The laboratories which were so excellent have been rearranged with greater space and some of them are the most remarkable in the country.
The boiler plant is itself a laboratory, with a capacity of 2,000 horse power, the boilers being of standard type with newest appliances. They are especially adapted to experiment This powerhouse will care for the heating, lighting and motor force of the great buildings and is built on the lines of a big central sta tion.
Steam is conveyed from the boilers to the steam laboratory in mechanical engineering through a subway seven feet square in section and the supply is carried in 20 and 10-inch pipes. The electrical equipment at the boilers includes three turbines directly connected to generators of 750 kilowatts, 500 kilowatts and 150 kilowatts, respectively, furnishing three phase current at 2,300 volts. In addition there are one 150-kilowatt turbine, two 150-kilowatt motor-generators furnishing direct current at 110 and 220 volts and two 35-kilowatt exciters.
The steam laboratory equipment includes a Curtis turbine of about 75 kilowatts capacity, a 38 Corliss with dynamometer, a 225 horse-power McEwan tandem compound, a compound and generator of the same make of 250 horse power, and a triple expansion Cor liss, especially adapted for experimental pur poses.
In the same laboratory there is a Brown en gine driving a three-stage compressor which will work up to 2,500 pounds per square inch. There are other compressors and a great many small engines and models of different types.
The hydraulic laboratory is fitted with 700 feet of canals, some of them 40 feet cross sec tion, with reservoirs, weirs, tanks and all kinds of measuring devices. Two pump wells 26 feet deep will serve for the testing of large pumps on a commercial scale. A pump of the capac ity of 22,000 gallons a minute lifts water to the second floor above which is discharged through a canal of 25 feet cross section into a penstock for the testing of water wheels. Nat ural heads up to 35 feet and artificial heads of some hundreds of feet may here be used. The battery of pumps includes a Douglass triplex, a Gould triplex and a Davis triplex, a 150 horse power turbine with direct connected centrif ugal pump, a 100 horse-power Terry turbine, a three-phase Jeansville pump, two duplex pumps each of the capacity of an ordinary steam fire engine, and the great pump which is driven by an angle compound engine of 325 horse power.
The chemical laboratory is fitted with a cen tral storage for rarer substances, special ele vators for quick service within the depart ment, electrical heating devices for the various processes and three systems of ventilation, the regular house system, the hood and a mush room ventilator applied to every table. The
laboratory has its electrical supply independent of the lighting or power systems of the buildings.
The aerodynamical laboratory is equipped with a four-foot blowing tunnel and an aero dynamical balance, a replica of that at Ted dington, England. The electrical laboratory is somewhat better than the old Lowell labora tory, but the improvement has been of neces sity in details and convenience.
The transmission laboratory is of unusual excellence. The equipment includes a 2,500 nau tical mile, artificial cable, corresponding to a regular ocean cable; a 2,500-mile long-distance artificial aerial line corresponding to a long distance trans-continental telephone line, two artificial power transmission lines of 800 miles and an artificial telephone subterranean line of 35 miles. Besides these items there is a nail of power transmission, 150,000-volt capacity. For experiments with this special laboratory has been built at the foot of one of the towers.
These are some of the new special equip ments, but the other laboratories, notably those for testing materials, for industrial chemistry, for biology, etc., find themselves newly placed in improved surroundings with increased facil ities and apparatus. The sewage laboratory, being located near one of the great outlets of the principal drainage of the metropolis, will not be moved.
With this unusual laboratory equipment, it has been possible for the Institute to do much of its experimental work on a scale approach that of industrial operations. The labora tories of mining and metallurgy, for instance, are designed to treat ores in quantities approx imating those used in actual practice, and rang ing from 500 pounds to 3 tons, and the con tributions to the literature of ore-dressing and metallurgy from this laboratory are well known. In the laboratory for testing the strength of materials, again, were conducted the first systematic and extended tests of beams of commercial size.
Throughout all the work of the Institute the aim of instruction is so to adjust the theo retical and experimental work that the acquire ment of principles in the classroom shall pre pare the student for his laboratory exercises, and that these in turn shall fix methods and results in his memory, and give him capacity for new experimentation. Throughout it is in tended to guide the student rather than to instruct him, and, whether in the four-year courses above described or in the graduate courses with which these may be supplemented, he is trained to work with less and less de pendence upon his teachers. This training should result in a considerable increase in his powers of ascertaining facts and overcoming difficulties, and so should increase his capacity for research.