UNIQUE TEST FOR LIBERTY ENGINE
American Aviators Won't Have to Experiment While Flying Over Enemy.
TWO PROBLEMS TO SOLVE
United States Bureau of Standards Has Devised a Way to Reproduce the Conditions Found in High Altitudes.
Washington.—The bureau of standards is erecting a little greenish-gray concrete building on the edge of its grounds where one of the final chapters of America's preparations for aerial warfare will be written. The bureau declines to discuss what part it will play in the final design of the new "Liberty air engine" which the government is expected to mount on all American airplanes for use in the European war, but it has become known that before the final design of this engine is approved it must undergo a few final tests in that little greenish-gray building.
There will be determined, under conditions almost identical with conditions found at various altitudes, just how an airplane engine performs when it gets so high that the air gets perceptibly thinner. It will be tested in a temperature down to freezing.
Bringing High Altitude Down.
The bureau building is a tombstone structure, full of delicate instruments (which will have the effect of bringing the skies down to the earth, insofar as airplane conditions are concerned). It is impractical to send an engineer to watch the engine perform up there, so the bureau plans to bring the skies to the engine. 