[Stoves] VITA's origins

Mon Sep 23 23:39:43 CDT 2019

Thanks for the history Richard. Great contributions were made in a rapidly growing movement. At that Cecil was writing the documentation to start the National Centre for Appropriate Technology NCAT which was established on Butte Montana. Ask him why it was put there. You will be surprised.

Tom Land (RIP) was hired to run the Brace Research Institute in 1957, believe it or not. He was the only head they ever had for many decades. I met him for orientation and training in 1977 prior to heading to Swaziland. He was working with Dr Budgen, the guy who built the bridge across the mouth of the Zambezi River in 1935.

He was making windmill towers, a great looking brick made from waste sulphur and we together tested the Pompe Verniet - remember that contraption?

Stoves were on the list even then, with a drawing in the handbook that is the precursor of the Rocket stove developed by David Hancock, and the Rocket Mass Heater by Ianto Evans.

When did Dan Johnson enter the picture? I thought he was a very early feature.

Thanks
Crispin
From: rstanley at mind.net
Sent: September 23, 2019 11:51 PM
To: stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
Reply to: stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Stoves] VITA's origins

Let me chime in here with  bit of history about VITA in the early years; Volunteers in Technical assistance was founded by a one Dr. Beno Sternlicht in the ?? late 60's. It was initially based in Schenectady New York ( the then home of General Electric corporation,  where Sternlicht worked. I joined them fresh out of peace corps in 1970 and worked for  a year before realising that the salary would not get us very far. The initial crew consisted of about ten staff in a quonset hut on the campus of Union college  in Schenectady but it had incredible outreach. by the time I joined, there were already several thousand technical assistance "Vita Volunteers", spread all over the US. VITA did not operate in a vacuum, as the interaction and outreach exposed it to a far wider world. It borrowed heavily on the information provided by missionaries, aid workers,  development organisations all over the world. several of these were recent and others longer-established if less formally known. Schumacher's, Small is Beautiful sprung  UK's own ITDG,  BRACE arose out of, if not in parallel with, the work of Dr Tom Lawand in McGill University in Canada).
 SKAT out of Switzerland,  TOOL emerged out of several universities in cooperation with the Royal Tropical institute in Holland, as did others out of Germany, France, and India.  As a request coordinator, the incoming "mail" (then the only known form of mail) was loaded with a huge variety of needs and resources one would rarely find in any conventional research organsation, The problem was not finding a solution for the overseas missionary or aid worker or local cooperative etc etc., but rather, how to track and condense it for easy application to a subsequent request from anywhere else.

And those were the heady days of file index cards and snail mail and corded phones. A parallel effort was put in place to extract and compile organised manuals from all the technical advice being offered, henceforth,  the Village Technology Handbook.  ITDG was undertaking a parallel effort as was Brace, Tool, Skat and others. The Village Technology Handbook was suceded by the TAICH directory, (Technical Assistance Information Clearinghouse).  VITA subsequently moved its operation to Washington DC as part of their not untypical unending search for operating funds. I doubt whether the politics and the culture of that arena were as much sought after, as VITA suffered from the ensuing Daniel Websterian soul challenging machinations as an unintended consequence. That you are writing about it now suggests they have survived somehow.

 Since I left in 1971,  for grad school and a long sought return to work in international development, I have had only very intermittent contact with VITA but those early heady days in the quonset hut remain a memorable experience indeed.

Richard Stanley

On Sep 23, 2019, at 2:57 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com<mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com>> wrote:

Volunteers in Technical Assistance.

The head was Don Feil for some time recently. I am not sure if he still is. His phone mailboxes are full.

US-based people volunteer their time to solve problems encountered by overseas people. It did a lot of positive things.  They produced the first (rather defective) WBT test, with them mediating three organisations, them, plus one in France and one in Germany.   They put out a number of publications including the VITA Technology Handbook and the microfiche library of everything the Village Technology Sourcebook. Back in the early ‘80’s that was the basis of any good appropriately technology centre library.

Cecil Cook and I co-founded the Transkei Appropriate Technology Unit in 1982 and there wasn’t all that much to go on, besides the ITDG publications.

So, there is some discussion of water storage here.
https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0006364<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjournals.plos.org%2Fplosntds%2Farticle%3Fid%3D10.1371%2Fjournal.pntd.0006364&data=02%7C01%7C%7C208b3cbdc43f4adb6a4b08d740a2811f%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637048938998269056&sdata=IL2iP47C1ULzkjKgV3q989Uwu7eyvUC9Lle6VdFpc%2FI%3D&reserved=0>

Conclusions
“All five water treatment methods can remove or inactivate cercariae in water, and hence produce cercaria-free water. However, reliable design guidelines for treating water do not exist as there are insufficient data. Overall, the review found that cercariae are inactivated when storing water for 10–72 hours (depending on temperature), or with chlorination values of 3–30 mg-min/l. UV fluences between 3–60 mJ/cm2 may significantly damage or kill cercariae, and sand filters with 0.18–0.35 mm grain size have been shown to remove cercariae. This systematic review identified 67 studiesabout water treatment and schistosomiasis published in the past 106 years. It highlights the many factors that influence the results of water treatment experiments, which include different water quality conditions and methods for measuring key parameters. Variation in these factors limit comparability, and therefore currently available information is insufficient for providing complete water treatment design recommendations.”
I think that is information enough to start.
Regards
Crispin

From: Stoves <stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org<mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org>> On Behalf Of K McLean
Sent: Monday, September 23, 2019 5:39 PM
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org<mailto:stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>>
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Water Disinfection - Mix Boiling Water and Unheated Water to Pasteurize

I searched for a couple hours and found nothing.  I'll keep trying.  What is VITA?

On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 5:13 PM Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com<mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com>> wrote:
Dear Kevin

I support your support to support those who have nothing.  Better is something.

Is it possible that VITA has done work on this?

It is so essential that it seems unlikely there is no work on it.  It is not something I follow closely.

Perhaps a brief search will turn up someone who knows someone who knows.

Regards
Crispin

Your disinfection by darkness method should be easy to test in a lab.  If successful in the lab, I can think of many ways it might be easily implemented.

Despite decades of effort, 2.2 billion people (67%) in the 60 developing countries analyzed in this study<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fpmc%2Farticles%2FPMC2813171%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C208b3cbdc43f4adb6a4b08d740a2811f%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637048938998269056&sdata=qfu%2BW7MN09Em72z%2FjpzGx9brasa8igoNymmdy3532j4%3D&reserved=0> do nothing to treat their water.  Of those that treat, 500 million use adequate methods.

If you think your disinfection by darkness method has potential, help find a lab and I'll pay for the testing.  It doesn't have to be the best solution, just a good method that can be quickly disseminated.  Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Kevin

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