PROPERTIES OF PHOSPHOR-BRONZE WIRES 233 



The effecting of states II and III. The inconsistencies of the 

 effect of annealing and vibrating the wires were at first dif- 

 ficult to explain. The conditions were evidently very compli- 

 cated. In annealing, even when the variables of the process, 

 the load, the current and the time of annealing were kept con- 

 stant, there was no regularity in the results. A very high tem- 

 perature by a large current would cause one state at one time 

 and another state at another time. The wires were heated to a 

 dull red glow and still the state could not be predicted. Wires 

 Nos. 3 and 4 were then annealed by different currents, to de- 

 termine whether there were not perhaps definite lower tempera- 

 tures at which definite states would result. The currents were 

 varied by .1 ampere between the range of .2 ampere up to 1.8 

 amperes when the wires began to glow. After each annealing, 

 the previous history of the wire was destroyed by the largest 

 current the wire would carry. Still there was no regularity of 

 results. 



The slow or sudden cooling of the wires after annealing, gave 

 no clue. At first the time of annealing seemed to have no ef- 

 fect upon the resulting state. Long continued vibrating by the 

 motor usually changed the state but unless the process was long 

 continued nothing could be predicted. It was, however, noted 

 that when the time of artificial vibration was very long state 

 II would usually result. Only one exception to this has been 

 found and that was a sample of wire No. 3, which was not 

 changed from state III in 13.5 hours of continued vibration. 

 The required time to bring about state II was found to be in 

 the neighborhood of 12 hours for wire No. 4. In general the 

 recpiired time is shorter for the smaller wires and longer for 

 the larger wires. 



The most recent work has shown that long annealing by a 

 comparatively large current, with the wire supporting a small 

 load, gives state III. Wire No. 4 was annealed by 1.0 ampere 

 while it supported a load of about 25 grams, and in four dif- 

 ferent trials has always been changed to state III. The same 

 wire under a load of 154 grams was not changed from state II 

 by the same current in 38 hours. This point requires some fur- 

 ther investigation before a definite relation of temperature and 

 the resulting state of the wire can be stated. In general, we 



