Abstract
Guy Stewart Callendar became one of Britain’s premier steam engineers and thermodynamicists, having learned his trade as a research assistant under his father’s tutelage at Imperial College (see Chapter 1). His introduction to the world technical stage came in July 1929 when he participated in the First International Steam Conference held in London under the sponsorship of the British Electrical and Allied Industries Research Association (BEAIRA).1 The conference convened engineers and physicists from Great Britain, Germany, the United States, and Czechoslovakia interested in the determination of the properties of steam over a wide range of temperatures and pressures. On Monday, July 8, Dr. Samuel Adamson, President of Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) opened the conference in the Council Chamber of the Institution. The first two and a half days were dedicated to presentations, discussions, and critiques. For the remainder of the week, delegates attempted to create standardized units and procedures, “so as to avoid in the future the discrepancies which up to the present exist between the Steam Tables used most generally by the different engineering countries of the world.”2 The conference adopted, as the recommended unit for the measurement of the total heat of steam, the International Calorie, defined as follows: “One international kilowatt-hour equals 860 international kilocalories.”3 This unit was independent of secondary properties derived from the behavior of water, local variations in the acceleration of gravity, and the value of Joule’s mechanical equivalent of heat. Yet, since important theoretical questions and national engineering practices remained at issue, the delegates agreed to meet again for a second conference in 1930.
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Notes
BEAIRA Minute Book 2,19 April and 23 May 1929, IMechE Library, London. “Steam-Turbine and Steam-Table Conferences: Reports of Two International Meetings in London Attended by American Engineers,” Mechanical Engineering, 51, 10 (October 1929): 790–792.
Nathan S. Osborne and E. F. Mueller to the Members of the London Steam Table Conference, 5 May 1930 with quote from the following enclosure: “Memorandum on the Definition of Heat Unit,” 28 February 1930, Egerton Papers, B/Egerton/13/3, Imperial College. Also enclosed are documents communicating the details of this decision to other technical laboratories internationally.
”Steam-Turbine and Steam-Table Conferences,” 792.
Obituary “Guy Stewart Callendar,” Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 91 (1965): 112.
BEAIRA Minute Book 2, 6 February 1930, IMechE Library.
Sir Alfred Egerton, F.R.S., 1886–1959: A Memoir with Papers, Lady Ruth Julia Egerton, Ed. (London: privately published, 1963).
Ibid., Preface.
Sir Henry Lewis Guy, F.R.S. (1887–1956), chief engineer of the mechanical department of the Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Company, 1918–1941 and Secretary for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 1941–1951, was very active in BEAIRA. Dictionary of National Biography 24 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Sir Henry Thomas Tizard, F.R.S. (1885–1959), physical chemist and science administrator. In 1929 Tizard became rector at Imperial College, a position he maintained until 1942. Dictionary of National Biography 54 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Egerton’s Personal Diary, 18 February, 20 February, and 14 March 1930, GB 0117 AE/2, Egerton Papers, Royal Society of London.
Egerton’s Personal Diary, 14 March 1930 and 26 March 1930, Royal Society of London.
Egerton, A. and G. S. Callendar, 1933, 149. See also Egerton’s Personal Diary, 20 February 1930, Royal Society of London.
Egerton, A. and G. S. Callendar, 1933; quotes from 205 and 148. Frederick George Keyes (1885–1976), U.S. physical chemist, MIT professor, and coauthor, with J. H. Keenan, of Thermodynamic Properties of Steam (1936).
E. B. Wedmore to Egerton, 10 March 1930, Egerton Papers, B/Egerton/13,14, Imperial College.
Further details on the technical disagreements are in A. C. Egerton, “Memorandum on the Properties of Steam,” 10 July 1930, Egerton Papers, B/Egerton/14/1, Imperial College.
{nrSources used in this chapter include Guy to Phyllis, September 1934, five letters from trip to America, 25 p. CP 8, Folder 1 (and Appendix B of this book); A. Egerton, “[Journal of a trip to] America, September 1934,” AE/3/5, Egerton Papers, Royal Society of London; Mrs. A. Egerton, “Trip to America, September 1934,” AE/4/1, Egerton Papers, Royal Society of London; “Third International Steam Table Conference, General Program. September 17 to 22, 1934,” The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, copy in Egerton Papers, B/Egerton/14/2, Imperial College}; and “Third International Steam Table Conference, September 17–22.” Mechanical Engineering, 56, 11 (1934): 701–703.
Henry Ford (1863–1947), automobile manufacturer and entrepreneur, American National Biography 8 (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 226–235.
{nrThe Britannic, a 27,000-ton vessel with a 683 ft 8 in keel, 82 ft 6 in beam, and a cruising speed of 18 knots, was the third ship with this name. All three were built by Harland and Wolff for the White Star Line. White Star Fleet List, http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/WhiteStar3.html (4 August 2005); “The Cunard White Star Motorship Britannic,” http://www.uncommonjourneys.com/pages/britannic (4 August 2005).
Guy to Phyllis, 8–9 September 1934, CP 8, Folder 1 (and Appendix B).
”White Star Line,” http://www.red.duster.co.uk/WSTAR11.htm (11 March 2006).
Guy to Phyllis, 8–9 September 1934, CP 8, Folder 1 (and Appendix B ).
Guy to Phyllis, 20–21 September 1934, CP 8, Folder 1 (and Appendix B).
CP 8, Folder 3.
Mrs. A. Egerton, “Trip to America.”
Guy to Phyllis, 20–21 September 1934, CP 8, Folder 1 (and Appendix B).
“Third International Steam Table Conference., 1934.
Davis played an integral organizational role in organizing the first ASME meeting on the thermodynamic properties of water and steam in 1921. “Brief History of the ASME Properties of Steam Subcommittee, http://www.asme.org/research/wsts/steam_history.pdf (4 August 2005).
”Third International Steam Table Conference, General Program.” The New York, a 21 455-ton trans-Atlantic liner, was built in 1926.
Mrs. A. Egerton, “Trip to America,” 8–9. “Shipping and Mails,” New York Times (20 September 1934), p. 47.
The Astor Hotel, noted for its enormous public rooms and an elaborate roof garden, was built in 1904 at Broadway and 44th Street. Ruth met Professors Ernst Schmidt of Danzig, Fritz Henning of Berlin, Werner Koch of Munich, and Erich J. M. Honigmann of Vienna.
Guy to Phyllis, 20–21 September 1934, CP 8, Folder 1 (and Appendix B).
”Third International Steam Table Conference,” 1934.
”Third International Steam Table Conference, General Program.”
Guy to Phyllis, 22 September 1934, CP 8, Folder 1 (and Appendix B). “Third International Steam Table Conference,” 1934.
Guy to Phyllis, 22 September 1934, CP 8, Folder 1 (and Appendix B).
Keenan, who had served as a delegate to earlier international steam conferences, was the co-author, with F. G. Keyes, of the Thermodynamic Properties of Steam (1936). au]35._“Steamers Crash in Fog Off Cape; Liner Laconia Rips Hole in Side of Freighter Pan Royal Off Peaked Hill Bar,” New York Times (25 September 1934), p. 45. “Laconia Out for Repairs,” New York Times (27 September 1934), p. 45.
”Shipping and Mails,” New York Times (24 September 1934), p. 35. The Mauretania, built in 1907 as the largest ship in the world, was a 31938-ton liner with a length of 760 ft and abeam of 87.5 ft. An older sister of the Lusitania, she served as a troop transport and hospital ship in World War I and, after being damaged by fire, was converted from coal to oil in 1921. On 26 September 1934 the Mauretania left New York on her final Atlantic crossing. Cunard Line, Page 2—Ocean Liners 1900–1914, http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/Cunard2.html#anchor42425o (11 March 2006).
Callendar, G. S., Hugh L. Callendar, and Sir A. C. Egerton, 1939; and Egerton, A. C. and G. S. Callendar, 1939.
A. C. Egerton to D. V. Onslow, 11 January 1939, Egerton Papers, B/Egerton/13/2, Imperial College London.
“Memorandum on E.R.A. Steam Research, September 1939,” Egerton Papers, B/Egerton/13/2, Imperial College London.
40. BEAIRA Minute Book 3, Section J: Steam Power Plant, Meeting on 17 May 1940, J/M26,1-6, pp. 156-161, IMechE Library.
BEAIRA Minute Book 3, Section J: Steam Power Plant, Meeting on 11 July 1941, J/M27,1-5, pp. 178-182, IMechE Library.
H. L. Guy to E. B. Wedmore, 5 August 1940 (confidential copy to Egerton), Egerton Papers, B/Egerton/13/2, Imperial College London.
E. B. Wedmore to H. L. Guy, August 1940 (confidential copy for Egerton enclosed with H. L. Guy to A. C. Egerton, 27 August 1940), Egerton Papers, B/ Egerton/13/2, Imperial College London.
H. L. Guy to Egerton, 27 August 1940.
H. L. Guy to E. B. Wedmore, 14 October 1940, copy in the Egerton Papers, B/Egerton/13/2, Imperial College London.
Sir Alfred Egerton, F.R.S., 1886–1959, 44–45.
Callendar’s résumé, 8 November 1940, Egerton Papers, B/Egerton/13/2, Imperial College.
Wedmore to Egerton, 31 October 1941 and Egerton to Wedmore 4 November 1941, Egerton Papers, B/Egerton/13/2, Imperial College London.
Callendar, G. S., and Sir Alfred Egerton, 1960.
Egerton to D. C. Martin, 28 January 1959, Egerton Papers, B/Egerton/19, Imperial College London.
Egerton’s Diary, October 1958, AE/2/37, vol. x, series c, p. 82, Royal Society of London.
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© 2007 James Rodger Fleming
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Fleming, J.R. (2007). Steam Engineering. In: The Callendar Effect. American Meteorological Society, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-935704-04-1_3
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