54 THE UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. [bull. 227. 
trying out of the plant and the determination of the instrumental 
constants was accomplished there. 
In July, 1883, when a chief chemist of the Geological Survey was 
appointed, physics was incorporated with chemistry, and a concentra- 
tion of all the laboratories of the Survey in Washington was deter- 
mined upon. A year later the laboratory was established in cramped 
quarters in the National Museum, where temperature work on so 
large a scale as the New Haven plans contemplated appeared imprac- 
ticable and had to be abandoned. Independent outside researches 
upon the effect of extreme pressure upon solids and upon high 
temperatures were, however, carried on under the general supervision 
of officers of the Survey. 
From 1883 until 1892 research work at the Smithsonian Institution 
was continued without serious interruption. 
The first independent official publication from the physical labora- 
tory appeared in Bulletin No. 14 (1885), on "The Electrical and Mag- 
netic Properties of the Iron Carburets," though the annual reports of 
the Survey and frequent contributions to foreign scientific journals 
gave ample evidence of the activity of the physical laboratory. The 
stud} T of the iron carburets was a remarkably thorough one, continuing 
through a part of Bulletin No. 27 and all of Bulletin No. 35. 
Perhaps the most important contribution to knowledge of high tem- 
peratures is contained in Bulletin No. 54, "On the Thermo-electric 
Measurement of High Temperatures." In this publication the funda- 
mental measurement of temperatures upon the gas scale, up to and 
somewhat beyond the melting point of gold, was rescued from the 
confusion into which it had been thrown by the gas-thermometer 
measurements of Deville and Troost, in which iodine vapor was used 
above its (then unknown) dissociation temperature. The thermo- 
electric pyrometer became a practical and accurate laboratory instru- 
ment, and a new and unique method of measuring temperatures by the 
varying viscosity of gases was developed. This investigation has 
become so widely known and received such general recognition that 
its author was asked to write the report on high-temperature measure- 
ment for the great Congress of Physicists at Paris in 1900. 
The entire work of those }^ears occupies 15 bulletins and parts of a 
monograph and an annual report. 
In 1892 the annual appropriation for chemistry and physics was 
reduced from $17,000 to $5,000, and ph} T sical research had to be entirely 
abandoned. So much of the apparatus as had been privately pur- 
chased was taken away, the laboratory was dismantled, and no further 
physical research was attempted until several } T ears later. 
In 1900 provision was again made to begin some work in physics, 
and a room was partitioned off for a laboratory on the fifth floor of 
the office building which the Survey now occupies. The physical and 
