API Gravity - History of Development

History of Development

The U.S. National Bureau of Standards in 1916 accepted the Baumé scale, developed in France in 1768, as the U.S. standard for measuring the specific gravity of liquids less dense than water. Investigation by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences found major errors in salinity and temperature controls that had caused serious variations in published values. Hydrometers in the U.S. had been manufactured and distributed widely with a modulus of 141.5 instead of the Baumé scale modulus of 140. The scale was so firmly established that by 1921 the remedy implemented by the American Petroleum Institute was to create the API Gravity scale, recognizing the scale that was actually being used.

Read more about this topic:  API Gravity

Famous quotes containing the words history and/or development:

    It is true that this man was nothing but an elemental force in motion, directed and rendered more effective by extreme cunning and by a relentless tactical clairvoyance .... Hitler was history in its purest form.
    Albert Camus (1913–1960)

    Sleep hath its own world,
    And a wide realm of wild reality.
    And dreams in their development have breath,
    And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.
    George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)