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[[underline]]To Mother, October 2, 1924[[/underline]]: What on earth gave you the idea
that "Sioux City No.2" is a locomotive? All the turbine-generators
being built in Bldg.60 have their names stenciled on
the various castings used in their construction. Thus, as we
walk through the shop we see parts of "South Bend No.1,"
"Columbia Gas & Electric," "Bethlehem Steel," "Detroit Edison,"
"Southern California," "Texas Light & Power," etc. Today there
was thunder through the whole building –- they had the huge new
Detroit Edison machine up to speed, testing it. It is as large
a single unit turbine as there is in the world –- 70,000 horsepower –-
and what a terrific roar it makes. The thrills ran up 
and down my spine as I viewed it from my gallery. The men around
it looked like mere pygmies. When I see machines like that, I
feel as though I'd like to get into design –- be one of the men
who tell the others how to build them. Here is a little sketch
of a turbine-generator, so you can have some idea of how they look:
[[image: diagram of a turbine-generator, with "electric generator" connected to "steam turbine", with a small man in a hat on the right side to show scale of this huge device]]

The machine I have been speaking about is approximately the 
size shown in comparison with a man. They are enormous.

[[underline]]To Willie, October 6, 1924[[/underline]]: Your chemistry sounds awfully interesting
and it must be great to be doing something comparatively
new and little understood. You would just love to go
through our research laboratories here. There are about as fine
as any, I think, and there is a great deal of chemical research
going on. For chemistry plays a big part in such an industry
as this. They are always experimenting with new kinds of metal
the various parts, and are searching for new methods of refining
metals such as by the vacuum furnace process. The blades
and nozzles of those big turbines present a great problem. You
see, they have a tendency to become pitted and corroded from
the action of the steam, and experiments are being continuously
carried on to find some alloy that will stand up better.
They now use nickel-steel, manganese-copper, cupro-nickel, and
Monel-metal for blading. And then there are all the various
heat treatments for steel, iron, copper, brass, fibre, composition,
etc., all of which comes under the general head of
chemistry, I suppose. It almost seems as though every part 
of some of these machines is made of some different material
because there is a material for every different function a
part serves. I imagine it would be a very interesting study –-
I need to go into it for all there was in it –- not just spend
say an hour a week on it for a semester. ...... I'm awfully