On May 28, 1937, the State Board of Registration for Professional Engineers was created by the 45th Legislature. This occurred in the aftermath of the tragic New London School explosion which took the lives of over 300 students and teachers at the New London School in New London, Texas.
http://engineers.texas.gov/anniversary.htm
Community residents and roughnecks from the East Texas oilfield responded immediately with heavy-duty equipment. Within an hour Governor James Allred had sent the Texas Rangers and highway patrol to aid the victims. Doctors and medical supplies came from Baylor Hospital and Scottish Rite Hospital for Crippled Children in Dallas and from Nacogdoches, Wichita Falls, and the United States Army Air Corps at Barksdale Field in Shreveport, Louisiana. They were assisted by deputy sheriffs from Overton, Henderson, and Kilgore, by the Boy Scouts, the American Legion, the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and volunteers from the Humble Oil Company, Gulf Pipe Line, Sinclair, and the International-Great Northern Railroad. Workers began digging through the rubble looking for victims. Floodlights were set up, and the rescue operation continued through the night as rain fell.
Within seventeen hours all victims and debris had been taken from the site. Mother Francis Hospital in Tyler canceled its elaborate dedication ceremonies to take care of the injured. The Texas Funeral Directors sent twenty-five embalmers. Of the 500 students and forty teachers in the building, approximately 298 died. Some rescuers, students, and teachers needed psychiatric attention, and only about 130 students escaped serious injury.
In response to this tragedy, the 45th Legislature created the Board to regulate engineering. The Legislative intent, as specified in Section 1.1 of the Act, states in part, “ . . . in order to protect the public health, safety and welfare, that the privilege of practicing engineering be entrusted only to those persons duly licensed and practicing under the provisions of this Act and that there be strict compliance with and enforcement of all the provisions of this Act.”
In 1997, the 75th Legislature changed the name of the agency to the Texas Board of Professional Engineers. All language pertaining to “registration” and “registered” was changed to “licensure” and “licensed.”
I once replaced a house gas line that was all beautiful L copper 1" and 1&1/4", it was gorgeous but was full of flaky black debris inside. I knew that we had replaced copper supply lines (the flex lines at the appliance itself) which had been the normal supply line material in the distant past, but had never seen an entire copper gas line.
The best that I could figure was that perhaps copper was OK before the malodorants were added to natural gas and that it was the malodorants which caused corrosion, on the other hand, it doesn't seem smart to use soldered copper that looks just like water pipe for NG anyway.
Does anyone know the official answer for why we got away from copper for natural gas?
***School officials saw nothing wrong because the use of “green” or “wet” gas was a frequent money-saving practice for homes,***
Gas drilling camps often use this in the remote drilling areas of the west.
Our house in one of these camps blew up, burning my mom back in 1956. It was caused by a leaking underground gas line. It missed me by about 1/2 second. our lives were never the same after that.
Another disaster near where my dad was born...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbs_Switch_fire