmospheres (700 pound's per
square inch) were determined, when using a nickel wire 0.127
millimeter in diameter. With the smaller iron wires used in
many experiments, the pressure was probably of the order of
twenty atmospheres.

Consideration of what would happen to a meteoric particle
falling into the sun, led to the experiments with the wires. It
seemed probable that the path of such a particle within the

BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN 137

atmosphere of the sun would not be long, and that the
particle would be consumed in a very brief time, probably a
fraction of a second. The conditions indicate that a very
large quantity of energy is thrown into a small amount of
matter in a short time. By electrical means, it seemed
possible to throw much energy into a short, fine wire in an
extremely brief interval of time. On this basis, the experi-
ments were devised and successfully executed.

Based upon information from Dr. J. A. Anderson, of the Mt. Wilson
Observatory, Pasadena, California. For a fuller account of the experi-
ments, see the " Astrophysical Journal," January, 1920.

DECOMPOSING THE ELEMENTS

Some Attempts with the Aid of Electricity

Definitions: Disintegration, the spontaneous processes of
radio-activity;

Decomposition, the splitting of complex atoms into simpler
parts;

Transmutation, some degree of synthesis of atomic nuclei.

Atomic disintegration has been recognized for twenty
years. Rutherford established atomic decomposition. To
confirm astronomical evidence that heavy atoms are not
stable at high temperatures, Wendt and Irion utilized the
method of electrically exploding wires, devised by Anderson.*
They chose tungsten as the element for experimentation
chiefly because its high atomic weight made its decomposition
probable on the hypothesis adopted. The wires used were
0.035 millimeter in diameter, about 4 centimeters long and
weighed 0.5 to 0.7 milligram.

In these experiments the tungsten wires were exploded
within strong glass bulbs so that the products of the explo-
sions could be collected for analysis. The electrical circuit
was similar in general to that used by Anderson, but had
additional electrical protective devices and a larger con-
denser. Voltages up to 45,000 were within the possibilities
of the equipment, but ordinarily about 30,000 volts were
employed. The discharge circuit was so arranged as to allow
a rapid non-oscilitating discharge through the tungsten wire
to be exploded, in the minimum time, thus concentrating the

* See Research Narrative Number 46.

138

DECOMPOSING THE ELEMENTS 139

energy input and giving the maximum temperature in the
material of the wire.

The bulbs within which the explosions took place were
made of strong Pyrex glass in good spherical form, having a
volume of about 300 cubic centimeters. Momentarily, the
bulbs had to withstand a tremendous outward pressure.
Thick bulbs invariably broke during the explosions because
of insufhcient elasticity. Thin bulbs immersed in a vessel
of water had sufficient support together with elasticity.
Three tungsten wire electrodes covered with Pyrex glass were
sealed through the wall of the bulb by fusion of the glass.
One electrode was used for spectroscopic examination of the
gases in the bulb. The two others at opposite ends of a diam-
eter, held the fine wire to be exploded, the ends of the latter
being sprung into tiny sockets drilled into the ends of the
electrodes.

Then some of the bulbs were exhausted of air until an
almost absolute vacuum was obtained, the most efficient
devices and methods being used, and the process continued
for fifteen hours with each bulb. During this time, the bulb
was supported in a furnace and kept at a temperature slightly
above 350 degrees Centigrade in order to drive off all gases
adsorbed on the interior glass walls. By passage of an elec-
tric current during the same period, the wire to be exploded
was kept at a temperature above 2,000 degrees. The bulbs
so prepared showed no spectrum or fluorescence and no con-
ductance when attached to a 50,000 volt induction coil.
Several bulbs when tested were found to have maintained
this condition for twelve hours before the explosion.

Other bulbs were prepared by filling with carbon dioxide
gas. After the explosion, the gases were passed through a

140 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

nitrometer for the absorption of the carbon dioxide and the
residual gas was analyzed. Although the vacuum method
more rigorously excludes contaminations, it does not permit
measurement of the volume of gas produced nor the collec-
tion of successive samples to form a volume sufficient for
chemical analysis.

In a vacuum bulb abundant gas was present after the
explosion, but no dust nor smoke nor solid residue was ever
found. Visual spectroscopic examination of the contents of
the bulb, without opening it, uniformly disclosed faint pres-
ence of the strongest green line of mercury, probably from
back diffusion from the vacuum pumps. The only other line
uniformly present and positively identified, was the strong
yellow line of hehum. Other, fainter Hnes, red, blue, violet
and yellow were observed, but have not yet been identified.
It seems that both hydrogen and neon were absent. (Refer-
ences are to lines of the spectrum.)

In the explosion the fine wire disappeared in a brilliant
flash. The gas evolution was very irregular, probably due to
irregular conditions of explosion; it is impossible, with the
present technique, to produce explosions of uniform brilli-
ancy and temperature. Wendt and Irion, following Ander-
son's method, went the additional step of so conducting explo-
sions as to collect the products and obtained evidence of the
conversion of the metallic tungsten wires into helium to the
extent of 50 per cent, or more. The work so far reported is
entirely preliminary in nature and is not quantitative. It is,
nevertheless, most interesting in its suggestiveness.

Based upon information from Dr. Gerald L. Wendt, Kent Chemical
Laboratory, University of Chicago. For a fuller account of the experi-
ments, see Journal of the American Chemical Society, September, 1922.

MALLEABLE IRON

Its Great Improvement by Cooperative Research

Following a custom that twenty years ago was rapidly
gaining ground, a group of founders of malleable iron cast-
ings formed the American Malleable Castings Association.
Monthly meetings were held; subjects of general interest dis-
cussed, and strong bonds of friendship formed. No steps,
however, were taken towards improvement of product or
study of process, for at that time serious metallurgical
research on iron and steel was confined to institutions of
learning and to rich companies or those broadminded enough
to anticipate a substantial return from money thus expended.

Development of the bicycle, which had to be light in weight
but strong structurally, necessitated alloy steel investigation.
The work of Taylor and White on high-speed steels made
plain to manufacturer and metallurgist the fact that the
threshold of possibilities had hardly been approached by
either. The start of the automotive industry carried this
message to all that furnished it with material. Inspection
that had been desultory became so rigid as to force many
manufacturers to improve their product and modernize their
plant practice.

There are two principal steps in making malleable-iron
castings. First, hard "white " pig iron, mixed with a propor-
tion of steel and cast-iron scrap, is melted in a furnace, and
then run into the molds for the castings. Second, these
"white" iron castings are cleaned and trimmed and then
"heat-treated" by being packed in a mixture of powdered

141

142 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

slag and iron oxide in large covered iron boxes, or ''pots,"
p'aced in an annealing oven, slowly heated to about 1550
degrees Fahrenheit, held at this temperature and slowly
cooled, the heat-treatment requiring seven days.

The Association while progressing along certain lines had
neglected research, with the result that by degrees the de-
mand for malleable iron had lessened to an extent that be-
came perilous. Eleven years ago, it became apparent to the
members that unless scientific principles were substituted for
crude practices, within a brief period their tottering indus-
try would crumble. The pretense that they had a secret
process was abandoned. It was decided to enter into a
thorough research covering the metallurgy of the process,
the metallurgical apparatus, and works' practices.

The ultimate tensile strength of the product at that time
averaged 39,000 pounds per square inch and the elongation
under tensile test 3.5 per cent. As far as could be ascer-
tained there had been no regular mechanical testing. The
metallurgy of the process was not well understood. Many
founders, indeed, were ignorant of the most vital and ele-
mentary details. For the most part the metallurgical appar-
atus was defective and in many particulars unsuitable. The
character of product depended upon hit-or-miss methods.
Misconceptions abounded.

A program was laid out. As soon as details could be put
into operation, association members were requested to make
their ''white" iron castings of a composition the elements
of which would be restricted to certain limits. These limits
were established not only to make sure that the metallurgical
change that should take place when the castings were heat-
treated unquestionably would be effected, but also to produce

MALLEABLE IRON 143

a finished product of high ultimate strength accompanied by
satisfactory elongation. The members were asked to cast
from each ''heat" specimens for tensile and impact tests.
Through this procedure it was soon possible to ascertain
exactly what each member was doing; how he was progressing
from month to month, and to compare one member's prod-
uct with that of the others.

Through painstaking metallurgical research, through de-
sign and installation of efficient metallurgical apparatus
operated under pyrometric control, through adoption of
scientific methods throughout the industry, through intro-
duction of a rational and uniform cost system, and by aid of
a competent bureau of Association inspectors, uniform qual-
ity can be assured. Although many members can make a
product considerably higher in ultimate strength and elonga-
tion than the average of the Association, averages only are
given here. For the past four years, ultimate strength has
been 53,000 pounds per square inch and elongation 15 per
cent.

Translated, these figures mean that a declining industry
has been restored, has won new fields and has established
confidence on scientific fact instead of traditions and secrets
which, as so often, were only covers for ignorance. Malleable
iron castings are now used for purposes and of sizes and
shapes formerly believed impracticable.

Contributed by Enrique Touceda, Consulting Engineer, Albany,
New York.

THE UPPER CRITICAL SCORE

First Measurement or the Higher as Well as the

Lower Limits or Intelligence, Beyond Which

It Is Not Profitable to Employ Applicants

FOR A Particular Type of Job

A rough measure of the brightness, or mental alertness, of
an applicant, by means of a standardized mental test, has
long been recognized as one of many possible sources of in-
formation for use in personnel selection. Early tentative
attempts to use this test technique in employment procedure,
sometimes met with anomalous results because it was not
recognized that, for some types of employment at least, an
applicant may be too intelligent.

In affiliation with the Carnegie Institute of Technology,
Pittsburgh, a group of twenty-seven companies of national
scope established, in June, 1916, the Bureau of Salesmanship
Research, now the Bureau of Personnel Research. This
Bureau was to pool the experience of the cooperators to
evaluate their current procedures, and to devise and try out
new ways of selecting and developing salesmen. The first
year's work, under Walter Dill Scott, issued in a volume of
"Aids in Selecting Salesmen," including an improved per-
sonal history record, or application form, a model letter of
reference to former employers, a guide to interviewing which
helped the interviewer to focus his attention on essential
traits and to record his judgments quantitatively,* and a set

* This form later became the Scott Rating Scale of the Army.

144

UPPER CRITICAL SCORE 145

of five psychological tests with full directions for giving and
scoring.

Among these tests was a group intelligence examination,
a forerunner of Army Alpha, It was given to various groups
of salesmen and sales applicants, and their scores were
checked against actual success as measured by amount of
sales. Among the men so examined, was a group of 40
salesmen for afood products company. To the dismay of the
research workers, when the intelligence test scores were com-
pared with the men's sales-production records, the correla-
tion was almost zero. This appeared to be a severe indict-
ment @f the test as a measure of intelligence.

Then came the War, and with it a vast experience in per-
sonnel classification and intelhgence examining. The psy-
chological tests proved their worth in the Army as indicators
of mental alertness. So when C. S. Yoakum, with this back-
ground of Army experience, in 1919, assumed direction of the
Bureau of Personnel Research, he knew that the intelligence
tests methods were valid, and he sought another explanation
of the riddle in the findings of 1916. Taking the same data,
he computed the correlation between test scores and length
of experience with the company. The correlation was not
zero. It was negative, —40. The brighter the salesman,
the quicker, as a general rule, he left the employ of that
concern.

Yoakum repeated the experiment with 76 salesmen of this
same company, using the best available adult intelligence
examination. The correlation of test scores and length of
experience was —46. A job analysis revealed that the work
was largely of the routine, order-taking sort. The pay was
not large. Chances of promotion were sHght. Only the

146 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

more stolid men were content to remain long enough to get
valuable experience and build up a creditable sales record.

Examining the intelligence scores again, it was apparent
that there is an upper limit as well as an anticipated lower
limit. Within this range, the chances are large that an
applicant for a position with this concern will make good.
Below this zone he will probably fail for lack of abihty.
Above it , the probabihties are that he will not remain long
enough to learn his work thoroughly and make a good show-
ing. The psychological test had, after all, been a valid meas-
ure of mental alertness. The need had been for a determina-
tion of its range of utiHty.

This range varies for different kinds of salesmen, as well
as for different occupations. In many jobs it has been shown
that there is no upper limit to the optimal intelHgence score;
but studies of pohcemen, salesmen, and many types of opera-
tives and clerical workers, where the task is essentially
routine, have shown how necessary it is to keep an eye on the
upper as well as the lower critical score. Research on the
utility of psychological methods in employment and place-
ment is but one of many scientific approaches to problems of
industrial personnel. Taken as a whole, the scientific study
of the human factor may prove as important to the next era
of industrial progress as research in the physical sciences has
proven hitherto.

This Narrative was contributed by Dr. W. V. Bingham, Director of
Cooperative Research, Carnegie Institute of Technology, and member,
Personnel Research Federation.

WOOD AND MOISTURE

Control or Shrinking and Swelling by Coating

In many parts of the world, the shrinking, sweUing, warp-
ing and checking of wood cause much trouble and expense
in its many uses, including furniture, vehicles and buildings.
As atmospheric or other conditions vary so as to change the
moisture in contact with wood, the wood naturally absorbs or
gives out moisture, consequently increasing or decreasing its
dimensions. To overcome or offset this dimensional change
with change of moisture content, men have devised many
expedients more or less successful. No generally applicable
means have yet been found, however, for completely and
permanently preventing changes of moisture content.
Furniture and wooden parts of vehicles made for use in New
York open their joints, or even come apart, in Arizona.
On the other hand, if in course of manufacture the wood were
dried to a moisture content suitable for Arizona, not a drawer
could be moved in New York.

Wooden blocks are the most suitable mountings for elec-
trotype and other plates from which much printing is done,
particularly illustrations. It is highly important that these
blocks should not warp or otherwise change dimensions, even
minutely. This problem is among those on which the Forest
Products Laboratory, of the Department of Agriculture, has
been working for years in its endeavors to overcome difficul-
ties encountered in the uses of wood in the arts. One day,
one of the laboratory's investigators, as a means of domestic
economy, was bronzing the steam-heating radiators in his
home. Accidentally he spilled some of the bronze liquid

147

148 RESEARCH NARRATIVES

on the " unfinished " top of a kitchen table. Before he could
get a cloth to wipe up the spill, the liquid had dried.

This incident soon connected itself in the investigator's
mind with his problem at the laboratory. A series of experi-
ments were tried. It was found that a bronze coating, com-
posed of a cheap gloss oil (a bronzing liquid of the gloss oil
type) and aluminum powder, was superior to many other
moisture-proofing coatings which have been tried. This
mixture is very fast drying; three coats can be applied in the
course of a half-hour. It is useful, also, for foundry patterns,
for backs and unexposed parts of furniture and refrigerators
and for similar objects. It is durable only when used in-
doors; it is not at all resistant to weather. It is cheaper than
varnish, enamels or paints. Three coats of aluminum
bronze showed an efficiency of 92 per cent in moisture-
proofing, no coating being zero.

Some other coatings tested and their efficiencies are of
interest: 5 coats of linseed oil, applied hot, followed by 2
coats of wax, 38 per cent; 3 coats of white lead in oil, 54 per
cent; 3 coats of spar varnish, 60 per cent; 3 coats of graphite
paint, 61 per cent; 3 coats of orange shellac, 87 per cent; a
heavy coat of paraffin, 91 per cent; 3 coats of asphalt paint,
96 per cent; 3 coats of spar varnish covered with vaseline,
98 per cent; aluminum leaf with asphalt paint base, also 98
per cent. Of course, the spar-varnish-and-vaseline is suit-
able only for certain limited temporary purposes. The as-
phalt paints are inexpensive, but for many uses their black-
ness is objectionable. Hitherto attempts to find a method
for covering asphalt or pitch paints with a coating of more
pleasing appearance have failed. In the tests mentioned,
coated and uncoated panels of wood were exposed for four-

WOOD AND MOISTURE 149

teen days to an atmosphere having a humidity of 95 to 100
per cent, i.e., extremely damp. The efficiencies are based
on the average quantities of moisture absorbed per unit of
surface area.

Efficient finishing of wood is of great economic importance,
not only for control of dimensions, but also for preservation
from decay and for appearance, as well as for other considera-
tions. After thousands of years of use of wood, so much is
left to be learned that Engineering Foundation, Forest
Products Laboratory, the Bureau of Standards and the in-
dustries are initiating a cooperative research of wood-finish-
ing processes. It bears upon the use of wood in buildings,
furniture, farm implements, vehicle wheels and bodies, rail-
way cars, and the application of paint, varnish and other
coatings and impregnating materials. It involves knowledge
of the nature of various kinds of wood. More than
$300,000,000 worth of paint and varnish is sold in the United
States every year, a large portion of which is applied to wood.
The value of the wood thus finished and protected, also runs
into hundreds of millions annually. The possibilities of
economy to be realized by scientific study are great. Every-
body is concerned.

Based on information supplied by the Forest Products Laboratory,
Madison, Wisconsin, Carlile P. Winslow, Director.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND PERSONS

Absolute Zero, 49, 51

Acid, 56, 115, 121

Acoustics, 53

Actinium, 38

Adirondack Mountains, 132

Air, 88, 99, 121

Alchemistic Symbols, 120

Alpha Particle, 46

Alternating Current, 34, 83

Aluminum Bronze, 148

Ammonia, 16, 28

Anderson, J. A., 135, 137, 138

Animalcules, 31

Annealing, 40, 63, 97, 98, 103

Antenna, 34

Anthracene, 67

Arc, Electric, 87, 123

Argon, 34, 49

Armor, 95

Army Rating Scale, 144

Aspartic Acid, 57

Astrology, 120

Astronomy, 120, 123

Astrophysics, 135

Atmosphere, 49, 51

Atom, 39, 46, 86, 130, 138

Audion, 35

Autenite, 47

Aviators, 22

Baekeland, L. H., 105, 18, 116

Bakelite, 114

Balloons, 50

Bell, Diving, 101

Benzol, 57

Beta Rays, 47

Billings, C. J., 60

Bingham, W. V., 146

Blondelion, 128

Borers, Marine, 74

Bronze Liquid, 147

Brunei, M. I., 89, 99

Caisson, 101

Cancer, 39, 48

Carbolic Acid, 115

Carnotite, 47

Castings, 141

Catalyst, 29, 56

Cathode, 35

Cathode Rays, 47, 87

Centrifugal, Centrifuge, 25

Chevenix, 117

Clarke, E. C, 101

Coal Tar, 56

Coatings for Wood, 148

Coblentz, W. W., 123, 125

Cochrane, T., 99

Coil, Loading, 81

Colorado Scientific Society, 59

Compressed Air, 99

Converter, Electrical, 83

Coolidge, W. D., 35, 40, 43

Copper, 13, 14, 121, 129, 135

Corrosion, 54

C.P.S.'er, 128

Creamer, 25

Creosote, 76

Crookes' Tube, 47

Crops, 93

Curie, Madame, 38, 46, 48, 86

Decomposition, 87, 138

Detector, 34

Deterioration of Iron, 55

Direction, 52

Disintegration, 138

Diving Bell, 101

Downs, C. R., 56

Dundonald, Earl of, 99

Dyes, 57

Ears, 52

Edison, T. A., 29, 33, 43, 83, 87

Electric Welding, 10

Electricity, 33

Electron, 34, 47, 86

Elements, 138

Engineering Foundation, 15

Equations, 126

Everson, C. J., 59, 94

Explosions, 19, 135, 139

Farmer, 92

Fatigue, 5

Filament, 40, 43

Flexible Pipes, 77

Floating, 59, 94

Flotation, 59, 129

Foot-candle Meter, 71

Formaldehyde, 114

Foundations, 99

Fumaric Acid, 56

150

INDEX or SUBJECTS AND PERSONS

151

Gamma Rays, 47, 48

Gas, 44, 49, 87

Gas Filled Lamp, 43

Gasoline, 20

Glass, 62, 65, 68

Goodwin, W. M., 113

Gore, G., 119

Guns, 54, 95

Hadfield, R. A., 102

Harveyised Armor, 96

Hawkweed, 2, 37

Heavisidion, 128

Helium, 49, 140

Heredity, 1

Herschel, C., 101

Hewett, B. H. M., 91, 101

Hexamethylentetramin, 114

Hibbard, H. D., 104

Horton, R. E., 94, 111

Howe, H. E., 64

Howe, J. L., 122

Hydraulic Turbines, 109

Hydrogen, 49, 140

Illumination, 71

Incandescent Lamp, 33, 40, 43, 69, 72, 83

Indumor, 128

Infra-red, 67, 124

Integraph, 128

Intelligence, 144

Iron. 7, 54, 112, 121, 132, 141

Ironclad, 95

Isomer, 57

Joints, Pipe, 77

Jordan, H. W., 21

Karapetoff, V., 128

Keene Valley, 132

Kennelly, A. E., 3

Kerosene, 20

Kinematic Models, 126

Kofoid, C. A., 76

Kolle Flasks, 68

Krypton, 49

Lactic Acid, 57

Lamps, 40, 43

Langmuir, L, 42, 45. 129, 131

Lantern Globes, 66

Lead, 46, 78, 121

Lemp, H., 83

Lens, 52, 65, 66

Light, 31

Limnoria, 74

Lippovaccines, 69

Loading Coil, 81

Lubrication, 130

Maleic Acid, 56

Malic Acid, 57

Malleable Iron, 141

Manganese Steel, 102

Marine Borers, 74

Mars, 124

Martesia, 75

Mathematics, 126

Matter, 37, 86, 88, 137

McCormick, J. B., 110

Mendel, Mendelism, 1, 37, 93

Mental Alertness, 145

Mental Hygiene, 20

Mesothorium, 38

Metals, 121

Mikesell, T., 92

Millar, P. S., 71

Miller, E. F., 18

Millikan, R. A., 33, 53

Models, 126

Moisture, 147

Molecules, 87, 129

Mollusks, 75, 89

Moore, H. F., 6

Moore, R. B., 48, 51

National Research Council, 76

Naval Consulting Board, 22, 29, 31, 62

Naval Tortoise Shell, 95

Neon, 49, 140

Nickel, 14, 112, 121, 135

Nickel Steel, 96

Nitrogen, 28, 133

Optical Glass, 62

Orientator, 22

Paint, 130, 133, 148

Palladium, 117

Parthenogenesis, 2

Pattern Shop, 109

Personnel Research, 144, 146

Phenol, 114

Phenological Records, 92

Pholas, 75

Photography, 105

Photometer, 71

Pigment, 133

Piles, 54, 74

152

INDEX or SUBJECTS AND PERSONS

Pile Worms, 75

Pipes, 55, 77

Planets, 121, 124

Plants, 92

Platinum, 88, 117, 121

Potash, 69

Projectiles, 95

Psychiatry, 20

Psychology, 145

Pupin, M. I., 80, 82

Pyrex Glass, 68, 139

Radioactivity, 37, 46, 48

Radium, 38, 46, 87, 112

Rectifier, 34

Resins, 114

Rhodonite, 67

Rotary Converter, 83

Ruggles, W. G., 22

Rutherford, E., 138

Salesmen, Selecting, 144

Score, Upper Critical, 144

Scott, L. N., 24, 29, 32

Scott, W. D., 144

Secomor, 128

Selenium, 65

Separation of Minerals, 59, 129

Serbian Herdsman, 80

Sharp, C. H., 73

Shield, Tunneling, 89, 99, 101

Ships, 52, 95

Ship Worms, 75

Shucomor, 128

Signals, Railway, 65

Smelting, 112

Soddy, F., 39

Sound, 52, 81

Southard, E. E., 20

Spectroscope, 123, 135

Sperry, E. A., 31

Stars, 123

Steel, 96, 102, 141

Submarine, 53

Submarine Pipes, 77

Sullivan, E. C, 67, 70

Sun, 50, 121, 123, 135, 137

Swart, W. G., 9

Symbols, 120

Synthetic Resins, 114

Tar, 56

Telephony, 80

Telescope, 123

Temperature, 49, 51, 123, 135, 139

Teredo, 74, 89

Thames Tunnel, 91, 100

Thermionics, 33

Thermions, 87

Thermocouples, 123

Thompson, A., 134

Thomson, Elihu, 10, 13, 25, 27, 83

Thorium, 38, 50

Titanic Oxide, 133

Titaniferous Ore, 112, 132

Titanium, 113, 132

Touceda, E., 143

Transmutation, 122, 138

Tungar Rectifier, 34

Tungsten, 40, 88, 123, 138

Tunnel, 89, 99

Turbines, 109

Ultraviolet, 66

Uranium, 29, 37, 46, 50, 67, 86

Vacuum, 33, 87

Vanadium, 56, 112

Varnish, 114, 130, 148

Velox, 105

Wadhams, A. J., 15

Warships, 95

Water, 31

Weiss, J. M., 56, 58

Welders' Glasses, 67

Welding, 10, 83

Wendt, G. L., 140

Whitney, W. R., 39, 88

Whittling Iron, 54

Willemite, 67

Wilson, W., 36

Winslow, C. P., 149

Wireless, 34

Wires Exploded, 135

Wolframite, 41

Wood, 147

Xenon, 49

X-ray, 35, 37, 41, 47, 48, 68, 86, 88

Xylotria, 75

Yellow Fever, 14

Yerkes, R. M., 64

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