May 19, 1942

Air Mail

Dr. T. K. Sherwood

Rational Defense Research Committee

1530 P Street NW.

Washington, D.C.

Dear Dr. Sherwood:

Thanks for arranging the extension of $2000.00 on our present contract.

I shall put through a purchase order with the Bell Laboratories for the job that Dr. Bozorth is doing for us. I do not know yet whether that will come under our present contract or under the contract starting July 1, or perhaps divided.

The suggestion in your letter of May 13, 1942 that our next contract be a one-year contract involving $4,800 for salaries, $2,400 for overhead, and $2,800 for supplies and travel is quite satisfactory to me. It corresponds closely to the proposal in my letter of April 10, 1942.

We are now building instruments covering the range 0-40 mm. of oxygen. I think that there would be no great difficulty in building an instrument for Mr. T. H. Chilton to cover the range 0-15 mm. of oxygen in ethylene, with reasonable accuracy, provided that we knew the pressure of ethylene which would ordinarily be present. Change from one atmosphere of ethylene to one half an atmosphere, for example, would cause an error of a millimeter or two in the reading, but if the ethylene pressure were kept roughly constant this trouble would not arise. At present we would have some difficulty in making an instrument giving much accuracy over the range 0-8 mm., but I hope that after Dr. Bozorth has completed his investigation on improvement of the magnetic circuit an instrument of this type could be built. In a month or two I shall have information on this point.

Yours truly,

Linus Pauling

LP:jr

cc to E. P. Stevenson