No-Do, Noticiario n.54B: EN LA ESCUELA ESPECIAL DE INGENIEROS DE MADRID. INTERESANTES PRÁCTICAS DE INVESTIGACIÓN.
http://www.rtve.es/filmoteca/no-do/not-54/1468304/
Duration: 1’ 25”.
Basic content: A teacher at the Escuela Especial proposes a question in a practical class to a small group of 4 engineering students: why did this pinion broke? While looking for the cause, the students show the equipment used to perform materials tests.
Description:
1’09”: The façade of the Escuela Escuela Especial de Ingenieros Industriales is shown.
1’15”: An operator, with greasy hands, shows a broken pinion, while the narrator puts the question “Why did this part on a Machine break?”
1’18”: At a laboratory, a teacher gives the broken pinion to a small group of 4 students (all well-dressed).
1’24: Various images of the Students performing a chemical analysis, probably a measurement of the sulfur content (an impurity) of the steel. The narrator explains that “The chemical analysis show that the steel is a good quality one, but the causes of the failure are still unknown”.
1’47: A small steel sample is submerged in a vase, which probably contains Nital (nitric acid and alcohol) to perform a metallographic analysis of the part. A Student looks through a microscope and 2 images of microstructures are shown. The first seems to be Martensite (quenched –hard- steel); the second looks like Bainite (which is rather soft and typically appears when the quenching has not been properly performed).
The narrator explains “At the metallurgical laboratory, the metallogaphic microscope is used to observe the constituents of the structure. Inspecting the microphotographs, deficiencies in the quenching of the part are found”.
2’02”: A student is shown while he performs an impact resistance test on a sample with a Charpy pendulum.
2’13”: A new equipment is shown: a small furnace where a student places 2 cilyndrical steel samples with a bore in their center, which are identical in shape. Thermocouples are introduced inside the bores and the furnace is hermetically closed. The narrator talks about the importance of determining the cooling curve of the steel.
2’22”: A graphical register is being obtained, then it is inspected. It shows a temperature-time graphic, with temperatures ranging between some 300 and 1000ºC. No time scale is shown. 2 very similar (parallel) curves showing heating up to 1000ºC approx. and cooling to some 300ºC. The 2 graphs differ both during heating and cooling at around some 700ºC, which a hand points.
The narrator explains: “(…) according to this experience, the parts that are well hardened have unbeatable resistance properties”.
2’28”: An operator introduces a part in a small atelier furnace.
2’31”: Pinions and gears perfectly turning on some unknown machine are shown.
2’36”: End.
Technical comment: the equipment and the graph shown between 2’13” and 2’28” can not correspond to a hardening / quenching equipment. I dare say that the samples introduced were 1 of mild steel ( or austenitic steel) and the other was of a carbon steel ( ferritic steel, which is the one typically used to build cars, machines, buildings, boats, etc…). The graph shows that around 700ºC “something happens” on 1 of the samples both during heating and cooling. As much as this is very close to the AC3 temperature of the steel, it looks like 1 sample was ferritic steel showing a phase transformation around 700ºC while the other was a mild steel used for comparison which does not suffer this phase transformation.
These images have nothing to do with what the narrator explains about cooling curves and proper hardening of the steels.
Comments and appreciations:
This short film is apparently simply a sample of “infotainment” that tries to show to the audiences a typical practical class at the Escuela Especial de Ingenieros de Madrid. It must be explained that laboratory and practical cases were more or less half of the time of their formation. So, there should be nothing strange on showing a laboratory practice. But anyway I think that some remarks are worth saying for a better understanding.
-University studies were extremely expensive in Spain, during the post-civil war years, so only a small part of the population could afford sending their sons there. Very few women reached university during the 1940’s, and female engineering students were purely anecdotal until the 1970’s.
-The access to the Engineering studies was specially restricted, because the applicants needed 2 years of previous preparation at private academies before being accepted to perform the access exam. So, the economical filter was even harder than for many other university studies. This social differences can be clearly seen in the dresses of the students, when compared against the one of the operator, or more probably a laboratory auxiliary, that appears at the end of the film.
-A third, political filter was applied at the time: authorities needed to sign and stamp a student card, without which no one was allowed to access the university.
Maybe there were some political motivations behind the realization of this short film. The history of the Escuela Especial de Ingenieros de Madrid is a bit special one. The first engineering schools in Spain were located in Barcelona and in Bilbao, which were rather busy industrial sites at the mid-XIX century. Both were funded by bourgeois and manufacturers’ associations who both gave money and pressed the local authorities to support and fund these schools. Political reasons (namely: control and power), made the central government to raise its own engineering school in Madrid at the beginning of the XXth century. But the building was poor, the budgets were often scarce, and the management was not always very skilled, so for most of the years until the civil war broke, the school languished and had a low prestige.
Once the fascists won the Spanish civil war, a strong centralization process began. This included the universities. And the Escuela of Madrid took control of the ones in Barcelona and Bilbao, which legally became local sites of the Madrid one. But the Escuela in Madrid had neither the prestige nor the means at that time. A situation that needed to be reversed. At the Revista del Ministerio de Educación (1), there’s an interview in 1942 with the director who clearly explains the lack of proper laboratories and workshops, mostly due to the lack of room in the buildings assigned to the school. And that although the situation has improved, they still have problems:
“Another magnificent task has been providing the Escuela of Madrid with a building (…) suited where we can install the laboratories (…) which were narrow and badly conditioned in the old building (…). We have the difficulty that part of the building is still used by the Guardia Civil forces, and although the (Education) Minister has given his promise, there are still pending (…) of being properly installed the foundry and the forge workshops (…other shops cited…) as well as the library (…) and some laboratories that are still provisionally and incompletely installed in the available buildings”.
A rather harsh and sincere description, under times of a totalitarian dictatorship.
So, the film basically shows how important and interesting and amazing the studies at the Escuela Especial de Ingenieros de Madrid are: a classical promotion film. But in the background probably there’s an interest on showing some of the new facilities, which had only recently, and not easily, been given to the Escuela –and thus to justify this decision.
References:
- Revista del Ministerio de Educación, 1942, Nº20 agosto, p.101 to 106
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