ASNT

Pennsylvania State University. The Alcoa team of Fink and Archer described X-ray exposure techniques for aluminum and steel, including the use of f luorescent and lead screens. Their 1929 paper is given credit for the first public description for the use of lead intensifying screens (Heidt 1994). Horace Lester attended this X-ray lecture and contributed to the discussion included with the published article. Lester’s comment discussed the increasing use of steel forgings and welded structures instead of castings because engineers believed that “these substitutes for castings are free from hidden defects and therefore more reliable.” He went on to point that his work at Watertown Arsenal showed that the assumption of soundness for forgings and welds was not true. Wheeler Davey also attended the lecture and made a comment that may strike a responsive chord even today: “the authors bring out the fact, previously emphasized by Lester, that there are few cases where it is good economic sense to use radiography for 100% inspection.” It was in this environment of unfavorable economics for widespread use of nondestructive testing that the American Society for Nondestruc- tive Testing (ASNT) began. AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR NONDESTRUCTIVE TESTING The society was started officially by a charter from the state of Massachusetts, dated August 1941. Prominent among the nine signers of the original charter are the first two names, Philip D. Johnson and Carlton G. Lutts. Lutts served as the first president of the American Industrial Radium and X-Ray Society during its initial year of operation, 1941-1942. The new society’s first conference was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in October 1941, highlighted by a presentation (later called the Mehl Honor Lecture) by Charles W. Briggs. Formed in late 1941, the society was in place as the United States entered World War II in December 1941. The war effort required increasing emphasis on product reliability and nondestructive testing. The f ledgling society was there to provide a needed forum for the exchange of nondestructive testing information. The new society journal, first called

Industrial Radiography and issued in the summer of 1942, played a key role in spreading knowledge about nondestructive testing. The war years gave a needed push to help the new society survive and grow during the crucial formative years. An early recognition was that nondestructive testing included methods other than radiography. Liquid penetrants and magnetic particles were in wide use and other methods, such as ultrasonic testing, were becoming important. In the summer of 1946, the journal name and mission were expanded to Industrial Radiography & Non-Destructive Testing. In the fall of 1947, the name of the society was changed to the Society for Non-Destructive Testing. The hyphen in the name disappeared in 1952. The journal expanded publication to bimonthly (instead of quarterly) in 1953 and became a monthly journal in 1964, at the same time changing the journal name to Materials Evaluation (Berger 1992). By 1967, many other countries had nondestructive testing societies and there had been five Interna- tional Conferences on Nondestructive Testing (now called World Conferences), so it seemed appropriate

Figure 19 Laboratory of Horace Lester at Watertown Arsenal, Watertown, Massachusetts.

CHAPTER 1

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Part 2