Reporting on the progress of the fuel investigation now being conducted by the Bureau of Standards, and covering the last of the work that was done under the direct supervision of the late Stephen M. Lee, the author gives the results obtained from the acceleration tests that were made on the road and in the laboratory. Tests relative to starting conditions, as called for by the program, have yet to be made; they have been delayed by the wreckage of the laboratory set-up caused by the explosion of Sept. 20, 1923.
Primarily, the tests described here were conducted (a) to determine whether the rates of acceleration obtainable at any given temperature are different for the fuels compared, and (b) whether, when carbureter settings are such as to give the maximum acceleration with each fuel, the fuel consumption under constant speed and load conditions will be greater with one fuel than with the other. Two specific conclusions are stated.
W. S. James, physicist, Bureau of Standards, gives an analytical description of the design of the disc used to simulate the inertia of a car and treats this mathematically in Appendix 1.