United States Military Academy West Point - Howitzer Yearbook (West Point, NY)

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X 'exe RMB S fw.,5xs:.jfff-21553 Q Q fjj Department of Chemistry, Mineralogy and Geology PROFESSOR LIEUTENANT-COLONEL WIRT ROBINSONQ class of 18875 Professor of Chem- istry, Mineralogy and Geology, U. S. M. A., I9lI. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR CAPTAIN JOSEPH A. BAER, Cavalry: class of l900. INSTRUCTORS FIRST LIEUTENANT WA4LTER SINGLES, Coast Artillery Corpsg Class of l904. FIRST LIEUTENANT EDWARD W. PUTNEY, Coast Artillery Corpsg class of l908. FIRST LIEUTENANT JAMES L. DUNS- WORTH, Coast Artillery Corpsg Class of I 909. SECOND LIEUTENANT OLIVER A. DICK- INSON, 5th lnfantryg class of 1908. SECOND LIEUTENANT PHILIP GORDON, 2d Cavalryg class of l908. SECOND LIEUTENANT -CLYDE A. SELLECK, lst Field Artilleryg class of l9l0. SECOND LIEUTENANT FREDERICK A. HOLMER, Coast Artillery Corpsg class of l9lO. ' SECO-ND LIEUTENANT HARVEY M. I-loses, 4-th Field Artilleryg class of l9l0.

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, ffl'- WQ3f'fQ-:V , - iw N ' ' -'rug .742---N ' tw, t 1 T191- ?-i'f ' f if 'RIF' -thi WT: f llll 5512. - was wage L ' .-ralfmli 5 bt haf? My w ail, gram' f fr if wry r -. ii 536 .digg rag G W saga - ff Aw L fvsrrzg .sf.,.1:is, sea., mf J cf, , it ,lgszf 'X . W A y . , V ZATH was one of the three original departments of the , H Academy and its first professor took his chair in V 1 1812. Soon after this date the department must have made supernatural efforts, for we find that in 1840 it had succeeded in accumulating most of the , . . Q threatening array which to-day confronts the plebe 1 5 and the yearling. Davies, Bass and Church were all well-known and successful eliminating Professors. Q Church's influence is still felt, and his Descriptive gif Vpytr - H Geometry, now heavily burdened with interpolations, continues to weed out those poor souls who lack the requisite imagination, and successfully reduces each class to its graduating limit. - Its century of- experience has taught the Department all the fine points of the game of elimination, and every class that enters knows that a goodly proportion of its membership will-go back to cit life or the next class, discharged for deficiency in Mathematicsf, During Hwritsu the goats toil lustily and the mathy men are often seen assisting at these nocturnal seances up into the wee-hours. The sense of relief and satisfaction which every man feels when he puts the Math Department behind his back makes his never again for this subject the best of them all. If it were not for the strain of worry, one would learn many weird and inter- esting things from the Science of Mathematics, On a starry night how easy it is to conceive of. the infinite, but in the section room you are told to consider that un- attainable place called infinity as the intersection of parallel lines or as the rendezvous for hyperbolas and their asymptotes. Doesn't that make it clear? No! Well, it's where plus and minus swap names and all our carefully specked laws of math fall down. But to the fertile imagination of some, Descriptive Geometry offered amusements second only to Coney. Revolving points and lines traveling along a peculiarly shaped' road called a directrix generated at R f , ,fe P ER A -4 . THE an ' r will warped surfaces, parabolic hyperboloids, ellipsoids or helicoids. When you started you never could tell what 'WRlT5'K 1. was-going to happen next. The trip through Calculus and 0523, 1 1' I Q 'Least Squares seems like a bad dream now, but even with X 142 that, from our retrospective viewpoint, we all agree that the -:N 5 , Department always gave us a good square deal. Egg- ,,42:1W.,, j- 5vnne- 19

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Sansa' ,Y xi7fE'1Q,E555'? N .M .. fun- '! . ' 4. fa- - --g..--.NNI 1. v' ..5,f :u.1,'1, rsyrr 'zine - N W ' ' H- af' -' ---- v . ',-' -11-,sigh -Efafisatlllllllll' mr.. 5555 2 fqyeawifv' H: tes . r we .. 1 . ..... ER - + . r g . 'rffi 1 Safer , si '-'f fga' vw. 4 Wf1'lig,.'Z'E?'f i E Elf- VLH' v I If 'iff P:gr'Y?' 771 if F33 'Qi' ,eh ns -' .,:k : :w14ffS,a:.3:2:f' sfyq, . : 3.1 -'f ,,-, ' g if '-41 Nw. -sv Lg ,.. 1- I ui. 131 4. rt' 11'-1h HM- 1: -.'2f-any-11.1 f-2! Q - - --'Hilda .av . 'v 'QL mr- 591 n w 44. 21 -4- 5- V 'ES' wc- rw - eff.-',..-'-fl.-4. 1. va 1' F-1' I - -..- if-1 .aff w- 'af pe- -me W 5 wffxf. M-siiisiii gr, t .44 P231 , . g f Qc-2. ss' fig. :L 'Nil Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble! LTHOUGH few of us believed literally. that the world was created in six days, yet we were unpre- pared for the startling statements that the Science of Geology asserted as undisputable facts. Numerous ages of hundreds of thousands of years each could be definitely staked off by reference to the rock layers. Very' soon we acquired vivid pictures of those ancient times when the fish-like Ichthyosauria, the Kangaroo-like Dinosauria and the bat-like Ptero- dactyls, all of monstrous dimensions, were grazing around. Small wonder is it that man did not thrive in those days and only put in an appearance during the present epoch. The mass of new things we learned in both Geology and Mineralogy now seems al- most incredible, but the department also managed to get into that one year, a course in both Chemistry and Electricity. In the latter subject we had Col. Robinsonis new text book, and many a goat was saved by the clear terse expression of technical ideas in short common Anglo-Saxon words. If any subject was especially difficult we were given a lecture, a real lecture, at which no one ever had any inclination to sleep. .The ideas were emphasized by expressive illustrations as those of molecules clasping hands, or, some important point was driven home by a good story like that about the file who tried to kill a deer through a mountain of glass. The Laboratory course in Chemistry aroused much enthusiasm among us, and the. experiments were of such a characteristic type that we really covered a good deal of ground. Some adventurous souls, how- ever, would now and again come to grief through their zeal as seekers after truth. Experiment: Take a piece of charcoal, about the size of fifty grains of wheat, pulverize to fine powderg take an equal quantity of nitre fthat white snowy stuff with a sharp tasteil and pulverize it also. Place both ingredients in a, mortar,' then. with a steel pestle pound the mixture violently. Observation: Cadet Du Flichet: willfully, violently and maliciously destroying government property about lO:l2M A. M. Inference: Charcoal is charcoal, nitre is nitre, but charcoal and nitre is dangerous. 21 CM ,Engl-if rw ,641 . 7. 'fix 1 'fi . ff ,W-f, ,f fc.- , Iii' . wt VW, , 'f wif .H 3 ev ' im