ScienceMakers Toolkit Manual - The History Makers

Chemistry
reluctant to say anything and so as I said, we did eat there and found out the next day that this was an accomplishment.
This is Ohio, this is North, and this is segregated.
Clip 3 - Begins Work with NACA/NASA: I started at…employed at NACA, the National Advisory Committee
for Aeronautics and the way I got that job…is kinda interesting. When I was here in Cleveland interviewing
for the job at Industrial Rayon at which they said they wanted a, you know, a mechanical engineering background.
While I was in town, I called a friend of mine who had graduated a year or so before I did from Ohio
State and he was working in Cleveland at NACA and so I just called and said hello, I was in town and told him
why, and he said, “Oh why don’t you come out here, we’re looking for people.” So I did. I applied for a position
there and got it and started in August of 1954, and again, this is a civilian agency of the government, the predecessor
actually of NASA, but it was NACA the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. I was at Clark
from 1953 to 1954, and then I started in 1954 at NACA as a research chemist.
Clip 4 - Jet Fuel Research: My work primarily was as a chemist. Yes, and initially it involved fuels for jet aircraft.
As in all vehicle studies, you’re always interested in getting better performance, more effi ciency, all kinds
of improvements in any mode of transportation. So, we were looking for fuels for jet aircraft that were better
than the ones that were presently being used…in some cases. In one case, they were looking at different kinds
of fuel, very quickly and very simply, instead of carbon and hydrogen, which is the makeup of the hydrocarbon
fuels that were used in cars and aircraft and whatever. We started looking at some boron hydrogen compounds
because it seemed that they might give us more effi ciency, more bang for the buck in some cases. It turns out
that yes, they were better in some ways, but in other ways they were not. There were too much deposits left, so
that program was looked at and then dropped. The Navy was particularly interested in those fuels, so we looked
at different kinds of fuels for jet aircraft other than the carbon and hydrogen fuels and then, as I said, that program
was dropped because it wasn’t any better.
Clip 5 - Oil Alternatives Research: And then in another program, we started looking for alternate sources of
fuels. By that I mean fuels come out of the ground now, petroleum reserves. Dig an oil well. You get the oil out
of it. You process it. A certain part of it goes for gasoline for cars. A certain part goes for fuels for aircraft. And
a certain part goes for some other uses. Well, we had a crisis, impending crisis: that we were going to run out
of petroleum fuels. What can we use? Well, one of the answers was we can use coal and oil shale. The United
States has a lot of coal. It also has a lot of shale oil reserves and can we get decent aircraft fuels from these
sources. Well, okay, let’s get some of this out and we’ll test it. As a chemist, we would analyze it. Tell the engineers
how similar or how different it is from the fuels that they were using. And so, there was a program that
was developed to look at fuels from alternate sources. Well, that went on for a few years until they found that,
oh, we’re really not as short on oil as we thought. We got enough to last for x number of years and the crisis that
started off and then [oil prices] started come back down, and so that program went by the boards also because
we don’t need these fuels from alternate sources.
Some of my work was involved with energy research…specifi cally looking at batteries and fuel cells, which are
sources of electricity. And the Navy was interested in the programs that we had. Well, NASA was interested
also, but NASA didn’t have money to support the programs. So, we were getting our support from the Department
of Energy and the Department of Defense. So, my work was more for sources…for terrestrial uses and
also underwater and…in some instances, because the Navy had some underwater aircraft that they wanted to
develop some of these sources of energy for, and not really related to outer space. And in telling…different
people they ask about that and they said, “Well, wait a minute, you’re out at the space agency and…” Yes, but
we do a lot of work that’s not directly related to space and we were asked to do this and we respond. And it just
happens that most of my work has really not been directed to any projects in outer space.
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