Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

184 THE WAR YEARS (1917-19)
But so rapidly was aviation history moving that 1 month later, when
the first 8-cylinder engine arrived at the Bureau for testing, it was declared
inadequate. Pershing had cabled that the planes he would need for his -
operations in 1918 must have 12-cylinder engines. Exactly 2 months after,
in September 1917, the "12," putting out over 300 (later more than 400)
horsepower, as against the 225 horsepower of the "8," had arrived and
successfully passed its 50-hour test. Originally named the "United States
Standard 12-cylinder Aviation Engine," it was rechristened the "Liberty
engine" as it went into production 4 months later. Up to the armistice, the
Packard, Lincoln, Ford, Cadillac, Buick, and Marmon factories built 13,574
Liberty engines, of which fully a quarter went overseas to the AEF and
the Allied air services.60
In preparation for tests of the Liberty engine, special
and altitude laboratories were erected on the Bureau grounds for perform-
ance studies of the engine under simulated flight conditions.61 (The tem-
porary structures were later combined in a permanent Dynamometer Labora-
tory, built adjacent to Northwest building.) Construction of the altitude
laboratory, in which conditions of low air pressure and cold encountered
at great heights could be established, was a tremendous engineering feat,
and for a time the chamber was the only one of its kind in existence.
Liberty engines, as well as Rolls-Royce, Hispano-Suiza, Fiat, Bugatti
and other engines made by the Allies underwent endless tests and measure-
ments of the effects of altitude on carburetor performance, on radiators, fuels,
lubricating oils, and on supercharging devices designed to enable planes to
attain higher altitudes.62 Of considerable importance at the time were the
Bureau studies in its chemical and altitude laboratories on the conservation
60 Crowell, pp. 273, 277, 280; Ayres, The War With Germany, p. 90.
Stoutly defending what some claimed was "a cooperative monstrosity," Secretary
Redfield said that Liberty engines after the war went into the planes of the airmail
service inaugurated by the postal service in 1921, powered the transatlantic flight
of the Navy NC—4 (Halifax to Lisbon) in 1919, and held all transcontinental record
flights and world's altitude, speed, and endurance record flights up to 1923 (Redfield,
With Congress and Cabinet, pp. 298—299). Stratton, too, thought it a fine engine,
pointing out that it had 200 fewer parts than European equivalents and developed
475 hp., where the most powerful European engine had less than 300 hp. Letter, SWS
to Airplane Engineering Department, Signal Corps, June 7, 1918, and attached correspondence
(NBS Box 16, ITA) -
01 Fourth Annual Report, NACA, 1918, PP. 483-498; NBS Annual Report 1917, pp.
110—111.
82 "Lubrication presented its problems, because the engineers believed that no other
lubricant possessed all the advantages of castor oil," and the Army Signal Corps called for
the planting of 100,000 acres to the castor-oil bean in this country. Paxson, American
Democracy and the World War, II, 269; letter, Director, Aircraft Production to SWS,
Oct. 11, 1918, and attached correspondence (NBS Box 16, ITAL).