Inventors at Work, with Chapters on DiscoveryIles, George
History
Inventors at Work, with Chapters on Discovery
Iles, George
Inventions -- History; Inventors
8.5 lbs. 4.5 lbs. 1 lb. none 2850 lbs. per sq. in. 3670
6 „ 4.5 „ 1 lb. 3 lbs. 3120 „ „ „ 5050
3 „ 4.5 „ 1.125 lbs. 6 „ 3620 „ „ „ 5250
So much for the value of a test in the improvement of an important
manufacture.
Mr. Umstead’s full report appeared in 1903, in the third volume of
bulletins published by the American Society for Testing Materials. This
Society, whose secretary is Professor Edgar Marburg of the University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, is affiliated with the International
Association for Testing Materials, one of the most important agencies in
existence for providing the engineer with trustworthy data.
Industrial Uses of Measurement.
Measurement industrially is taking on a new and rapidly extending scope.
It is of great moment that a railroad or a steamship, a factory or a
mill, should be built of the best materials in the most economical way,
that it should be equipped with the most efficient boilers, engines,
machines, and lamps: in effect, that every dollar be expended for the
utmost possible value.
At Altoona the Pennsylvania Railroad Company has a laboratory for
testing the materials which go into its roadbed, bridges, tracks,
rolling stock, buildings, telegraph, and signal systems. Every gallon of
oil, each incandescent lamp, car axle, or boiler plate accepted by the
Company must pass a due test in a continuous series of competitive
examinations. The huge scale of such a Company’s purchases, the strains
placed upon its equipment by a service growing in extent and in speed,
make this course indispensable. Take another case, this time in New
York, at the power-house of the Interborough Company in West 59th
Street. There every day a fair sample of the coal brought to the dock is
burned, and its heat-units ascertained as a basis for payment. With a
consumption which may rise to 1500 tons a day this precaution is
obligatory.[30]
[30] The United States Geological Survey, Washington, D. C., in 1906
published a report on the coal testing plant at the Exposition, St.
Louis, Mo., 1904. Part I, Field work, classification of coals,
chemical work. Part II, Boiler tests. Part III, Producer-gas,
coking, briquetting, and washing tests. This report, with elaborate
tables and many illustrations, is of great value.
The Pennsylvania R. R. Co., Philadelphia, in 1905 published a large
and handsomely illustrated volume, “Locomotive tests and exhibits,
St. Louis, 1904.” $5.00. The locomotives represented the best
American practice of 1904. Every detail of construction and
operation is given in the most instructive manner.
The Company is continuing these tests of locomotives at Altoona,
Pa.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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