Chapter 22
Enter Alloy: Exit Rust
2Scientific discovery is invention, and vice versa.
3 We say ‘‘discovery’’ because scientists (sometimes called inventors) simply bring into physical, tangible relief, energy properties of the universe which are and always have been latently present. There is herein inferred no credit of ‘‘scientific attitude’’ in the fussings of millions of tricksters of mechanical rearrangements who are popularly called inventors. However, even after ‘‘discovery,’’ inventions often remain popularly unrecognized and unemployed for long periods. For example, chrome-nickel, an alloyed combination of elements of special proportions for toughening of steel, was scientifically ‘‘discovered’’ in 1898 but was not put to practical use until the World War.
4 Alloying of basic metals in general had not attained to broad use prior to the World War because the finance-capitalist, herewith ‘‘dubbed’’ Fincap for short, was interested in tonnage not in quality, and failed to envision the value, even in his own production-machine monopolies, of alloy employment that might afford higher longevity in service of mechanisms.
5 In fact, it was quite counter to Fincap’s interest to achieve such high longevity even in his own mechanisms for, through such devices as interlocking directorates and widespread holdings, he apparently reaped higher revenue from the production of gross tonnage of erosive disintegratable raws than out of the production of improved machinery.
6 By instigating the War, Fincap unleashed popular man’s educated ingenuity (theretofore but minutely and fearfully ‘‘valved off’’ for Fincap’s competitive ends) into the people’s own service to demonstrate its survival worth, in defense of family, nation, idealism and honor in the broadest sense.
7 Fincap, busy with profits, did not dream of the change of attitude toward machinery and its basic manufacture that would transpire during the War. Educated man’s ingeniousness, waging war, was limitless. Men fought defensively for their freedom, their ‘‘democracy.’’ The ostensible ‘‘offensive’’ was simply the means of ‘‘defense.’’ Better, ever better, guns were required. Guns wore out with terrific rapidity, which intensified their scarcity and called attention to the necessity of designing guns that would last longer. English ordnance men demonstrated that steel alloyed with chrome and nickel which, as stated, had been originally invented in Germany, was so tough that it could withstand disabling wear twice as long as could the gun steels till then employed.
8 The utilization of chrome-nickel-steel in British guns was only one of a myriad of innovations designed to provide increased longevity of service of man’s extension-mechanisms of predominant survival. Chrome-nickel-steel not only provided a metal that was relatively rust-proof, but one with increased hardness and toughness and one with twice the tensile strength of ordinary steel and with 50% more than the tensile strength of the best gun steels in use prior to its inclusion. Specifically and matter of factly, this increase in the tensile strength of steel symbolized the great transition from the matter-over-mind to mind-over-matter dominance.
9 Prior to the War, ordinary steels and cast iron, et cetera, were approximately identical in compressive and tensile strength. These two stress categories of ‘‘compression’’ and ‘‘tension’’ comprise essentially unique stress satisfaction segregations of all structures and mechanism. They are selectively employed by scientific man to balance the two primary (and otherwise unharnessed) energy characteristics: push and pull. True, there are other stress and structural characteristics such as ‘‘hardness,’’ ‘‘elasticity,’’ ‘‘elongation,’’ et cetera, but these are figuratively speaking, children of the parents: compression and tension.
10 The pre-War steel-iron family averaged approximately 60,000 lbs. to the square inch, ‘‘ultimate’’ in either compressive or tensile strength, and was representative, broadly speaking, of the most ‘‘efficient’’ of all man’s materials-of-design-satisfaction and synthesis. (‘‘Efficient’’ connotes an integration of the weight-strength, availability, coincident longevity-workability-under-standability factors as it applies to structuring of the inanimate slave. [It might also apply to appraisal of a spontaneous inamorata.]) Not only was the steel-iron family balanced in its compressive and tensile strength, but up to the World War its compressive strength was still only the equivalent of the top compressive strength of masonry and stone which was likewise 60,000 lbs. to the square inch.
11 Stone and masonry, however, have a tensile strength relatively far less than their compressive strength. Moreover, the stone and masonry tensile strength (of 50 to 500 lbs. per square inch) is inferior, by cross-sectional area comparison, even to that of the best fibrous members of animate structures—that is, of wood, hemp, et cetera. Wherefore, steel, although equaled compressively by masonry, was 120 times stronger than the latter (pre-War) from a tensile viewpoint. That is why we say that in steel lay, broadly speaking, the most important by man synthesized advance of materials for structural design satisfaction up to that date.
12 Immediately following the war-born institution of toughened, hardened and non-corrosive alloys and their inclusion in heat-treated steel products, further refinements of the alloying process occurred.
13 Subsequent to the War, industry advanced the tensile ability of certain special production steel products (‘‘piano wire,’’ et cetera.') to 400% more than the compression-resisting ability of any steel,—‘‘production’’ or ‘‘research’’—by equivalent cross-sectional comparison, i.e., to 300,000 lbs. to the square inch tensile strength.
14 Proof that these changes factually symbolized the transition to popular mind dominance over matter is to be drawn precisely from this structural and mechanical tension vs. compression history.
15 It was postulated earlier that the tension line is a fitting symbol of intellection, being practically unlimited in length with relation to its cross-sectional area. Being also flexible, the tensed structural member is instantly adjustable to load changes and may, therefore, receive eccentric loadings at any point along its surface, because it tends to pull true and, with loading, becomes more cohesively taut. It is more ‘‘intelligent’’ to ‘‘play’’ a great fish with a delicate tension line with which one may tire and ultimately reel him in (despite his superior size, weight and speed to like characteristics of the fisherman) than, irrationally in a might-makes-right bully manner, to jump into the water and attempt to push the fish out with a fishing pole of possibly 100 times the cross-sectional area of the line.
16 Vertically and statically employed structural compression members have ‘‘advantage’’ over any other equally dimensioned compression member employed horizontally, slantwise or otherwise. Vertical compression members of masonry are limited in height to 18 times their diameter. This is the old Greek column formula. The compression stress-satisfaction members of steels and woods are allowed a little better than this proportion of diameter to length.
17 Structurally speaking, eccentric or working loads must be applied to compressive members only at their terminals, in the line of the longitudinal axis; otherwise their fundamental tendency to deflect from that axis will be amplified toward failure through collapse, or sheer.
18 Although the compression member is thus highly limited in its functioning in comparison to the tension member, granted equal cross-sectional strength, the ‘‘practical’’ structural advantage was nonetheless held by compression-employed materials, as in the stone arch bridge, until the U. S. Civil War (at which time the Bessemer and Kelly processes of economical steel manufacture were invented), due to the high economic availability in these earlier days of inanimate, unsynthesized stone with its simple pounds-per-square-inch compression resistance highly superior stressively to the tensile strength of vegetable or living tissue-structured fibers. This compressive advantage was then symbolic of the superiority of might-makes-right throughout all the days of pre-mechanized society.
19 In the post-Civil War synthesis era, stone was supplanted by a metallic extraction from stone itself which, as a primary structural and instrumental material, made the machine possible. This extraction had obviously called for functioning of the selective mechanism of intellect.
20 Following the analogy of tension representing ‘‘right’’ and compression ‘‘might,’’ this intellectual functioning developed not only a parity with might in the commercial or warehouse era prior to the World War as symbolized by an equal balance of the compressive and tensile ability of the then most able structural materials (as demonstrated in the Brooklyn Bridge with its stone compression masts and steel tension cables), but, also, a slight edge over ‘‘might,’’ that is, approximately 70,000 lbs. per square inch in compression and 75,000 lbs. tensile strength in alloyed steel, which latter was 10,000 lbs. more than the ‘‘best’’ compression strength of stone (60,000 lbs.) and 500% greater tensile strength than in the stone structure days. This 142/?% compressive gain of steel over stone represents approximately the sum total of advance of the pushing bully of the 20th century A. D. over his 3,000,000 B. C. stone age forebear, and the 1500% gain of steel in tensile ability represents the practical ‘‘intellectual’’ gain over the stone age.
21 As mentioned above, tension members are much more versatile functionally in relation to working loads than compression members, where either is developed to its most satisfactory or efficient extension. Wherefore, in cross-sectional tests of one cubic inch units the superior metals of the tension or compression categories may show only an equivalent resistance to ultimate failure. They are not at all equivalent as practically disposed in their respective extended ‘‘best’’ structural employment.
22 To lift a weight mechanically to any height, for instance, to the top of the Empire State Building, there is required either an elevating plunger similar to that of the old push-up elevator, or a tension cable suspended and reeled overhead. If a push-up elevator were to be used, it would call for a horizontal cross section diameter almost as great as that of the Empire State Building itself to avoid dangerous deflection, though the load be but one pound. So effective, however, is metal in tension and so unlimited is it in cross-sectional ratio to length, that a steel cable of 1-inch diameter would be sufficient to lift a several ton load to the top of the building.
23 In the giant suspension bridge, the roadway (or ‘‘working-load’’ receiver) is directly connected by hanging (a tension function) only to the tension members, the roadway being threaded through the compression masts without touching them lest the latter be deflected. In a weight-for-weight comparison of compression members vs. tension members, in balanced structure relationship, each disposed in the manner of greatest efficiency of service, as demonstrated in the modern suspension bridges, the steel even of war vintage was six times more useful when employed in the tension than in the compression function. This latter comparison is in ‘‘versatility’’ and is not to be confused with pure push-pull ability. Pursuing our analogy of ‘‘mind’’ being represented by tension and ‘‘matter’’ by compression, it would seem that the post-War industrial era started with a ratio of mind-over-matter dominance of 6:1.
24 With the inception of alloys and their post-War higher development, metals in their most suitable state for tension use jumped further, that is, to four times the ability of steel in the most suitable state for compression, or 280,000 lbs. tension vs. 70,000 lbs. compression. This statement, be it remembered, is made on the basis of tests of cubic inch blocks, and is not to be confused with the 6:1 greater ability of steel used in its most efficient tensile disposition over steel used in its most efficient compressive disposition. These static and dynamic advantages must be integrated to assess the increasing economic advantage of tensed over compressed steel. There was, therefore, a 24:1 total use advantage in the steel used in tension over steel employed in compression at the opening of this decade (1930). Our telelogic designer is cautioned that steel should be employed tensilely wherever mechanically appropriate. This is done with efficiency in the great suspension bridges already mentioned, in which the cross-sectional area of the steel in the direct compression of the masts is 24:1 to the cross-sectional area of the cables, although both members participate equally in supporting the ultimate working road-load.
25 Current industrially producible steel is not only 24:1 more economically useful in tension than in compression, but compared to the structural ability of stone it is compressively 114:1, and tensilely 240:1, more useful. It is also 6000:1 more tensilely useful than the mortar used to join the stones together.
26 Although mind and matter have become, in the industrial era, apparently of equal compressive importance, mind has attained a distinctly superior tensile ability. This corollary of man’s progress, revealed in structural ability, seems to be justified by comparison of these figures to those developed in the early chapter: ‘‘E = MC2’’ = ‘‘Mrs. Murphys Horse Power,’’ indicating an approximate gain by man of 29 inanislaves.
27 Mans scientific or intellectual control of his environment is specifically indicated by his progression in tensive cohesive flexibility of adjustment, as directly demonstrated in the ratio of increased tension ability of materials extracted from his environment for that environments structural encompassment. Structurally speaking, if stone has a tensile strength of 1000 lbs. per square inch and commercial steel has 240,000 lbs. per square inch, then man in the stone age had only 1/240 of the ability of man today. In other words, modern man has advanced by intellectuality 2400% beyond his stone age ancestor in ability to conquer environment. This is potential, rather than actual, of course, because man still structures his homes in stone, brick and mortar, hiding with an inferior-complexity his steel ability under tons of stone ‘‘facing.’’ Furthermore, that hidden steel in building has not yet been segregated into efficient tension and compression elemental balance of ‘‘best’’ possible service, as demonstrated in the suspension bridge. A beginning may be noted in the tension diagonals employed in the large one story light frame steel structures—such as in the temporary buildings of the world fairs.
28 It is interesting that nature’s structures—whether tree, human, fish or fowl—long ago took cognizance of the fundamental tendency of the elements in their solid state to do more efficient work in tension, in which state their molecular forms are arranged in a most adequate manner, to-wit: The life cell in each of nature’s creatures not only indicates cognizance of the superiority of solids in tension, but also of the fact that every element is transmutable energetically into solid, liquid and gaseous states, being converted progressively from the solid to the gaseous state by energy radiation with usual volume increase as passaging from solid-to-liquid-to-gas. (There is one marked exception to this progression, most fortunate for man. H2O has greater volume as ice than as water.) A progression of mutability or flow is evidenced in the progression of solid-to-liquid-to-gas, i.e., as the transfer is made from solid>liquid>gas a higher degree of plasticity and elasticity is progressively attained.
29 Nature fashioned her primary structural member, the life cell, as a globule in which elements in their liquid and gaseous states are compressively enclosed by elements in their solid and tensed state. A small proportion of elements in a gaseous state are enclosed within the liquid that is held within the tensed solid estate globule. The ball skin of solids is always in tension (due, partly, to its being filled with liquid, and, partly, to the fact that it is pressured outward by the inclusion of the relatively highly compressible gas under pressure within the relatively non-compressible liquid) except at load transfer points, that is, at the portion of its surface upon which the ball rests, or at the point at which it is push-contacted by the life cell arrangement. Any applied load or work is distributed equally to all of its solid tensile surface, through the medium of its contained relatively non-compressible liquid, which is a highly mutable loaddisbursing design-member. The shock of contact of eccentric loads upon the life cell is absorbed by the small quantum of the already compressed but still further compressible gases pregnant in the liquid. The life cell may be likened to a ‘‘sausage’’ balloon filled with carbonic (‘‘fizzy’’) water.
30 Mechanical science is slowly comprehending this vastly efficient structural principle of nature. Its partial observation and teleologic application to the design of the pneumatic tire has made possible potentially safe, superior-to-horse-speeds in motorization which could never have been attained by compressively employed steel tires of the horse-drawn vehicle’s wheels.
31 Until the advent of the age of marked superiority of metals in tension over tensile abilities of natural fibers and ‘‘raw’’ stones, it was useless for man to overcontemplate this structural efficency of nature.
32 Leonardo da Vinci was apprised of the natural principle of mechanically functioning structures, but he had neither the precise materials to be highly use-effective teleologically nor the possibility of evolving them out of anything at hand to correspond with their efficiency as observed in nature.
33 As a result of the service improvement of machinery during the World War and the many discoveries in processes of alloying, heat-treating, and electro-chemical analyses, it is now not only suitable but essential to efficiency for man to incorporate in his structural and mechanical designs the efficient principle which, in nature, enables life-celled-structured birds and insects to fly, and the tree, the largest living unit mechanism, to rear itself to colossal heights relative to trunk diameter, and, adjustingly, to withstand storm and change through life continuities in some cases of several thousand years.
34 The microscopically observed structures of ‘‘worked’’ steel and tree trunks are, alike, comprised of myriads of sausage-balloon-fibrous units. The science of the determination of the electrical-frictional affinities of molecules in lubricants, cohesives and aggregates, and the ratios of these agglomerations is known as colloidal chemistry. Colloidal chemistry, coupled with thermodynamics in its advanced stage (comprehending general characteristics of the energy phenomena in chrystalline, liquid and gaseous estates) currently constitutes the central objective of science which seeks structurally to employ the primary electrical polarity specifics of radiation.
35 In compression, a tangential agglomeration of spheroids is structurally the most satisfactory cellular arrangement since cellular elongations under compression tend to wedge and split asunder their agglomerations. In tension, however, fibrous crystalline surfaced elongations of the globular cells are most frictionally cohesive.
36 The foregoing discussion of structural function may seem to be unrelated to a discussion of the forces unleashed by Fincap when he encouraged, during the World War, the ingenuity of young, educated minds for what he conjectured, at the time, would be his own profit production. Nevertheless, it is not only pertinent but it precisely typifies the myriad of enrichments, intricacies and niceties of penetration-for-use-purposes which the popular educated mind attained in the World War and which creates the irrevocable chasm between business minds still focused upon surfaces and the science-led deeply-penetrating-by-mind social trend. The widening breach demonstrated itself dramatically in the ‘29 and ‘37 panics.
37 The geometric progression of intellectual complexity of industry engendered by the War made it devastatingly evident—when the War was concluded—that Fincap (excepting only his hazy awareness of the names of broad fields of activity such as that of the ‘‘chemical industry’’) was completely devoid of any tactical comprehension of the industrial mechanism. Until the War, Fincap had been able in a general, workable way to comprehend relatively simple industrial mechanisms which were gross and easy to see with the naked eye--for example, in a cotton mill, where Fincap was familiar with the cards, spindles, slubbers, spinning frames and other equipment.
38 Ford, the true industrial-principle leader as distinguished from Fincap, tried to stop the War but found his peace-ship gesture absurdly inadequate. So, with the ingenuity that had inspired his earlier conception of the production of automobiles-for-people vs. automobiles-for-the-individual, he plunged into the industrialization of war machinery to speed war’s end. True, many other highly ingenious industrialists entered the war-machinery field, but Henry Ford represents the most efficient and progressively intuitive of the group.
39 Ford’s unique ‘‘principle of service’’ had already differentiated him from other financially hamstrung industrialists. His positing of CONTINUITY vs. STATICISM had evolved a continually moving production line in lieu of the antiquated ‘‘batch’’ method of production. Realizing that continuity is logically integrated with service, Ford became highly concerned with the longevity of reciprocating parts in his products and processes. He was more concerned about this than was any other industrialist in the world.
40 Through his contact with war ordnance engineers such as the British gun designers who ushered in chrome-nickel-steel, Ford became thoroughly apprised of the alloying and heat-treating of metals for higher service. This interest in the special alloying of metals to provide the highest specific satisfaction under any of an infinity of conditions of speed, loading, frequency, et cetera, with infinite frictional or energy considerations, precipitated an intensive research by Ford into electro-chemical metallurgical analysis. The results guided him in evolving hosts of special alloys.
41 The first application of these alloys occurred in Ford’s production machinery, and even more exquisitely in his tools-to-maketools. Eventually the principle was extended to the finished product, namely, the automobile itself, designed and fabricated for popular use. Within a very short post-War period, Ford structured into his automobile 54 different types of alloyed steels which, under microscopic or electrical analysis, were individually as different as are rubies, diamonds and emeralds.
42 Despite this new steel world, the ‘‘business man’’ still speaks of steel with the general notion that there is only one such article. ‘‘Steel is up 3 points,’’ et cetera. He is lingering in the warehouse era of mental activity during which steel companies rendered almost any kind of malleable ferrous product into sheets, tubes, and other sections, and shipped them as ‘‘steel’’ to warehouses in cities for the take-it-or-leave-it use of the manufacturers of rustable goods.