Illinois Institute of Technology - Integral / Lewis Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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THOMAS KANE The beloved Veteran of the trustees is Thomas Kane, now more than eighty years old. In the world of business he is remembered as a manufac- turer. In the world of religion he is remembered as the persistent advocate of systematic giving. In the little world of Lewis Institute he is remembered for four things. First, he believed with all his heart in the ideals of the Founder, for he had himself been a pour buy, and worked his way up. Second, he used to come to the Institute and talk to the students about these ideals. His favorite text was, Get a streak of fat and a streak of lean, by which he meant Unite school theory and shop practice as you go along. Third, he always tried to advertise the Institute. In this he found himself virtually alone, for the Institute has never had the time or the art to advertise itself. Fourth, his keen eye perceived that one of the evening students, J. Hall Taylor, was a real inventor. So he staked every cent he had on Hall Taylor, and his judgment proved sound. Mr. Kane and Mr. Taylor became the Amer- ican Spiral Pipe Works, and remain so, and sell pipe to every country on the globe. Eleven

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BION JOSEPH ARNOLD There are three electrical engineers who stand at the head of their profes- sion. These are Edison, Steinmetz, and Arnold. They are great friends and Arnold would doubtless say that Steinmetz is his superior as a mathematician, but we happen to know that Dr. Arnold invented and proved the present single phase type of electric road when Dr. Steinmetz said it could not be done. Undergraduates who want to read about B. J. can take their choice of main- sources. They can read the long list of. his successes in Who ' s Who. If this stumps them, they can pick up the daily paper and see what particular railroad Dr. Arnold is electrifying. Everybody knows the he electrified the New York Central in and out of New York, and that he is the chief subway engineer of the City of Chicago. But there is hardly a great city on the continent that he has not supplied with electrical brains. Then there are the magazine articles about him, such as appeared in the American Magazine last August and last March. B. J. has no use for bluff or hot air. He lives on hard facts, consuming vast quantities daily. He is patient, thorough, persistent, stubborn. When he gets one of his poetic ideas he tests it and then he banks on it, trusting his. own mental processes. Thus it was that when his first single phase apparatus burned up, the very night before he delivered his inaugural as president of the American Society of Electrical Engineers, he rebuilt the whole thing at a cost of forty thousand and ran a train over twenty miles of road, calmly emerging a week ahead of all other single-phase inventors. Then he gave the outfit away to two universities, because it involved the use of compressed air, and he saw that this was unnecessary Every enuineerino- student in Lewis has only one desire — to be like the great B. J. Thirteen