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 to the Chief Engineer of Willys-Overland Company discussing experiments with a substance called Katalite to counteract engine detonation.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 74\3\ scan0379 | |
| Date | 14th April 1924 | |
| April 14, 1924. Mr. Arthur J.{Mr Johnson W.M.} Baker, Chief Engineer, Willys-Overland Company Toledo, Ohio. My dear Mr. Baker: I wish to acknowledge receipt of your letter of April 12th and of your telegram of April 14th. Before receiving this letter and telegrams I sent you yesterday a night letter, of which I do not have copy but which read approximately as follows:- "Your Main number cannot be reached by Bell Telephone Company connections. Your telephonic message has been transmitted to me indirectly and perhaps not quite correctly. My understanding is that you have made some experiments on Katalited heads and wish to continue them. I am delighted with this and wish to assure you that you can count on my most eager cooperation and that any work sent to us will be done very promptly under my personal supervision. Address Katalite Corporation, Woolworth Building, New York. Kindest regards. (signed) Edward Sokal" I was away a great part of Saturday on road tests and received a memorandum concerning your telephone call in the evening. I then tried to reach you by phone but was informed that Main 2188-W is on a line competing with the Bell Telephone System and cannot be reached from New York. Your experiments on Knight motors with increased compression are most interesting and fully confirm my own experiments on a Ford engine in which the compression ratio was increased by cutting down the combustion chamber by a strip of about 1/8th of an inch in thickness, which corresponds to about two gaskets; this Ford engine has been working now for a couple of thousands of miles very satisfactorily without any troubles of detonation, which invariably occur after a very short time if the same cylinder head is used in non-Katalited condition. Mr. D.{John DeLooze - Company Secretary} G.{Mr Griffiths - Chief Accountant / Mr Gnapp} Roos of the Locomobile Company has also made experiments indicating clearly the effect of Katalite in counteracting detonation. You will find a description of some of Mr. Roos' experiments in an editorial article published in the March 20, 1924. issue of "Automotive Industries" on page 608. This article was written by somebody who is not well conversant with the chemical principles underlying the action of catalytic agents, but the facts brought out by the Locomobile Company are stated correctly. On recent dynamometer tests they have found that | ||