Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-04-09
N1tNE ROOM ANn
SWITCH BOARD

Louis exposition for $4,000, and will soon
be installed 1t will not only produce liquid
air, but will freeze hydrogen and is the
only machine in America that will do this.
1t will be used when necessary to keep the
various parts of the laboratory building at
an even temperature in summer. THESE
particular rooms are fitted with double win
dows and automatic heat and cold regulat-
ing devices so that they may be held at an
even temperature all the year round. This
is about 10 degrees for the most of the
rooms, though some of the measuring is
always done at a temperature of 81 degrees.
There is range of temperature from GO
t. 50 degrees that can be held within a de-
gree all the time simply by setting the lit
tie thermoStat on the wall of each room.
The thermometric work is under DR.. c. w.
G.. K. Burgess. Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, and H. C. Dickinson of Will
Jams and Clark University.
System of Ventilation.
The general scheme of the building is on
plans prepared by the bureau officials,
though the actual work was laid out by the
architects office of the Treasury Depart
ment. Chief Engineer c. II. Sponsler of the
Pennsylvania State College is now in charge
of the whole plant. He has been with the
building since it's inception. and probably
no one who had not grown up with the
structure could fathom the maze of pipes,
wires and ducts of all sorts that link up
the two buildings like great system of
veins and arteries. Much of the actual in
stallation of the electric plant has been
done by Mr.. Henry Whallon, himself a
Washington man and expert electrical
worker.
The two buildings have their own gas
plant, manufacturing gas for the furnaces
from gasoline. The engine room runs both
the heating and cooling plant and there is
in the deep basement an immense brine
tank that will store up fifteen tons of re-
frigeration like a storage battery to be
drawn off at night, as it is needed If the
engine plant is shut down. Ordinarily the
brine pipe system in the cold room is used,
operated from the engine room, and there
is great fourteen-foot fan that draws air
over the cold pipes as it is needed, and
forces it through great insulated duct
over the whole of both buildings. A similar
fan does the same service for the hot air.
and each room in the two buildings has hot
and cold ventilators hitched together with
link motion so that as one opens the
other closes. These ventilators are con-
trolled by simple but effective thermostat
on the wall so that the temperature is al
ways regulated to a nicty.
There is too much that is new and strange
in the bureau for 1t all to be seen in a sin
gle day. But a cursory glance well repays
even the layman. In the top Of the labora-
tory building there is the chemical labora-
tory Here the most exact and eXacting
qualitative and quantitative work is done.
1t is fitted with all the latest appliances to
help rhe work Each of the working desks
has hot and cold water, an ice water duct.
air and electric connections and
gas for the bunsen burner flames and
vacuum pipe. A series of little wheels on
the front of each work bench controls each
of these sources of supply, while overhead
and all around are racks of glass bottles
filled with reagents of every sort, enabling
the Elaborate tory to do every variety OF work
,hnla iS
A. Moves, secretary of the American Chem
ical Society and editor of the American
Journal of Chemistry. He is assisted by
Dr. H. N Stokes, who, through the courtesy