From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Letter from Zenith Carburetter Co. regarding failures of glass bowls and the introduction of a new 'hard flint' glass.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 44\1\ Scan199 | |
| Date | 17th May 1928 | |
| THE ZENITH CARBURETTER CO., LIMITED, Sheet No. 3. Messrs. Rolls-Royce Ltd. 17th May 1928 and not liable to cause breakage. The fact of your getting three failures in a comparatively short time we think can be only due to the fact that it may happen that these are three bowls that were not correctly annealed, and the matter has been taken up strongly with the glass manufacturers. We are now employing a different type of glass i.e. a "hard flint" which has already been tested satisfactorily and which we believe will perhaps be more satisfactory than the "Pyrex" that we have used up to the present. We are quite willing to send you the flint glasses to replace those you have in stock, but honestly do not think it is worth while, and we are not at all certain that changing the fibre washers to cork ones will be satisfactory. We do make a metal bowl which we supply on request, because we have realised from the very first that although one may take every precaution, glass still remains a rather uncertain material for the particular purpose in question. On the other hand we must not lose sight of the fact that the percentage of breakages in a total of 8000 has been only about half per cent. We can assure you that this matter is receiving our constant and careful attention and we are exploring every avenue possible to entirely obviate the occasional bursting of a glass, and | ||