A FIRE LABORATORY
The underwriters’ laboratory at Chicago is modeled on much the same lines as the testing house of the British Fire Prevention Committee of London. The following is a description of one of the experiments as conducted in the Chicago laboratory: “A fire door of iron, containing some new features, had been sent in by the manufacturers for a thorough test of its power to withstand the flames and to confine them to the apartment where they might originate. A large archway of fire brick, erected for such tests as these, forms one side of a great gas oven, and into this opening the door was placed, being carefully bricked in, in exactly the same manner as if it were standing in a completed building.
“Built out from the edges of the oven walls was a chamber of iron plates, completely inclosed, covering a space the size of an ordinary room, and in this were placed cotton, silk, and woolen garments for the purpose of ascertaining whether, even if the door were able to withstand the attack of the flames, it would still permit Heat enough to get through to ruin such goods, or even put them in danger of combustion.
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