Face Powder Banned In Aerospace Laboratories

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30279, 4 November 1963, Page 7

Face Powder Banned In Aerospace Laboratories

Women's cosmetics have no place in Americas most advanced aerospace laboratories. Along with the recent announcement that a new two million-dollar quality control installation will be built at Burbank. California, came the edict; no women’s face powder will be allowed. It is not that scientists object to women, or women’s cosmetics, but because inside tne "super-clean’ - rooms of the laboratory even a tiny grain of face powder could interfere with the accuracy of delicate measuring instruments. according to LockheedCalifornia Company experts in charge of the new windowless laboratory. Even standard lead pencils will not be permitted in the rooms—only ball-point pens—because a fleck of graphite could introduce error into instrument calibration so vital in the increasing precision demanded for man's searching out of secrets in the universe that surrounds him. The comers will be rounded to prevent dust accumulation.

I In the new L-shaped 60.000-square-foot quality assurance laboratory, which is scheduled for completion early in 1964, there will be about 30.000 measurement instruments and test electronic equipment for tomorrow s aircraft and spacecraft. 159 Employees Initially. 150 employees will work there. Their task will be to calibrate and service electronic, electrical, linear, mechanical, optical, microwave. force and mass, hydraulic, and temperature reliability control instruments. Through openings in the roof, gyro laboratory instruments will “shoot” the North Star to set and test inertial navigation equipment with an accuracy of i«in to 10 miles. Vibration-free, the 16ft-deep basement will be bolstered by nine-inch-thick walls. It will contain a number of “clean" rooms (free from harmful dust, moisture, fumes) and “screen” rooms < shielded against outside electric and magnetic fields) for precisian measurements.

The main calibration laboratory shares the basement with the reference standards laboratory—the focal point for all measurements at Lockheed.

The ground level floor will be devoted to production testing of electronic equipment before installation in aircraft. In the six environmentcontrolled clean rooms, dust specks as minute as one micron—about 1000th the size of a grain of sand —will be filtered out. While inside tha rooms equipment will be cleaned ultrasonically—dipped in a chemical solution agitated by high-frequency sound waves to shake loose any clinging foreign matter.

Entry into the clean rooms will be via air locks to maintain temperature and humidity—dryness—control. An “air shower’’ at the entrance will remove dust. Smocks will cover street clothes, and Sieves will be worn when handling such items as precision gauge blocks because of skin moisture problems.