Word: instruments
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...life and of many another aspect of the sea's vast and various lore, oceanographers must record temperatures not only at the surface but at considerable depths. Nearly a century ago a Frenchman named Aimé used a "reversing thermometer" for taking depth temperatures in the Mediterranean. This instrument had a constriction in the tube above the bulb. Having been lowered to a measured depth, it was flipped upside down by some such expedient as slipping a weight down the line to actuate a lever at the end. This upset broke the thread of mercury at the constriction, preserving...
...principle, is still in general use. It necessitates a separate operation for every depth at which the temperature is obtained. Thus ocean students were excited last week when Professor Carl Gustaf Arvid Rossby, head meteorologist of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reported that he and two associates had devised an instrument which would record a complete temperature gradient from the surface to a maximum depth...
Called the oceanograph, the Rossby instrument has a stylus which makes a temperature-pressure graph on a sheet of smoked aluminum foil. The foil is moved back & forth by a barometer and tension spring hookup which keeps track of the water pressure (hence the depth). The stylus is moved from side to side by a bimetallic thermometer which keeps track of the temperature. Its creators state that the oceanograph is accurate to within one foot of depth and one-tenth of one degree Fahrenheit in temperature. It is to be used on the 142-ft. auxiliary ketch Atlantis, peripatetic research...
...Postmaster General and the Secretary of Commerce in order that additional training may be given to Army air pilots through co-operation with private companies who later on will fly the mails. This should include, of course, training in cross-country flying, in night flying, blind flying and instrument flying...
Granted that flying conditions were poor; granted that army fliers lack experience in blind and instrument piloting, radio beacon landing; granted that the government's aeroplanes were some years behind the civilian transport machines in efficient performances--that may be valid excuse for their poor performance in carrying the mails, but it would be small consolation had the emergency been one which could not be controlled by executive order or opposition legislation. The individual army pilots lack neither courage or ability, but the equipment, training, and morale of that service is far below the standards of practical preparedness...