Columbia University School of Engineering - Yearbook (New York, NY)

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The 1934 COLUMBIA ENGINEER MINING AND METALLURGICAL ENGINEERS AND FACULTY Scheer Lilley Hunt Toering Poole Blond Baldizzi Barrett Heuzzizzg Morrill Beyer Kern Pine! Foote Allen Read Taggart CCIIIIPIJFII Burley Ietfe To the Editor, Coimitbia Engineer. DE.'XR MR. SIEGER: Wfhile duly conscious of the honor of being asked to contribute to this yearis Engineer, I feel I must beg to be excused. I know I promised I'd give you something, but on looking over the articles that have appeared in the last half dozen issues I realize I am totally incapable of writing anything suitable. I had in mind Writing you something on the subject of a i'Plea for Poetry in a Practical Period, in fact of advocating that a course in rhyming be added to the pre- engineering schedule. You never know when you may need it. If asked to make an extemporaneous speech at a dinner, it is so handy to have tucked away in your cigarette case half a dozen limericks which are new to your audience. They go over wonderfully, especially since Repeal, e.g., Dlye ken 601' Professor Maciink, who invented the chromium sink, he plated out metals in all kinds of kettles, which always produced a strange stink. XV hen I was between six and seven I graduated from the Kindergarten to the Grammar School, so called because they started you out on Latin Grammar- and to make it more attractive we learned the rules in verse. Common are to either sex, Artifex and Opifexf' etc., and so forth. Like taking old-fashioned castor oil smothered in Hsassapai-ella. I suppose it was this early introduction that infected me, for I have always had a leaning towards poetry. VVhen I got to College I had the unhappy knack of getting elected to all the jobs requiring plenty of hard work but rewarded with more kicks than halfpence, such as Secretary of this, Treasurer of that, Manager of itother. My crowning glory was Assistant Editor of the University journal Ca monthly, thank goodnessj. That was some fun. The Editors, one from each School or College, used to meet and discuss the contributions on hand, mostly written by the said Editors, which discussion usually hinged around the question of whether the article was Forty-two

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The 1934 COLUMBIA ENGINEER Memorial jllllinute fur ijerufessur Zahn 39. Muretruft N j'ANU.rxRY twenty-sixth last, our valued colleague and friend, John Harold Morecroft, passed away at Pasadena, California. Desiring to record in its minutes a tribute to Professor Morecroftls excep- tional abilities, an appreciation of his quarter century of service to Columbia, and an expression of our sense of loss in the passing of a tried and valued friend and associate, the Faculty of Engineering hereby instructs its Secretary to record in the minutes of the faculty the following memorial, and to forward a copy to Professor Morecroft's family. Born in Staffordshire, England, September nineteenth, l88l, John H. Morecroft came to th-is country as a boy and settled in Syracuse, New York. Here he attended Syracuse University, graduating with the degree of Elec- trical Engineer in 1904, and, later, returning to his Alma Mater as Instructor in Civil and Electrical Engineering. Professor Morecroft's first contact with Columbia occurred in 1907 when he began studying problems of electrical circuits and communication under Professor Pupin. A year later he became a University scholar and, in 1909, he entered the department of Electrical Engineering as an instructor. His unusual abilities were quickly recognized and his advancement was rapid. He was immediately recommended for an Assistant Professorship, became an Associate Professor in 1914 and Professor of Electrical Engineering in 1923. During the entire quarter century of Professor lNlorecroft's service to Columbia his chief interest was in the field of alternating current circuits and in the development of radio communication. His keenly analytical mind and his experimental abilities placed him in the forefront in the development of radio science. During the Viforld War he served first in the United States and later in the Allied Navies, as an expert consultant on submarine defense. He became President of the Institute of Radio Engineers and was a member of many committees of that organization and of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. To the outside world John Harold Morecroft will be remembered as the author of important texts in the electrical Held. His books on electrical circuits and machinery, written jointly with Professor I-Iehre, are used in our own classes and at many other schools. His Principles of Radio Com- munication is recognized the world over as an authoritative work, and reached its third edition last year. The results of his experimental researches are embodied in his books on 'tExperimental Radio Engineering. on Radio Communication, and on Electron Tubes. To his many friends and colleagues at Columbia, however, Professor Morecroft's passing recalls those sterling qualities of character and personality which endeared him to the Columbia men of his generation. We record his Cctlllflillllfd 011 page 58D Forty-olze

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The 1934 COLUMBIA ENGINEER really libellous or not and how the Authorities would take it. But occasionally there would be space at the bottom of the page that required filling and that's where I came in. f'That little thing I found, on the ground. is an article I prize, since its size, makes it handy for the pocket, and when you gently knock it, on a house or tree or rock, it goes off with murderous bang, while you cut away or hang, and the answer is, a bomb. XYell, I didn't get fired even when I was raised to the pedestal of Science Editor in my senior year, and that was because I was a sneak. All the Editors were sneaks. That is to say, they told tales out of school. And this is how it worked. For instance, I wrote a doggerel entitled The Universal Expert, a libellous skit on the Professor of Garbage Disposal who really believed he was the Great I Am. But my friend jones, the Editor from the Medical School, made a copy in his own handwriting which I carefully filed away. The day after that copy of the journal appeared I got a note saying the Dean would be pleased to see me at 4 p. m. I-Ie spent fifteen minutes telling me what, a filthy rag the Iournal was and that the Senate ought to abolish it and all the Editors ought to be sent down, and finally came to the point that the feelings of the Professor of Garbage Disposal had been deeply hurt and we'd have to apologize on our hands and knees-and then I interrupted him by blurting out, But Mr. Dean, you've got it all wrong. The article was written by that bum jones of the Medical School and was supposed to be a take-off on Old Professor X, the man that teaches IrIomeopathic Surgery, and we all told him it oughtn't to be published. And I showed him the copy in -Iones' handwriting with his name at the bottom. Of course, there had always been great rivalry between Science and the Medical School, especially between the two faculties, and the Dean admitted that as applied to Professor X, the article was really very funny, I heard later that he had called in the Prof. of G. D. and told him what I had said and the latter on re-reading the article said it was the best skit that had appeared in years, for he c0uldn't stand Prof. X at all. But to return to the question of poetry, wouldn't it be wonderful if some of our difficult and abstruse courses could be dished up in verse! Wfhat an Epic one could write on Power or Strength of Materials! I once thought I'd like to write a summary of Physical Metallurgy in blank verse. 'Which shows how cC0lZfI'1l'Ill?lI on 7lP.1'fI7lZgCj LARGE CENTRIFUGE IN MINING LABORATORY Forty-three