The apparatus to be described in this report has been in the process of development for twelve years. During this time the resources of Weslyan University have been supplemented by appropriations from the United States Department of Agriculture and th e Connecticut (Storrs) Agricultural Experiment Station, and by contributions from private individuals...The addition of the apparatus for the determination of oxygen was made possible by liberal grants from the Carnegie Institution of Washington... The first grant of the Carnegie Institution for the development of the apparatus for the direct determination of oxygen was made to my colleague, Prof W.O. Atwater...A serious illness has compelled his untimely retirement from the work, and the writer, who has had the personal supervision of the development of the apparatus since 1895, has continued the research... FRANCIS GANO BENEDICT. August, 1905." [SOURCE: Atwater, W. O. and Benedict, Francis Gano. A Respirator Calorimeter With Appliances for the Direct Determination of Oxygen. Washington, D.C., Carnegie Institution of Washington,1905, pp. III. Biodiversity Heritage Library, https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.31912. Accessed 2 Nov. 2018.] "Atwater is best known for his studies of human nutrition. He invented and used the respiration calorimeter, with the help of fellow Wesleyan scientists Edward Bennett Rosa and Francis Gano Benedict, to measure precisely the energy provided by food and created a system to measure that energy in units, known as food calories as developed in the Atwater system. 'Maintained in the basement of Judd Hall [at Wesleyan], the 4- by 8-foot chamber housed a machine that measured human oxygen intake and carbon dioxide output.' With annual costs exceeding $10 thousand, the respiration calorimeter was considered a dream project for the 19th century. Atwater began the first of about 500 experiments in 1896. In fact, 'he made history by establishing America’s first state agricultural experiment station at [Wesleyan].' He studied respiration and metabolism in animals and in humans. The calorimeter aided studies in food analysis, dietary evolution, work energy consumption, and digestible foods. It measured the human metabolism balance by analyzing the heat produced and metabolic rate by a person performing certain physical activities. With this machine, the dynamics of metabolism could be quantified and the balance between food intake and energy output could be measured. Atwater applied the first law of thermodynamics to his research: Energy can be transformed (i.e., changed from one form to another), but it can neither be created nor destroyed. Before Atwater's development of the respiration calorimeter, many experiments on calorie intake and expenditure had been conducted on animals. During this period, there was a widely held belief that the first law of thermodynamics applied to animals, but did not apply to humans because they were unique. Atwater demonstrated that whatever amount of consumed energy humans cannot use is left over and stored in the body. His findings thus established that the first law applied to humans as well as animals. Atwater's research and conclusions in this regard changed both how people thought about science and about humans. The results from Atwater’s calorimetry study influenced many areas of American life. Most importantly, the calorimeter was a great influence to the growing awareness of the food calorie as a unit of measure both in terms of consumption and metabolism. Atwater reported on the weight of the calorie as a means to measure the efficiency of a diet... ...His collaborator and successor at Wesleyan, Francis Benedict (1870–1957), continued down Atwater’s path using the respiration calorimeter to further measure metabolism and other bodily processes. Benedict studied the varying metabolism rates of infants born in two hospitals in Massachusetts, athletes, students, vegetarians, Mayans living in the Yucatán, and normal adults. He even developed a calorimeter large enough to hold twelve girl scouts for an extended period of time. His biggest improvement was the invention of portable field respiration calorimeters. In 1919, Francis Benedict published a metabolic standards report with extensive tables based on age, sex, height, and weight." [SOURCE: "Wilbur Olin Atwater." Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilbur_Olin_Atwater. Accessed 8 Oct. 2018.] “The Food Research Institute of Stanford University is one of the oldest research and training institutions focusing on the production, distribution, and consumption of food on a global scale. Now a unit within the School of Humanities and Sciences, it was established in 1921 by an endowment grant from the Carnegie Corporation. At the present time, the institute has a faculty of twelve social scientists, a student body of forty graduate students from all over the world, and a half-dozen ongoing research projects.” [SOURCE: “Falcon, Walter P. “Food Research Institute, Stanford University.” Food Policy, vol. 3, no. 2, May 1978, pp. 149-150, https://doi.org/10.1016/0306-9192(78)90083-0. ScienceDirect, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0306919278900830. Accessed 31 Oct. 2018.]
Language
English
Library Location
Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University