Lehigh University - Epitome Yearbook (Bethlehem, PA)

Page 16 text:

XX- ' ' ' ■ ■■ SaHL -. fc lfJ La = ■ i m. ■= -, —. ■ 1 -?; r: s rH : - , • ,•-■ H

Page 15 text:

THE WAR . strange places no one had heard of since his eighth grade geography days drove home the grim reality that America was taking a beating and that a great national effort would be necessary to turn defeat into eventual victory. What ' s this I ' ve been hearing about the J avy ' s having a special reserve for engineering students? Sure, they let you graduate and then give you a commission. Say, that sounds swell. Sorta ills two birds with one stone. C HE WELL-KNOWN human desire to have one ' s cake and eat it too was illus- trated in the great interest that all American college students showed in the various Army and Navy reserve programs, the first of which appeared about the middle of December, 1941, and which was very similar to the present V-7 set-up. More than 175 junior and senior engineers at Lehigh began to investigate its possibili- ties. At first glance a reserve of this kind seemed to be just what most normal fellows were looking for. Almost everyone felt a deep pain inside of him when he read of the Japs taking one island after another, pushing MacArthur back to Bataan and hoisting their flag in Manila. Everyone wanted to help. But it ' s not easy for a man to drop his education after having sweated blood to pass Math 106, having burned the midnight oil for years over physics and heat engines and organic chemistry and strength of materials. It ' s not easy for a man to walk away from an education that his parents have saved for years to give him or that he ' s worked full shifts at Steel to get — even if he does walk into the service of his country. Yes, sir, the college reserve program of the Navy looked good and so did advanced R.O.T.C. Most fellows thought these units offered a chance to fulfill two seemingly conflicting desires. ¥ 4 M ■ it J .i, w flU uto

Page 17 text:

THE WAR . War affected the faculty, too. Ever since America had changed its status of neu- trality to one of non-belligerency men in the engineering faculty, specially in the me- .. chanical engineering department, had been slipping away into the armed forces or into defense industries. Dr. Adelbert Ford, former head of the psychology depart- K ment, was the first faculty member to leave after Pearl Harbor, reporting to the Navy in the latter part of December, 1941. ry} Almost a year before the war began, Captain Benjamin Mesick, then an assist- ant professor of military science and tactics and now a colonel and the commanding officer of one of the Army ' s largest ordnance depots in California, and Professor Harold V. Anderson of the chemistry department began discussing the possibilities of using X-rays for certain types of tests on metals used in the manufacture of gun parts. The more they discussed the idea, the more they felt that they might be on the trail of something useful. Through the efforts of Captain Mesick, the Frankford Arsenal became interested in the plan; and a few months before Pearl Harbor officers at the Arsenal suggested that the National Defense Research Committee inaugurate an investi- gation of the foregoing idea, with the result that the Council established a research project at Lehigh under the War Metallurgy Committee with Anderson as Technical Representative. At the outset, the N.D.R.C. project staff consisted of Charles W. Tucker, investigator; G. Douglas Nelson, investigator; Dr. Max Petersen of the Phys- ics department, investigator; Dr. C. E. Stoops, of the chemical engineering depart- ment, investigator; Dr. Joseph B. Reynolds as special consultant in mathematics; and Professor Anderson as technical representative of N.D.R.C. A Lehigh alumnus, Lt. Col. C. H. Greenall, chief of the Frankford ordnance laboratories, acted as liaison officer for the project which is being carried on in such a hush-hush atmosphere that at this time only its title, Residual Stresses in Cold-Drawn Non-ferrous Alloys: An X-ray study, can be released. Although the work started almost from scratch and progressed slowly for many months, enough headway had been made by the summer of 1942 that two X-ray dif- fraction units of the newest type as well as other pieces of special equipment were bought for the project. In the spring of 1944, both Professor Anderson and Dr. L. L. Wyman, General Electric research metallurgist, who is the present N.D.R.C. research supervisor, feel for this reason that the work has progressed far enough to be not only a valuable contribution to the war effort but that it will uncover new uses for the X-ray in post-war industry. I hear they ' re going to cut out houseparty this spring. J law, they wouldn ' t dare. There ' d be a stri e or something. 1 HE BOYS came back from their first wartime Christmas holidays to be greeted by an official announcement that there would be no houseparty that spring, and the Brown and White editorially agreed with General Sherman ' s famous statement about war but expressed a confidence that houseparty was not yet dead and that the forces of righteousness would eventually triumph. Meanwhile the Japanese W. H. Chandler Chemistry Building; G. D. Nelson; C. E. Stoops [13]