Martyrs

A hermetically sealed concrete room with air pressure reduced to that of high altitudes; an airplane engine running under actual flying conditions; a mixture of gasoline and air; a leak, a stray spark, a short-circuited wire--who knows? and four young scientists of the U. S. Bureau of Standards were blown into Nirvana. Others were injured but will recover. The dead: Lauer, 23 years old, a Ph.D., preparing for a professorship in mathematics; Kendig, 26, an electrical engineer; Cook, 30; Lee, 35 (a survivor of the Knickerbocker Theatre disaster of last year). Theirs were the salaries of Government employees--none over $2,000. Some of their families may receive $50 a month from the Government; a voluntary relief fund was started by the Bureau staff. Said Herbert C. Hoover, in whose Department the Bureau is: " These men were martyrs to the experimental work through which science finds its advances toward public usefulness." Director George K. Burgess appointed a committee to make a minute investigation.

The victims were engaged in experiments to test the amount of evaporation in an airplane engine. Government experts estimate that 500,000,000 gallons of gasoline may be saved yearly if the experiments prove successful. In the same laboratory but a few weeks ago the engines of the Navy's great dirigible, ZR1, received their final tests.