Encyclopedia of Connecticut biography, genealogical-memorial ...

for loads of 4,000,000 pounds and it will
show distinctly a variation of one pound
in the load. The calibrating machine has
eight twenty-five-hundred-pound stand-
ard weights, each adjusted to a probable
error of not more than one part in eight
hundred thousand on the scale previously
mentioned.
These testing machines embodied improvements
over his earlier testing ma-
chines, and contained a new form of
"Emery" plate fulcrum, and the E. & T.
Fairbanks & Company, of St. Johnsbury,
Vermont, saw the machine and believed
that these fulcrums could be adapted to
railroad track scale, and working in conjunction
with them and with the Penn-
sylvania railroad, Mr. Emery designed
and built such a scale, which was installed
in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, and was entirely
successful in its operations. The scale
was redesigned to embody certain fea-
tures which were developed in the construction
and test of the first scale, and
this design was adopted by the Penn-
sylvania railroad as their standard for
track scales, and is built by them in their
own shops and also by the E. & T. Fairbanks
& Company in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
During the first year of its use eighty
million tons were weighed on this scale,
which was located in Tyrone, Pennsyl-
vania, without impairing in the least its
sensitiveness or accuracy, whole trains
passing over the scale at the rate of four
miles an hour, each of the cars being
weighed separately without stopping the
train. Besides these trains which were
weighed, many thousand more cars
passed over that scale the first year for
classification, and over seven thousand
locomotives also passed over it. At the
end of the year the scale was retested and
pronounced as accurate as when first set
up.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BIOGRAPHY
260
In the winter 1910-11 Mr. Emery de-
signed a track scale testing car for the
United States Bureau of Standards. That
car carries 100,000 pounds of standard
weights and goes all over the United
States testing the track scales of the rail-
roads and industries. Mr. Emery con-
structed a model of it, one-twelfth of the
regular size, for the United States Bureau
of Standards, for them to exhibit at the
San Francisco Exposition. A second car,
also equipped with 100,000 pounds of
standard weights, was built for the Bu-
reau of Standards in 191 5. Eight of these
weights, each weighing 10,000 pounds,
were adjusted to one part of 1,000,000.
The Department of Agriculture had him
design and build for them a scale that
would weigh a hive of bees in one room,
the weighing being done in another room.
The temperature of the inner room be-
ing maintained within one-tenth of a
degree for long periods, to determine the
temperature at which a colony of bees
would eat the least honey. For the
United States Bureau of Standards, Mr.
Emery has built a set of test levers of
50,000 pounds capacity for calibrating
testing machines.
Very early in his study of the construc-
tion of ordnance, Mr. Emery conceived
the idea of constructing guns by hydrau-
licly expanding either a single forging or
a series of concentric forgings, by the use
of hydraulic pressure on the interior, thus
putting the required initial strains into
the metal instead of by the method of
shrinking one part onto another. This
also raises the elastic limit of the metal,
and guns so made are much stronger than
when the parts are shrunk together.
These ideas were embodied in patents
taken out by him both in this country and
in many foreign countries. He tried
many times to interest the gun manufac-
turers and the War and Navy depart-