UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE. Frederick H. Mueller, Secretary For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C. Abstract This Handbook is a three-volume compilation of approximately 150 selected papers previously published by the staff of the National Bureau of Standards on precision measurement, calibration, and related subjects. It was prepared to meet the urgent need of newly established standards laboratories for a "textbook" and reference source in these fields. Volume I contains papers in electricity and electronics; Volume II, heat and mechanics; and Volume III, optics, metrology, and radiation. Each volume contains a complete index of the entire Handbook by author, subject, and title. 1600 U u zh no. 77 V. 2 2 Engin Foreword The National Bureau of Standards is charged with the responsibility of establishing and maintaining the national standards of physical measurement, and of providing means for their effective utilization. This responsibility carries with it the mission of providing the central basis for a complete, consistent system of physical measurement, adequate for national growth in research and technology. The recent tremendous increase in industrial activity, particularly in the missile and satellite fields, has led to an unprecedented demand for precision measurement, which, in turn, is bringing about the establishment of hundreds of new standards laboratories. Many of these new laboratories must cover the entire field of measurement, and must do so with a staff not previously trained in work on standards of precision measurement. To aid these laboratories in transmitting the accuracies of the national standards to the shops of industry, the Bureau has prepared this three-volume Handbook. It is a compilation of publications by the Bureau staff that have been found of value to those who are establishing and operating new standards laboratories. Omitted are some extended works, as well as a few shorter papers that are otherwise readily available. It is hoped that this compilation will serve both as a "textbook" and a reference source for the many scientists and engineers who must be trained in the shortest possible time to fill responsible positions in this critical area. A. V. ASTIN, Director. Preface Because of the urgent need for this Handbook, it has been reproduced by a photoduplication process. As a result, the individual publications that make up the compilation will be found to vary in such details as style, size of type, and method of pagination. Each paper reproduced for the compilation is essentially complete as originally published and retains its original page numbering. All pages have also been numbered in regular sequence throughout the three volumes. Thus, the volume page number and the original page number are combined, for example 100/10. Because of the short time available, a complete review of each paper included was not possible. However, some efforts were made to bring the older papers up to date, and only those papers have been included that are of current value. Nevertheless, users should be cautioned that the state of the art may have advanced beyond that represented in some of the older papers. These three volumes, extensive as they are, include only a fraction of the published work of the National Bureau of Standards relating to standards. However, many of the reprinted papers contain extensive bibliographies that will enable the user who is confronted with a special problem to locate additional information. The papers that appear or are cited in this three-volume Handbook were originally published over a period of several years as circulars, research papers, chapters of books, and as articles in scientific and technical periodicals. Thus individual copies of many papers are no longer readily available. More recent Bureau publications, and in some cases the older papers for which prices are given, may still be obtainable by purchase from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C. Other papers may often be obtained directly from the authors or from the publishers of the Journals in which the papers appeared. The papers referred to in the various lists, if not generally available as stated above, are usually available for reference in technical, university, Government depository, and public libraries. Contents Heat The international temperature scale of 1948- Absolute temperatures below 1° K: Chromic methylammonium alum Installation for adiabatic demagnetization experiments at NBS. An examination of the helium vapor-pressure scale of temperature Page Methods of testing thermocouples and thermocouple materials. Stability of base-metal thermocouples in air from 800° to 2,200° F. Determination of the purity of hydrocarbons by measurement of Precise measurement of heat of combustion with a bomb calorimeter. Heat of combustion of benzoic acid, with special reference to the stand- Note on the density and heat of combustion of benzoic acid. Thermodynamic properties of 1,3-butadiene in the solid, liquid, and V |