That's a great story for Sat morning. Just think, not only would you
save on lighting bills, but heating bills as well!
--R
On 9/25/2010 10:44 AM, Dieselhead wrote:
SWIMBO surprised me. She snagged some used doors. I was happy because
I had found homes for all the used doors I had collected over time.
Now I have 3 more very heavy doors to move store and try to find a
home for. But, these doors have an interesting history. They are
connected to the Manhattan project. Thus the glow in the dark
reference. Part of the Manhattan project was to find a way to refine
uranium to sufficient purity. That was done at a national lab located
at a university. It involved a lot of chemists and physicists. to
house all these chemists and physicists, they built a 3 story link
building between the chemistry building and the physics building.
This became the offices for the highest ranking members of the
project, like Dr. Wilhelm. The link also housed a special library,
and relevant parts of the university library were moved there, so the
scientists could have easy access to the books. It was later renamed
the Physical Sciences Reading Room.
The doors she snagged are the Physical Sciences reading room doors. A
double set with glass panels and a book drop, and the door from the
opposite end. SWIMBO want to use them in our retirement house to
build a library an use these doors.
No actual refining was done in this link building, so the doors never
did glow in the dark. Later Nuclear Engineering moved to a separate
building, the National Lab offices moved to the renamed Wilhelm Hall,
and later to a new building with the acronym TASF. The link building
became overflow for otherwise homeless faculty. Now the Physical
Sciences Reading room is being remodeled into something else, so the
old doors were being tossed.
The term "Glow in the Dark" was actually invented in 1944 as part of
the refining. The actual refining was done in a wood "temporary
building" on the east side of campus. Nobody living knows what went
on in there, but it was always said that if you went by at night,
there was a strange glow coming from the building. You could see the
glow through the wood. That was the only "temporary building" that
didn't stand for 40 years.
When I built my house in 1980, we used all new doors in the house, but
when I finished the basement a couple of years later, I used scrounged
doors with stories. The bathroom door came from the house I lived in
through college. It was framed with elm that my Granpa had cut during
the depression. I had double doors leading into the shop that SWIMBOs
dad scrounged in Milwaukee. The double doors to the outside were from
the 1909 remodel of the church my mother went to growing up. Her
ancestors were in on founding the church in 1832. Unfortunately we had
to leave that house after only 8 years.
So, "Glow in the Dark" doors are a logical progression I guess. Just
have to find a way to store them until we retire and find/build that
"retirement home"
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_______________________________________
http://www.okiebenz.com
For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com
To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/
To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to:
http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
