Thayer School

The Dartmouth Society of Engineers held the first of its two annual dinners in Boston on October 19. About thirty alumni and guests were present to greet Dean Myron Tribus and Professor Bill Kimball '29, and to hear Lt. Comdr. John R. Wear, CEC, USN describe his experiences as a Battalion Commander in South Viet Nam. Myron and Bill demonstrated the time-sharing operation of the Dartmouth GE-235 computer using a teletype hook-up to Hanover. The ease with which the computer is used, and the simplicity of the Dartmouth computer language, BASIC, are always impressive to observers. A standing invitation is extended to anyone visiting Hanover to stop at Thayer School tor a demonstration of this computer system.

The following alumni were present at the Boston meeting: C. F. Hitchcock '39, Gerry Sarno '51, Tom Barr '50, Larry Freier '55, Lindley Hall '59, Robert Sundblad '47, Bill Olmstead '39, Frank Killilea '62, Richard H. Ellis '17, Warren Daniel '50. Gil Nelson 50, Joe Wattleworth '60, Walter Cairns '51 Joe Sarno '51, John Scanlon '34, Bruce Johnson '62, Nelson Doe '13, Phil Jackson '44, Bob Harvey '47, Kenneth H. Little '53, Jim Wooster '60, Tom Gustenhoven '44 and Bill Striker '47.

The second D.S.E. meeting was held in New York on October 26 with Dean Tribus and Dick McClure D' 66 present to represent Thayer School. Myron again "talked" to the GE-235 computer in Hanover and obtained information which Bill Kimball had stored for him in the computer earlier in the day. Carl A. Morse, president and owner of Diesel Construction Company, was guest speaker. Mr. Morse, Business Week's "Master Builder," related his experiences in the building industry.

The first of NASA's Polar Orbiting Geophysical Observatories was launched from Vandenberg AFB, California, October 14, carrying an experiment designed by Professors Millett Morgan and Tom Laaspere. For them this was the fruition of three years of hard work including many trips to California during the last year. Their experiment consists of a very-low-frequency receiver for observing whistlers and ionospherics above the ionosphere. These phenomena are known to be much stronger above the ionosphere than on the ground and by making simultaneous observations on the ground, it is hoped to understand the effect" of the ionosphere on the signals. The receiver on the spacecraft uses an electric dipole about ten feet long overall. The Dartmouth experiment is one of 21 carried by the 1000 pound Observatory.

Joe Wattleworth '60 visited Boston at the time of the D.S.E. meeting to attend the annual meeting of the Institute of Traffic Engineers which was held concurrently with the World Traffic Engineering Conference. Joe was presented with the ITE Past Presidents' Award for 1965 for his paper entitled, "Peak-period Freeway Control - Planning and Evaluation." This high honor was not only in recognition of his paper but also for his major contributions in the field of traffic engineering. Joe completed his Ph.D. at Northwestern in 1963 and is now both an Assistant Research Engineer at the Texas Transportation Institute and on the faculty at Texas A. & M. He has published eight major papers with main emphasis on the demand-capacity relationships and peak-period control of traffic flow on freeway systems.

Russ Stearns '38 saw Rube Samuels '47,Yong Chae '57, and Thayer School Adjunct Professor of Engineering, Fred Sanger, at the 6th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundations held in Montreal, Quebec in September. Rube was busy inspecting the many fascinating construction jobs which are the by-product of a booming economy and the Montreal World's Fair. Yong, who is Assistant Professor of Soil Mechanics at Rutgers, was co-author of a paper at the conference, "Dynamic Pressure Distribution Beneath a Vibrating Footing." Yong spent part of last summer as Consultant and Researcher at the Cold Regions Lab in Hanover. While in Montreal, I was able to spend a little time with Hart Beardsley D'37 who is in the process of moving from Montreal to St. John's, where he will be in charge of a power development at Bay D'Espoir, Newfoundland, for the British Newfoundland Corporation. Hart is president and general manager of the Twin Falls Power Corporation, a subsidiary of BRINCO, and has recently created a power development and complete town on the Unknown River in Labrador.

Frank Killilea '63 was seen at Logan Airport, Boston, on his way to Portland and Bangor, Maine for Metcalf and Eddy. Frank is working on power plant design and operation. Lin Hall '59 and Tom Jester '64 are also with Metcalf and Eddy in Boston. Lin has a graduate program underway at Tufts for his doctorate. John Scully '58 is hard at work on his doctorate at Purdue in the field of soil physics. He was in South Dakota on a field trip when I called at his lab office in June. Bob Price '47 and CraigCain '45 were also at the annual A.S.T.M. meeting held at Purdue in June. Craig is president of the Chicago Fly Ash Company and lives in Evanston, Ill. Bob reported seeing Dick Whikehart '47 in Cleveland recently where Dick is chief engineer for the McDowell-Wellman Engineering Company. The Whikehart family, which includes four children, is located on Gates Mills Boulevard, in Cleveland. Bob, while very busy as head of the Research Center for the International Pipe and Ceramics Corporation, took time out recently to go back to school at Penn State, taking a couple of courses in the new math. Ed Brazil '65 joined Bob's research group in New Jersey this past September.

Professor of Engineering, Sid Lees, returned in October from an official Exchange Visit to the USSR under the auspices of the American Automatic Control Council. A conference was held the first week on the ship "Admiral Nakhimov," sailing the Black Sea during the day and putting up at ports like Yalta and Sochi at night. Of 1100 delegates, 12 were Americans. The next two weeks six American engineers made a tour of plants, laboratories, and a university in Kiev, Tbilisi, Baku, Minsk, Leningrad, and Moscow. Computer centers, an oil refinery, a steel mill, a couple of instrument factories, and many research laboratories were visited. One highlight was the Institute of Metrology (the USSR Bureau of Standards) founded by Mendeleyev. His offices are preserved as a museum. Since this was an exchange visit, an equivalent delegation is expected to visit Dartmouth, particularly to see our time-sharing computer setup.