The National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Experiments on the Expansion of Steam

[The following narrative is taken from Frederick W. True’s Semi-centennial history of the National Academy of Sciences, A History of the First Half-Century of the National Academy of Sciences 1863-1913, pp. 226-227.]

It is recorded in the first Annual of the Academy that on February 29, 1864, “the Hon. Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, invited the appointment of a committee of three members of the Academy to act jointly with three members named by the Department and with three members of the Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania, for the promotion of the Mechanic Arts, to conduct, witness, and report upon experiments which may be agreed upon by the Commission on the expansion of Steam. The experiments are to be reported as early as practicable to the Department and to be submitted also to the National Academy of Sciences for its judgment and suggestions.” [Ann. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1863-1864, p. 39.] The investigation was undertaken by authority of Congress.

The Academy appointed as its committee Fairman Rogers, F.A.P. Barnard and Joseph Saxton. The Navy Department appointees were Horatio Allen, Chas. H. Davis (a member of the Academy) and B.F. Isherwood, and those of the Franklin Institute, J.H. Towne, J.V. Merrick, and R.A. Tilghman.

Whether any results were reached by this commission is doubtful. A preliminary report was made to the Academy on January 5, 1865, and another report of progress on January 26, 1866, but in 1880 we learn that “owing to the lack of appropriations these investigations have not yet been concluded.” [Rep. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1864, pp. 2 and 5-7; also for 1866, p. 3, and for 1879, p. 9.] In the meantime two members of the commission had died, and perhaps others. In view of this circumstance and the fact that fifteen years after the experiments were begun they were still unfinished, it is improbable that they were ever brought to a conclusion. The most that can be learned is that the object in view was to determine the measure of expansion that would give the best results in practice, that a program for the experiments was considered at a meeting held in New York on June 29, 1864, at the Novelty Iron Works of which Horatio Allen was the president, that the apparatus proposed by him was approved by the commission, that after delay this apparatus was made ready for use, and that experiments were conducted by five assistant engineers detailed by the Navy Department, one of whom had general charge, while the other four kept regular watch of operations.