Science: At Westinghouse | TIME

Atom-smashing used to be one of the purest of pure sciences, but it is rapidly grossening toward practicality. Substances made artificially radioactive in atom-smashing machines are used for cancer research and other biological studies, so that atomic experimenters now turn out —though with their left hand — products of commercial value. Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co., which is interested in the practical business of making money but also has a reputation for farsightedness, has built a giant atom-smasher, the only one possessed by any industrial laboratory in the U. S.

Last week Westinghouse staged a special demonstration of recent and current research, with the atom-smasher as star performer. Spectators handed the operators silver coins which were put under the atom-smasher, made artificially radioactive, returned to the nervous owners — who were assured that their gingered-up coins were harmless, would cease to radiate in a few days.

King of the atomic world at Westinghouse is Dr. Edward Uhler Condon, Coauthor of Quantum Mechanics and The Theory of Atomic Spectra, a distinguished theoretical physicist at Princeton before going to East Pittsburgh two years ago.

Approachable, colloquial and jolly, Dr. Condon is that delight of newsmen—a scientist who used to be a newsman himself. Born in New Mexico 37 years ago,son of a railroad civil engineer, he spent his childhood roving all over the West with his father. After a year at the University of California, he dropped out and went to work for an Oakland paper. But he soon decided that journalism was not his line, returned to the university and graduated with highest honors. He likes reading science books of all kinds, band music, complicated ice-cream sodas. His thick black hair stands almost straight up, as though he himself carried a constant electrical charge.

Other highlights of the Westinghouse show:

Hell’s Bells. “K-42-B” is a new alloy of iron, nickel, cobalt, chromium, manganese, silicon, carbon and titanium which maintains extreme hardness at high temperatures. Two bell-shaped castings, one of ordinary steel, one of K-42-B, were heated red-hot in a furnace. When the red-hot steel bell was struck with a hammer, it was too soft to respond with anything but a thud. But the red-hot K-42-B bell, when struck, rang out clearly, like a church bell on a sparkling winter day. The Westinghouse people call this exhibit “Hell’s Bells.”

Carburization turns a soft iron wire into steel in one minute. The wire is heated in a hydrogen atmosphere to prevent oxidation. The hydrogen, bubbling through alcohol, picks up alcohol vapor. This vapor contains carbon, which inter acts with the hot iron to make it steel. The Westinghouse people devised this exhibit to show the new importance of controlled atmospheres in hardening commercial steel parts.

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