Worcester Polytechnic Institute - Peddler Yearbook (Worcester, MA)

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vv VN Thinking Required I CAN see it all now. The years will pass, and as I sit in my own little executive’s chair, a park bench, contentedly inhaling on a cigarette plucked from the obscure depths of the gutter, I’ll glance at the few remaining burning strands of tobacco and discover that this snipe has a filter tip, a Kent micronite filter. Like a flash the cold winter’s winds will soften with the touch of reminiscence which will engulf my bones to the marrow. Kent, that name reminds me only of the Atwater Kent Laboratories of my Alma Mater, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Memories will inundate my mind taking me back to my undergraduate days at W.P.I. Here in those labs which house the Electrical Engineering Department were conducted some of the most significant events of my life. Such things as Spark’s Parties, IHEE pledging, Senior class meetings, and Doc¬ tor Quinn’s sex lectures come most readily into focus because of their great signifi¬ cance. However, there are also the more serious matters which can’t be brushed aside: the induction motor burning out, the drain on the personal budget when Zeech dropped the ammeter, and the day when Professor Grogan blew the main circuit breaker while demonstrating the finer points of servo-mechanisms to a group of prospective Tech students. These events Stecfoical serve not only to show that everybody “goofs,” but that our lives are full of dis¬ heartening and mortifying experiences which are a part of Tech’s balanced train¬ ing program. Of course one can’t think of Kent Labs and the EE department without realizing that the core of the organization was not the buildings and the equipment available, but rather those that man them. When I think of the E.E. department’s staff, I’ll picture them most vividly as they always were on May Day wearing their green union suits as a mark of utter contempt for the Communist demonstrations through¬ out the world. Besides remembering this group as being conscious of world affairs, I’ll recall them as an efficient and progressive unit of which any educational institution might well be proud. As the leader of this staff I’ll remember one of Stanford’s best products, Professor T. H. Morgan, who never once was too busy to deny his valuable time to all of us who plagued him with our varied woes. Of course, to us, the Assistant Head of the Department, Miss Allen, will always be considered as a most gracious lady. As I patrol the gutter once more for a smoke and the streets for a hand-out, I’ll wish that she were present so that I could accept one of her exorbitant offers of a loan (in school days intended for proms and other events) and tap her supply of candy which was always on stock for “the boys.” But enough of this daydreaming about the past. The needs of the present day must be attended to. Let’s start job hunting again. Say, I wonder if any of my old in¬ structors might consider turning over one of their spare time jobs to me. Do you sup- “Ho-hum” { 20

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Professor Corey, missed his vocation as a cartoonist. He makes up for this, however, by having the best collection of cartoons on campus displayed on his bulletin board. Professor Whenman, known to the faculty as “old faithful of the M.E. Department,” is still trying to teach the underclassmen enough about gears so they won’t put their transmissions together with three speeds in reverse. “Spike” Staples, between Lacrosse seasons, can be found showing freshmen how to make a maze of lines mean something. The Heat-Power section is headed by R. P. (Red Pencil) “KO” Kolb, a man who realizes it is better to have mistakes corrected at Tech than in industry. The graduates will someday realize this, even though they don’t now, especially when their exams are returned looking like road maps. Another celebrity in the Heat-Power section is “Thunderbolt” Webster who is matched only by “Lightning” Ken Scott in speed at writing “Thermo” formulas on the blackboard. The name “Thunderbolt” comes about because the rate at which equations are presented is such that the class looks as though an electrical storm had just passed. Over in Washburn Shops, Professor Dows is still showing the “Dusties” the old points of industry and in between times trying to salvage some poor sophomore’s bench grinder in the machine shop. His partner in Washburn, “Crafty” Ken Fowler, has taken over the leadership of the sand-pounding crew in the foundry in addition to his bench grinder salvage duties. Carl “Ha-Ha” Johnson merrilly rolls along putting across “that idea ” and emphasizing it by saying, “that idea, get it, get it?” Joe Gale is still lighting the lantern for Carl and helping out the many distressed juniors in metallography and welding labs. “Hey, Joe . . .” Professors Hooper and “Fluid Flow” Finlayson, and Messrs. Neale, Smallridge, Henderson and Ferguson, make up the force which furthers our education in fluids and mans the Institute’s second string swimming pool (or Alden Hydraulic Labor¬ atory if you prefer). There are three second-year members of Higgins’ teaching ranks. Alden Roys, a W.P.I. graduate in 1940, serves the Depart¬ ment as an Experimental Engineer and In¬ strument Specialist. Mr. Kistler, an instruc¬ tor, has caused the raising of several ceil¬ ings as well as most of his students’ usually placid tempers. The third is Tennyson Wang, who, we understand, is an acrobat of sorts. It seems the lock on Mr. Wang’s second-floor office door jammed from the inside and caused him to contemplate a jump out the window. Luckily someone from the Department’s maintenance crew saw him perched on the window sill and released him from his cell. In the departmental office, Miss Gaylord continues making sure that the seniors talk to no interviewer offering less than twenty thousand a year to start, providing their reports have been in on time. Although we josh and poke fun at the men who instruct us, we should all feel a deep sense of gratitude and appreciation toward those men as they are giving us something we will possess all our lives — our education. Whether we realize it now or after we leave the Institute, these men have done a lot for us. They are great friends, even though we may not think so on exam day. Front row, left to right: Prof. J. H .Whenman, Prof. B. L. Wellman, Prof. R. P. Kolb, Dr. G. H. MacCullough, Prof. K. G. Merriam, Prof. H. W. Dows, Prof. F. A. Anderson. Back row: Prof. R. F. Bourgault, Prof. K. W. Fowler, Prof. F. S. Finlavson, Mr. F. J. Ogozalek, Prof. F. N. Webster, Mr. W. A. Kistler, Mr. A. T. Roys, Prof. H. S. Corey, Prof. K. E. Scott, Prof. C. W. Staples, Prof. J. A. Bjork, Mr. T. C. Wang.

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S ttyitieeiiaa Front row, left to right: Dr. H. H. Newell, Dr. F. J. Adams, Prof. T. H. Morgan, Prof. D. E. Howes. Back row: Prof. W. R. Grogan, Prof. R. L. Moruzzi, Mr. T. Kali- szewski, Mr. A. K. McCurdy, Prof. G. E. Stannard, Mr. R. G. Beschle, Prof. R. H. Krackhardt, Prof. W. B. Wadsworth. pose that Professor Wadsworth is still working on the development of protective ear-muffs? His spare time job was keeping unwanted and harmful noise from people’s ears. I never had any trouble being obliv¬ ious to his lectures. Maybe there’s a future for me in that line. Then again with my solid foundation in all electrical fields (inherent in all Tech E.E. grads) perhaps I could be a controls ‘ ' Let’s ge t Gobel Again.” man. Professors Bill “Stern” Grogan and Doug Howes in the summer months worked on such projects as automatic torpedo fir¬ ing devices and kidney bean shuckers. I don’t suppose, though, that either of them know I once shunted out the tilt circuit in a pin ball machine. It seems to me as if Professors Stannard and Krackhardt had a very interesting re¬ search project under survey back in ’56. It dealt with methods of reducing radio noise. I’m sure I could gather together other Tech men in straits similar to my own and aid these two educators considerably by raz¬ ing the rhythm ’n blues libraries of the local radio stations. Ah, but all these ideas are as futile as monitoring Engineering Economy classes in hopes that I might some day teach them or trying to install Hollywood tail-pipes on Professor Newell’s 1929 Franklin. The obvious question arises: was it worth the suffering at the hands of Mr. Beschle of re-calculating and re-plotting our lab results and going through the many punish¬ ments reserved only for inhabitants of Hades to arrive at this station in life which I now command? I think that I should have cut Professor Locke’s electrocution lecture and paid the supreme consequences. I can’t even get a job baby-sitting for Mr. Mc¬ Curdy’s clan (“Not broad-minded enough,” he says). Why, oh why, didn’t I take Option A? 1 21