Excerpt from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 210: Series A., Containing Papers of a Mathematical of Physical Character; February, 1911

The foundations were laid by h.m. Office of Works in a manner which affords the greatest satisfaction. The plan, with two sectional elevations, shown in fig. 5, will render them quite clear. The room which has been set apart for the new comparator is one in the basement of N o. 6, Old Palace Yard, the building occupied by the Standards Department of the Board of Trade, which is interesting historically as having been built in 1754 as a residence for the Clerk of the House of Lords, immediately in front of the old Jewel Tower. The latter is also now part of the Standards Office, and is the oldest remaining part of the original Palace of Westminster; it was completed during the reign of Richard H. Moreover, it is believed that the building of 1754 was erected on the basement of a house of some historic interest, formerly existing on the site, and which was only partly removed to make way for the new building. The new Comparator Room was one of the large wine cellars thus left.

The room is rather more than 15 feet square and 9 feet high, the ceiling being arched; the excellently preserved stone walls are upwards of a yard thick. It has one double window and two double doors, each provided with two very efficient ventilators. Between each pair of doors and windows, owing to the thickness of the walls, there is adequate space for the insertion of fans, and for the storage of ice or other means of cooling, if desired on hot summer days when the outside temperature is over 62° F., the official temperature for comparisons. The floor of the room is 10 feet below the street level, and a pit, 11 feet 6 inches long by 5 feet 6 inches broad, and with a front bay extension of 5 feet 6 inches by 2 feet 9 inches, was dug out below the floor for a depth of 4 feet down to the virgin soil, a very compact sandy loam. On this foundation concrete blocks were first laid for the support of the cemented brickwork with which the sides of the pit were made secure. Then two separate solid concrete blocks were laid in the midst as indicated in the three drawings (fig. And perhaps most clearly shown in the third, the section CD. An open air space of 6 inches was left all round the blocks, except where the two approach each other, which they each do on one side (the front of the larger block and back of the smaller one) within 2% inches.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.