Planes, Trains and Automobiles: NIST Edition

I have a confession to make: I had never seen the 1987 movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles. That is, until I had already begun writing this blog post.

I recently went through the NIST Digital Archives in search of valuable information about our agency’s impact on American lives. There, I stumbled upon some research into planes, trains and (you guessed it) automobiles along the way.

After experiencing both, I can now tell the NIST edition of the beloved comedic tale.

Planes

Most people jetting around the globe today in foul weather or overnight have no idea that NIST was behind their safe landing. In the 1930s, when we were named the National Bureau of Standards before becoming NIST, our researchers developed the blind landing system for airplanes.

Flying and landing a plane with limited-to-no visibility — due to fog, clouds or limited daylight — was highly difficult at the time, bordering on impossible.

Researchers Francis W. Dunmore and Harry Diamond each dedicated their talents to the problem. They developed a radio beacon scheme that would mark the landing path. A visual indicator with vibrating reeds in the plane’s cockpit picked up the radio signals from instruments on the ground and would indicate if the pilot was off course from the landing path. 

On Sept. 5, 1931, the first “completely blind” landing in aviation history using only radio signals for guidance occurred after a flight between NIST’s experimental air station at College Park, Maryland, and Newark Airport in New Jersey. (To get there, we ran a series of tests, including famed pilot Jimmy Doolittle of World War II, but we have another blog post specifically about that.)

In looking through the NIST Digital Archives, I also discovered this photo of the High Voltage Laboratory on our Washington, D.C., campus before we moved to Gaithersburg, Maryland. During World War II, NIST researchers conducted experiments to learn how lightning could strike a plane and not injure anyone onboard.

The electric current flowed harmlessly through metal planes, but plywood aircraft were not immune. They needed to provide a conducting path for guiding the lightning current to a location on the aircraft where occupants were not situated.

Almost a century later, NIST continues its work to support flight. Our million pounds-force deadweight machine calibrates the specialty scales used to accurately measure the thrust of a rocket or jet engine. And our researchers recently updated a fire-simulating tool to assist engineers in designing fire protection systems for curved surfaces, such as the ceilings and overhead compartments of planes.

Trains

NIST’s connection to trains goes back almost to the start of our institution in the early 1900s. Railroad trains at the time were derailing and causing 13,000 deaths or injuries annually. The American Foundry Society recognized the issue: the fracturing of the wheels. Experts came up with a combination of metals, known as an alloy, that would resist the fracture.

However, to maintain quality control, the foundries that made the wheels needed a good reference to create the alloys consistently. NIST created well-measured samples of iron chips of varying chemical compositions, which the foundries used to compare against their wheels and ensure the highest-quality product. That was a precursor to our present stock of standard reference materials. Today, SRMs help make sure food nutrition labels, medical tests and other critical measurements are as accurate as possible. 

NIST also played a role in the glass used on railroads. In collaboration with the Association of American Railroads and Corning Glass Works, our researchers worked in the 1930s and 1940s to standardize the color of the glasses used for railroad signal lights. 

The researchers studied the transmission of light through glasses colored red, yellow, green, blue, purple and white. At the time, signal engineers used these colors to route train traffic, but there was confusion in some cases about what the colors meant and how to interpret them. In their studies of the quality of color, known as chromaticity, the researchers commended signal engineers for using red, yellow and green signals for long-range signaling in high-speed train travel

Automobiles

We existed in a different time in the first half of the 20th century, when motor vehicles were a novel concept that rapidly spread throughout the country. Between 1920 and 1930 alone, the number of vehicles registered in the U.S. exploded from 9.2 million to 26.7 million.

It was also arguably a time of fewer safety protections and protocols for scientific experiments. The research shown here measured motorists’ reaction times when applying their brakes. Two revolvers rested under the car. When one fired (leaving a mark in the road), it was a signal for the driver to hit the brakes. This automatically fired the second revolver (leaving another mark on the road). Researchers divided the car speed by the distance measured between the two marks.

Luckily, auto research is much safer today, but the impact of NIST automobile research in this next example continues today.

In 1967, NIST researchers used a decelerator to test the use of seat belts as a protective measure in car collisions. With almost two dozen human subjects and crash test mannequins, they simulated an auto crash into a barrier at 17 miles per hour (7.6 meters per second).

The subjects first used lap belts alone, and then shoulder harnesses were added in later tests. While the main purpose of the work was to improve the performance of anthropomorphic mannequins for tests such as these, it also justified mandating shoulder harnesses in motor vehicles.

Nowadays, NIST is still heavily involved in automotive research. 

Our automotive lightweighting facility is dedicated to studying the lightweight metals that could one day replace what auto parts are currently made from. This would make vehicles more fuel-efficient. 

Self-driving cars are taking the world by storm. But before they can become a common reality on all roads, we need a way to measure their performance and ensure their safe use. NIST is researching three topic areas: sensing and perception; AI; and communications (in a network between cars). 

However you choose to get around, NIST’s research has helped to make that process safer. And if self-driving cars or other new modes of transportation come along in the future, we’ll be doing research to make those better and safer, too.  

Beep, beep!

These vehicles might not fit easily into our “automobiles” section, but NIST also played a role in these modes of transportation.

School buses: NIST once defined federal color standards, including National School Bus Chrome, the distinctive yellow used for U.S. school buses starting in the 1920s.

Taxis: In the late 1920s, the Office of Weights and Measures at NIST tested the accuracy of new versions of taximeters — which measured distance traveled and calculated fares — introduced by taxi companies. Nowadays, NIST still has its hand in the “transportation for hire” industry, working toward equality of standards between traditional taximeters and newer, app-based ride-hailing technology. 

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