Engineering War Research

U.S. engineering colleges last week stepped up to participate in war research. After the Kilgore bill to establish an Office of Technological Mobilization was put before the Senate, 73 colleges organized the Engineering Colleges Research Association with Dean Willis Raymond Woolrich of the University of Texas as president. When Stevens Institute's President Harvey N. Davis was appointed director of the Office of Production Research & Development in WPB (TIME, Nov. 16) the Association's council went to Washington to help and be helped.

Last week the council endorsed the Kilgore bill at a Senate subcommittee hearing, with post-war reservations. To Harvey Davis they offered lists of engineering laboratories, equipment and staff, hoping for quick assignment of war projects and funds. Their hope: to get problems which cannot be decided on paper evidence, including those which will require the operation of pilot plants to test new processes. The colleges resent their comparative idleness and empty laboratories in time of crisis.

Some projects of war import are already under way at individual colleges and have now been called to OPRD's attention as worthy of quick development. Among them:

>At Washington State College, a new magnesium process under study for ten years with good results. Handicap: lack of money for pilot plant development.

>At the University of Texas, a method of making butadiene, needed for rubber, from sour natural gas (too corrosive to pipe), eight years in the laboratory, also now ready for a pilot plant.

>At New York University, a study of motion in industry, looking toward higher efficiency and increased output.

>At Virginia Polytechnic Institute, development of spiral plywood pipe for low pressure fluid transportation to save steel; also in the pilot-plant stage.

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