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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "+//ISBN 0-9673008-1-9//DTD OEB 1.0 Document//EN"
+ "http://openebook.org/dtds/oeb-1.0/oebdoc1.dtd">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/x-oeb1-document; charset=utf-8" />
+<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/x-oeb1-css" href="DrBillBio.css" />
+<title>Bill Wattenburg’s Background: Don’t Call the FBI!</title>
+</head>
+
+<body>
+
+<h1>Don’t Call the FBI!</h1>
+
+<h2>(1974)</h2>
+
+<p>This next story amused our staff to no end when they found the first of the newspaper
+stories. Wattenburg seemed excited himself when we showed him how widely the story had been
+publicized around the world. He said that he hadn’t realized it at the time.</p>
+
+<p>In 1974, Wattenburg again embarrassed government scientists and bureaucrats alike. He saved
+the country millions of dollars during the first oil crisis when he showed that he could measure
+how much oil was in oil refinery storage tanks by simply pointing a special infra-red camera at the
+tanks from a distance. This story was first reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, February 6,
+1974, with the headline: “How to See Inside Their Oil Tanks”.</p>
+
+<p>During the oil crisis, Energy Department officials announced that they were going to use
+a thousand FBI agents to crawl into all the oil tanks in all the refineries of the country to see how
+much gas and oil the oil companies were hoarding. Embarrassed officials in Washington quickly
+cancelled their plans to use FBI agents after the story of Wattenburg’s feat was carried by the
+wire services all over the country.</p>
+
+<p>Wattenburg treated the viewers of the ABC network to a dramatic film that showed how he
+stood back at a distance and measured the oil levels in all the storage tanks at the Richmond,
+California, Chevron Oil Co. refinery—without really trying! As his special TV-like camera
+scanned the tank farm, the screen showed the surface of each oil tank glowing brightly up to the
+liquid level in the tank. The empty upper portion of each tank showed black. The liquid levels of
+a hundred oil tanks in the distance could be measured to an accuracy of 5% just by looking at
+their images on the camera screen.</p>
+
+<p>Wattenburg had made the film in a few minutes using a commercially available infra-red TV
+camera—from a distance of a mile away! He showed that the government could easily measure
+the oil in all the refinery tank farms of the country. He proved that they could do this in a day by
+simply flying over the tank farms with military reconnaissance aircraft that carried the same infra-red camera. </p>
+
+<p>This is the story he gave one reporter at the time:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+ <p>The idea came to him when he remembered that water tanks on the farms near where he
+ grew up often had a very visible dew line on them early in the morning because the portion of the
+ tank filled with water stayed at a warmer temperature overnight than the empty upper portion that
+ was cooled down by the nighttime air temperature. Conversely, the sun warmed the upper
+ surface more quickly than the lower surface in the afternoon. This meant that the portions of oil
+ tanks filled with oil would be warmer in the morning and cooler in the evening than the empty
+ portions which followed the local air temperature. This temperature difference is easily measured
+ and displayed by infra-red TV cameras of the kind Wattenburg borrowed for his dramatic
+ experiment (Thermovision by AGA Corporation). This technology was first developed for satellite
+ reconnaissance of rocket launchings (Wattenburg worked on this as a consultant to Lockheed
+ Missiles and Space Co. in 1965–1968.)</p>
+
+ <p>The congressional subcommittee that had initially insisted that the Energy Department use
+ FBI agents later asked Wattenburg to testify at a hearing in Washington. They wanted to
+ investigate why the Energy Dept. had not thought of his idea. He wrote the committee staff a
+ widely publicized letter in which he gave them complete instructions on how to do it themselves
+ and where they could find a suitable infra-red camera in the Pentagon! He suggested that this
+ would save the taxpayers his airfare—and that “they would really find it a lot more fun to do it
+ themselves.”</p>
+
+<p>The subcommittee staff insisted that he appear. Then he wrote back that he would be
+ delighted to appear because he had “just discovered something else that your subcommittee has
+ told a government agency to do that is even more foolish than using FBI agents to crawl into oil
+ tanks.” They evidently cancelled the hearing.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+</body>
+</html> \ No newline at end of file