Repository: UIHistories Project: Booklet - Engineering Experiment Station and Industry (1909) [PAGE 21]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

38

Breckenridge—Engineering Experiment Station

Breckenridge—Engineering Experiment Station

89

will be helpful to all industries, that other work will be helpful to special industries and still other work will be of significant value to each and every home. The continually increasing cost of lumber during recent years has emphasized the necessity of finding some material to take its place. Concrete is rapidly doing this. Everywhere we see this material entering into all sorts of structures. Its use is becoming universal. It is easily transported and handled. The desired mixture of cement, stone and sand can be prepared by machinery and unskilled labor. Combined with suitably located steel bars it is cheaper, stronger and more fire resisting than wood. The cement industry of the country has made the most rapid growth of any of our new American industries. It is extremely important that engineers, architects, and builders should know definitely and accurately concerning the strength and other physical properties of reinforced concrete in all its many and varied forms, mixtures and mechanical treatments. This information the Engineering Experiment Station has been endeavoring to supply, and with, we believe, much success. Eleven bulletins of the thirty-six published have referred to this subject. The first step was the installation of the 6oo,ooo-lb. vertical testing machine arranged for testing large and bulky specimens; then came the planning of the work, the making of the tests;. then the labor of computations and finally the interpretation of the results and the publication of these results and the conclusions to be drawn from them. The last of these steps is of most vital importance. To do all of these things well is no insignificant task; but they must be done and those engineers who do not know what the results of such tests signify will either use materials wastefully or will design structures that will be temporary and unsafe. Such work as this can not fail to be far reaching and of large economic importance to all the engineering and industrial interests of the State. In the same way the tests of Illinois fuels which have been in progress for four years are of special value and interest to every manufacturer; every railroad company, every power plant both private and municipal and to every home in the State. They are equally valuable to the mining interests of the State. The examination and tests of Illinois coals have been carried forward by several cooperating departments; (a) The Technologic Branch of the U. S. Geol. Survey. (b) The State Geological Survey. (c) The Chemical Department of the College of Science. (d) The Graduate School and (e) The Engineering Experiment Station and all aided by the special Conference Committee on Fuel Tests,—composed of representatives of the Western Society of Engineers; Western Railway Club; Illinois Manufacturers' Association; Coal Operators' Association ; State Electric Light Association; and the Building Managers' Association of Chicago. Seven bulletins of the Station have related

to this important work. The composition, the heating value and the physical nature of Illinois coals have been most carefully studied and set forth as the result of the work carried on under the direction of Professor S. W. Parr, and his work will continue to be of increasing value as time goes on. The experiments by the experts of the Station concerning the burning of Illinois coals under power plant boilers, and in furnaces designed to allow perfect combustion and smokelessness have done much to make Illinois coals worth more in our own and in neighboring states, especially those states north and west of Illinois.. A knowledge of the comparative expense of burning briquetted fuel, coke, hard coal, Virginia, Ohio and Illinois coals in different types of residence heating furnaces and boilers can not help but be of value to every home in the State. The bulletin of Dr. J. K. Clement, on the "Rate of Formation of Carbon Monoxide in Gas Producers" is a work of exceptional merit and is a first step in aiding the problem of Illinois coal as a suitable fuel for large gas producers. The coal produced by Illinois has an annual value of $55,000,000, a still larger amount is doubtless consumed by Illinois industries; the writer would welcome figures on this subject. If the economies pointed out as possible by the Station were carried out, and in many cases they have been, at least 5% of the coal consumed by the State could be saved. What is true of the Experiment Station's work and tests of concrete and fuel, is equally true of its other lines of work, but thus far more time and money have been devoted to these two lines of work than to others. More need not be said to convince the engineer or the members of this Society, that the work of an Engineering Experiment Station may be as helpful to the progress of industrial Illinois as the work of the Agricultural Experiment Station has been and is to the agricultural interests of the State. It will, perhaps, take more time to educate the general public to understand the possibilities for good which might easily result from a more generous* support of such a station. It will be for such societies as this to demand of the Station, such service as it should reasonably be expected to furnish, at the same time urging such generous support by the State for its work, as the results of its past investigations seem to justify or the possibilities of the future seem to promise. There are many investigations which must be made, they are vital to industrial progress. Many of these investigations can be better made by such a station as the one we are now describing than by any other agency. They can be made for less money. They can be made by scientific methods. While they are being made they will help develop the type of man needed by our industries for the more special investigations of the individual or the more highly specialized industry. Several foreign nations have agencies similar to this to make their fundamental industrial investigations. Are not the future interests of the State of Illinois of such importance as to demand the substantial development and extension of

*