Prof. F. W. Clarke as chief chemist of the Geological Survey, our laboratory was officially connected with the chemical laboratory. Conformably with the further decision of the Director, by which the divers laboratories of the Geological Survey were united in one central laboratory in Washington, it was again necessary to change our basis of operations, this time... from New Haven to Washington. In the quarters assigned to us in the U. S. National Museum, temperature work on so large a scale... appeared impracticable, and it was therefore abandoned. ...In place of the dangerous and cumbersome apparatus of the former laboratory, the endeavor is made to reduce all apparatus to the smallest dimensions compatible with reasonable accuracy of measurement." - Meaning and context.">
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[T]he rooms which had been placed at my disposal by the American Museum of New York became temporarily unavailable. ...[W]e determined to rent a house in New Haven, Conn., and thither the laboratory was removed in November, 1882. ...[T]he city offered excellent library and other facilities for scientific work, such as can be met only in the immediate vicinity of a large university [Yale College]. ...The work in New Haven was not satisfactorily completed. In July, 1883, with the appointment of Prof. F. W. Clarke as chief chemist of the Geological Survey, our laboratory was officially connected with the chemical laboratory. Conformably with the further decision of the Director, by which the divers laboratories of the Geological Survey were united in one central laboratory in Washington, it was again necessary to change our basis of operations, this time... from New Haven to Washington. In the quarters assigned to us in the U. S. National Museum, temperature work on so large a scale... appeared impracticable, and it was therefore abandoned. ...In place of the dangerous and cumbersome apparatus of the former laboratory, the endeavor is made to reduce all apparatus to the smallest dimensions compatible with reasonable accuracy of measurement.

— Carl Barus

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "[T]he rooms which had been placed at my disposal by the American Museum of New York became temporarily unavailable. ...[W]e determined to rent a house in New Haven, Conn., and thither the laboratory was removed in November, 1882. ...[T]he city offered excellent library and other facilities for scientific work, such as can be met only in the immediate vicinity of a large university [Yale College]. ...The work in New Haven was not satisfactorily completed. In July, 1883, with the appointment of Prof. F. W. Clarke as chief chemist of the Geological Survey, our laboratory was officially connected with the chemical laboratory. Conformably with the further decision of the Director, by which the divers laboratories of the Geological Survey were united in one central laboratory in Washington, it was again necessary to change our basis of operations, this time... from New Haven to Washington. In the quarters assigned to us in the U. S. National Museum, temperature work on so large a scale... appeared impracticable, and it was therefore abandoned. ...In place of the dangerous and cumbersome apparatus of the former laboratory, the endeavor is made to reduce all apparatus to the smallest dimensions compatible with reasonable accuracy of measurement." in the context of "" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Carl Barus

About Carl Barus

Carl Barus (February 19, 1856 – September 20, 1935) was an American physicist and the maternal great-uncle of the American novelist Kurt Vonnegut. He was dean of the Brown University Graduate Department from 1903 until his retirement in 1926. In 1905 he became a corresponding member of Britain, a member of the First International Congress of Radiology and Electricity at Brussels, and a member of the Physical Society. Beginning in 1906 he was on the advisory board of physics at the Carnegie Institution in Washington state. He died in Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A.