even read my instruments. But I ducked my head, slowed down the engine to about 1,100 revolutions, so the hail and rain wouldn't chew up the propeller more than necessary, and went at it.

"It was a bit rough!

"Still, forty-five minutes later I came out of it near Camp Meade, almost exactly, as luck would have it, on my compass course. I landed at Washington all right, but the propeller and the leading edge of the wings looked as if rats and squirrels had been chewing them, and the plane was soaked clear through.

"But that was nothing compared with some of the storms the fellows have weathered since."

Sco

BLIZZARDS AND TORNADOES

COTT plugged through from New York to Washington the day of last year's big blizzard, when not a railroad wheel was turning. "It "It wasn't bad," he says. "I steered by compass to Aberdeen, and landed in the snow for more gas and oil, then came on." And Harris went through the 1920 tornado that hit Illinois and Ohio and cost more than 100 lives. "I had nice sailing from Cleveland to Bryan," he says. "But beyond there it began to get rough and bumpy upstairs. I ran into the worst rain and hail storm I ever hit, near Gary. For about five minutes I couldn't see anything, not even the instruments on the dashboard in front of me. The wind was blowing about forty miles an hour and the motor sputtered and missed and I thought of how cold Lake Michigan under me would feel. The way the lightning was flashing was something fearful, but I guess, from the papers, I was as safe in the air as the people on the ground. Anyway, I sat tight hoping to reach the other side of the storm. Well, I reached the other side, where there was a heavy downpour of rain from a higher cloud, but the visibility was delightfully better. Within ten minutes I landed at Grant Park, Chicago, in beautiful sunshine. They said the storm passed over Maywood and they were worrying about me. I arrived at 1:50,

as the card will show. The mail left New York at 7 A. M."

Now pardon his bit of pride: "I think that is pretty good time for mail from New York to Chicago, eh what? And anyway, the Air Mail went through when trains, street cars, and automobiles were held up."

"Old Pop" Anglin, as the Service dubs him, ducked under a storm one day and took to flying low on the run to Bellefonte. He was winding along the railroad through Penns Creek Valley when he lost the railroad because of the fog! "I was right down on the tracks," he said, "hitting it along, when the tracks dived through a tunnel. I considered there wasn't room for me to go through that tunnel, and thanked the Lord for an Immelman turn. I missed the blooming tunnel by less than half the thickness of a camel's hair. And then I lost not only the tunnel but the railroad. I thought of the man who lost the house that fit his key, but I found it! I circled around and got a new start and hopped right over that tunnel and got a good dinner in Bellefonte."

One of the twelve pilots we lost, and one of the best the Service.ever had-one who refused to bow before any kind of weatherRobinson-lost his life from a chance less than that. He was tripped, one clear bright day, by a wire stretched between mountains across the Susquehanna. A fisherman saw himsaw his plane, running fast, trip up and crash, in a tail spin.

IN

A CRASH IN THE ROCKIES

IN THE big Western country, with its far reaches, still the mail must go! There "Jim" Murray, high up above the Rockies, also crashed.

"I followed," he says, "the course of the Union Pacific rather closely from Rocky Springs to Walcott, Wyoming. At that place I left the railroad and flew toward Elk Mountain, the only clear spot I could make out anywhere along the whole range opening toward the east."

It's a big mountain, 12,500 feet high.

"The summit of it," he goes on, as well as the entire Medicine Bow Range,"-which is a black-and-white range of mountains, the black parts of which are forests and the white, snowcovered rocks-"was invisible in clouds. But the gap just south of the mountain, to the north of which is high, rough country, seemed to afford the only chance of my getting through. I flew under the bank of clouds, and almost at once found myself in a heavy snow storm. I was then perhaps halfway across the range, which is, roughly, fifteen miles wide at this point. Then I made a quarter turn to the right and flew south for a few minutes toward where there seemed to be more light and less

snow, all the while climbing away from the snow-covered mountains below."

The snow thickened. He wanted, he says, to turn back. "But," he reported, "that was impossible. My only plan now was to try to pass the storm and trust to getting through the remainder of the pass, down into Laramie Plain.” He turned eastward again, gradually climbing, full engine, with the machine slowing, the snow increasing, and the trees inching up closer. "Then," he continues, “I saw that I could not possibly outclimb the slope ahead. The jig was up."

He settled and crashed.

"Almost at once," he goes on, "I started to walk eastward, carrying the machine compass. But that was useless-it had been broken in the crash. It was getting dark while I walked through two feet of snow in what I judged to be slightly north of east. I walked for an hour and a quarter and struck a lake. There I spent the night.

"I again started east with the sun, at daybreak. I found a shack, not far from my resting place beneath a cedar tree, and discovered from a book that the lake was Sand Lake. As it was still snowing heavily, I decided to face toward the town of Arlington, which is fourteen miles away, rather than risk the hike through, directly eastward, with nothing to eat."

A while later he removed his flying suit and boots which were heavy and not designed for walking, carried them for a mile, then abandoned them, with his address in a pocket.

It was three o'clock when he walked into Arlington and learned he would have to drive six miles to phone Cheyenne.

It should be added, too, that when a crew went to get his plane, there were bear tracks in the snow around it.

Bears, and other members of the animal world, had been out to inspect this new monster from the air!

M

R. HOWARD E. COFFIN, now vice-president of the Hudson Motor Car Company, received a telephone call one morning offering him the nomination for vicepresident of the Society of Automobile Engineers. Mr. Coffin asked if it would require any effort or time, and when assured that it would not, said that he would accept. Some days later he was called again and informed that he had been elected president of the society.

At that time the Society of Automobile Engineers was composed of about three hundred members. It had been organized by that far-seeing publisher, Mr. Horace M. Swetland, and nursed by him through a struggling infancy. But it had not yet made any record of great accomplishment and it had

no funds. It had a valuable good-will, however, and Mr. Coffin saw great opportunities for it. Urged by Mr. Swetland, he engaged Mr. Coker F. Clarkson, secretary of the Mechanical Branch of the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers, as general manager, promising him a salary of five thousand dollars a year for two years. When the new president reported this move at the first meeting of the board of directors of the society, he met with considerable opposition from the doubting Thomases. At the next meeting one of the board brought in a chart showing how many years of normal growth it would take before the society could meet Mr. Clarkson's salary. By that time, however, some of the other directors had caught a little of the spirit of Mr. Coffin and Mr. Swetland,

and the renascence of the Society of Automobile Engineers started.

Mr. Henry Souther was next interested in the plans for the society. He had been in charge of the experimental and testing laboratory established by the Mechanical Branch of the A. L. A. M., at Hartford, Conn., in 1905. From then until the time of his death during the war, he continued an inspirational force among engineers in the automobile industry. These three men-Howard E. Coffin, Coker F. Clarkson, and Henry Souther-aided by Mr. Swetland and others, started the Society of Automobile Engineers on its new course of usefulness to the automobile industry. The plans which they put into effect were really a continuation of the work which had been started in the Mechanical Branch of the A. L. A. M. Mr. Coffin had been chairman of the committee on tests of that branch. Other members of that committee were John

"Standardization" is the word generally applied to the contribution to the automobile industry with which Mr. Coffin's name is particularly identified. That word is something of a misnomer, for it implies the fixing of standards for all time, while what has been done is the adoption of what might better be called "accepted practices," or standards subject to change and improvement as the engineering art of the industry progresses. Mr. Coffin is known as the father of "standardization," although by no means was he alone responsible for it. He was one of those who first saw the value of it and was instrumental in getting others to believe in it and in getting it done. The importance of standardization is appreciated when one realizes that it is the thing that makes quantity production at low cost possible.

THE COOPERATIVE SPIRIT

TANDARDIZATION in the automobile

air-cooled car, Hiram P. Maxim, son of Sir Hiram Maxim, and Charles B. King, who made and ran the first gasolene automobile on the streets of Detroit. This committee, with Mr. Souther as consulting engineer, had little more than started its work when the 1907 panic came and its appropriation was cut, never to be restored. These men saw an opportunity to carry on this same work in the S. A. E. when Mr. Coffin accepted the presidency of that society in 1910.

One of the interesting incidental developments from the joint efforts of this early engineering committee was the invention of the Maxim silencer for guns. The committee was working on mufflers for automobile exhausts and during one of its sessions some one remarked that it would seem possible to apply the same principle to muffling the sound of the explosion in a firearm. At the next meeting Mr. Maxim brought his silencer and demonstrated its use before the members of the committee.

One of the important contributions of this committee to the automobile industry was the standardizing of screw threads. The automobile needed a finer pitched screw than was being made at that time in order to give greater friction and prevent bolts and screws from being jarred loose so easily. To-day the A. L. A. M. screw thread standards, adopted and revised by the S. A. E., are universally accepted.

complishment if there had not been that coöperative spirit in the industry which was dealt with in the previous article of this series. That spirit was fostered in the Society of Automobile Engineers. It is one of the outstanding features of the entire industry to-day.

The membership of the Society of Automobile Engineers jumped from 310 in 1910 to 899 in 1911. It absorbed the Mechanical Branch of the A. L. A. M., and took over its work. To-day the S. A. E. has more than five thousand members. Its name is now the Society of Automotive Engineers, and it concerns itself not only with the engineering problems in the automobile, but in the airplane, the motor boat, the tractor, and the gas engine fields as well.

The man who led this organization into its present period of usefulness was a student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in IC02. That was in the days of the early infancy of the automobile industry-less than twenty years ago. He had built an automobile as part of his thesis work in college. When Mr. Fred. L. Smith, of the Olds Motor Works of Detroit, went over to Ann Arbor to see if he could employ an engineer, Dean Cooley of the engineering school recommended Coffin to him. Coffin at the time was doing some summer school work and had no desire to leave it, but he agreed to come to Detroit and talk with Mr. Smith about the job. When

he got there he found that he was expected to take it; Mr. Smith had settled the whole thing. So Coffin took charge of the engineering experimental work at the Detroit plant of the Olds Motor Works. A few years later he became chief engineer of the company.

In 1906, Mr. Roy D. Chapin, Mr. Coffin, Mr. Frederick O. Bezner, and Mr. J. J. Brady, all department heads at the Olds Motor Works, decided to start in the business for themselves. Mr. Chapin went to California to interest some of his friends in the proposition. While on Catalina Island, one day, he received a wireless message from San Francisco from E. R. Thomas, the producer of the famous Thomas Flier, asking Chapin if he would not come to see him. In the Bohemian Club in San Francisco, one evening, the plans were laid for a new automobile company to turn out cars which the Thomas organization was to sell. Thomas and Chapin left San Francisco on the last train East the night before the earthquake. They were met by the other men in Chicago where the plans for the new company were completed. Thomas wanted them to use an idle plant of his in Buffalo, but they convinced him that Detroit was going to be the centre of the industry.

THE EVOLUTION OF A GREAT COMPANY

D

ESIGNS for a new car were made and with the blue-prints of this car and a contract with the E. R. Thomas Company to take the entire output, Mr. Chapin went to see Mr. Theodore H. Buhl, a director of the First National Bank of Detroit, regarding a loan on the stock of the company. Thomas was putting in a large sum of money, and Chapin, Coffin, Bezner, and Brady were each taking a block of the stock that was larger than their limited resources would pay for. They wanted to borrow the balance they needed by giving the stock as security for a loan. Mr. Buhl sent them to Mr. Alexander McPherson, the conservative Scotch president of the bank. The result was one of those clear-visioned actions on the part of Detroit bankers that have done much to make that city the centre of a great industry. Based on confidence in the young men alone and Thomas's connection with the venture, the loan was granted. In the first year they turned out five hundred cars and the profits were more than the capital invested. That was the beginning of the Thomas-Detroit Company, later the Chal

mers-Detroit, out of which sprang the present Hudson Motor Car Company.

This company started by these young men in 1906, like most of the automobile companies of that time, was purely an assembling concern. The motors were contracted for from one manufacturer, the transmissions from another, the bodies and all the other parts, down to the bolts and washers, from other "parts-makers." To some degree that has continued to be the situation in the industry ever since. There is no company to-day that makes all the parts of a motor car; it would not be economical to do so. Back in those days all the parts were made according to the peculiar specifications of each company. When the 1907 panic came, this produced serious results in the industry. A manufacturer who was making bolts, or washers, or tubing, or some other minor but necessary part of a car, according to the specifications of the company using those parts, would fail for instance, and no other company was equipped to produce those parts according to the same specifications. Before the parts could be secured some other concern would have to make tools and jigs, or possibly build entirely new machinery for their production. Meanwhile, all of the more important parts for the car might have been delivered. The assembly could not go forward, however, nor cars be turned out, for want of a certain sized bolt or washer or small bit of tubing.

And such a situation did not apply only in hard times when concerns were failing. It applied at all times. Production might be stopped due to difficulties of transportation which would interfere with the delivery of certain parts, or because one parts maker would fall down on an order for one reason or another. The small companies suffered more than the large in this respect as they could not distribute their orders for single parts as the large companies could. And they were also hit harder because of the higher cost of having things made according to special specifications. The steel mills were clogged with a mass of small special orders each requiring and necessarily awaiting-its turn for separate run. Special brands, secret processes, mysterious ingredients, delays in delivery, and high prices, were the rule with the steel salesmen.

Tire manufacturers had millions invested in plant and mould equipment, and no two brands would fit on the same wheel rim. It

can be imagined that "standardization," with a wholesale scrapping of individual trade practices along with hundreds of thousands in production equipment, was by no means an easy achievement. But half the time in some accessory plants was being lost tearing down and setting up tools to meet the endless and useless variations in material demands. Deliveries were months behind schedule, quantity production was impossible, delays were costly and prices were high.

T

THE STANDARDS COMMITTEE"

HIS was the situation in the motor-car industry after ten years of more rapid growth than had ever taken place in any other industry. At the first meeting of the Society of Automobile Engineers after Mr. Coffin was elected president, he said: "Our members, as engineers, are responsible for nine tenths of the production troubles and much of the needless expense entailed in the manufacture of motorcars. Every purchasing department in the business is seriously hampered in its work by the utter lack of uniformity in material specifications which are being passed on to it by our engineering departments. Every individual engineering department is at present a law unto itself in nearly all matters touching design and the preparation of specifications. Individuality of design is one thing and should be encouraged. Individuality in specifications is largely useless and should be restricted within reasonable limits. Nine times out of ten it is not the unavoidable act of Providence which delays the output-it is the irresponsible draftsman or designer who is permitted to draw upon his imagination for specifications throughout the entire range of theoretical possibilities."

A "standards committee" was appointed with Henry Souther as chairman. It was divided into many sub-committees, each working along special lines. Representatives of manufacturing companies in the various lines were placed on these sub-committees in order to secure their advice and coöperation.

At the time this standardization work was started, one company making lock washers for the automobile trade was being called upon to supply eight hundred different kinds to be used with bolts of only three or four different diameters. This one plant had to have eight hundred sets of producing dies for these alone. Sixteen hundred sizes of steel tubing were

being specified by automobile makers; one company alone was using eighty different sizes. The Standards Committee has reduced these to sixteen standard sizes of lock washers and seventeen standard sizes of steel tubing with thirteen different degrees of thicknesses. Among the many other things which it has done has been the establishment of standard sizes for magneto bases so that any make of magneto can be used interchangeably. It has recommended standard sizes for carbureter flanges for the same reason, and a uniform pitch of screw for radiator caps so that any cap of the proper diameter will fit any radiator.

The most important single accomplishment of the committee has probably been the establishment of standard specifications for alloy steels. Due to the experiments and tests of this committee, it has combined and reduced the number of alloy steels used in motor-car manufacture from about two hundred and thirty to less than fifty. These special steels have all been given numbers and can be ordered by the automobile companies simply by number. The steel companies now carry in stock those numbers for which there is the greatest demand. This is an advantage that all makers of materials or parts for motorcars, tractors, motor-boats, gas engines, and airplanes enjoy due to the establishment of the S. A. E. standards. They know within certain limits what they are likely to be called upon to supply to these industries, and they can be prepared to meet the demand.

Only a few of the "standards" and "recommended practices" established by the S. A. E. "standards committee" have been touched on here. More than two hundred materials and motor-car parts have been thus standardized. The results of this work are combined in the S. A. E. handbook, a looseleaf publication of three hundred and fifty pages, the "bible" of the automotive engineer. This is always at the right hand of the designing engineer and saves him time and effort in addition to keeping his specifications of parts that can just as well be uniform in accordance with the best recognized current practice. The Society of Automotive Engineers has no power to enforce its standards, but the companies, with few exceptions, have always been glad to adopt them, even when it has involved considerable initial expense to them in making changes. They know it means saving in the long run.