Thayer School

Prof. Hans Grethlein (1968) with Dr. S. Sourirajan of the National Research Council of Ottawa will again offer their two week course on 'Reverse Osmosis' this coming summer. The all-inclusive fee for the course, including meals at the Hanover Inn, is $800.

G. E. Erickson MrE '70: "I am a senior systems analyst for Ford Motor Company. Currently, I am the leader of a project to develop a telecommunications system between a main office IBM 370/155 computer and the Honeywell 316 computers in district sales offices. The limitation of the DDD network and the core size of the H-316 make this a challenging project.

"I am enrolled in the MBA program (night school) at the University of Michigan and have 50 percent of the program completed.

"Jerry Petitt BE-MBA '69, is with American Express setting up a credit checking network."

At the last Annual Meeting of the Highway Research Board (NRC, NAE) in Washington, D. C.:

1. Robert Foote CE '48, presided at the session on Freeways and Joe Wattleworth CE '60, summed things up in discussion.

2. Professor Yong Suk Chae, C.E. '57, of Rutgers presented a paper on "The Dynamic Properties of Cement-Treated Soils."

Nelson L. Doe CE '13 sent in a clipping from Trains for December 1971 which shows a photo of a 325 ton Seaboard E3 3014 (GM 1940) Diesel locomotive being moved into the General Motors Exhibition Building at the New York World's Fair of 1939-40. This was one of the responsibilities of Nelson who was the Superintendent of Construction for the GM Exhibition undertaken by the Turner Construction Company.

In the field of Diesel locomotives, GM certainly can't be accused of 'planned obsolescence': the same locomotive was used by GM 24 years later at the 1964 World's Fair in New York.

Prof. Ed Brown (1937) CE '35 and Prof. Carl Long (1954) have completed a comprehensive report on the water supply and sewage needs of 35 communities for the New Hampshire Water Supply and Pollution Control Commission. Included in the report are data and analyses showing the general dynamics of development in these communities and their environs as reflected by population growth and characteristics, transportation facilities, recreational resources and their development, land and water use, and the general physical characteristics of the region. A very impressive report by 'doers.'

Colin E. Jones DE '72, is Senior Engineer with Rank Xerox Limited in London, England, and is working in Product Development.

Colin came to Thayer as a chemical engineering graduate from University College, London.

His doctoral thesis describes apparatus he designed and built to detect, nondestructively, any mass discontinuities which might occur in the inner layers of heterogeneously layered cable. He investigated ten different methods of doing this before settling on a micro-wave system. Before his investigations he said with refreshing candor and humor that he really didn't know a microwave system from a green bean; Professor Fred Manasse (1968), his thesis advisor, assisted him in making this distinction. The apparatus he built consisted of standard components, cost around $2,000, and has been tested successfully in the manufacturing plans of the General Cable Corporation, which financially supported the project.

Prof. Tom Piatkowski (1967) presented a paper called, "A Novel and Versatile Approach to Computer Hardware Education and Terminal Development" this past August at the Fourth Triennial Congress of the International Federation for Information Processing held in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. Professor Piatkowski reported on the work he has been directing at Thayer over the past several years in which a new approach to computer hardware education and computer terminal development has been implemented. Over the past three years, students taking Engineering 118 with Professor Piatkowski have built a quite large, free-stnding minicomputer system that provides a wide range of terminal features to Dartmouth Time-Sharing. This system has been used for biomedical research, analog-to-digital data conversion, and is now part of a digitally controlled music synthesizing system.

Professor Piatkowski's talk preceded that of Henry Urion BE '70 a graduate student at Thayer who also delivered a paper in Ljubljana entitled, "Cum Laude: A New Approach in Designing Computer Assisted French Language Instruction Programs." Henry has many other achievements including having won a cake-baking contest at Thayer against a field of females including faculty wives and secretaries.

Otis W. Hovey CE '17: "First of all I want you and Bill Kimball to know how much I enjoyed reading, 'The First Hundred Years' ..." Thayer School has come a long way from the days in Bissell Hall, and I am proud to be a graduate from such a fine school.

"My earliest recollection of Thayer School goes back to undergraduate days, when, for two summers, I served as secretary to Professor Fletcher (1871-1918). He always chose the precise word for the meaning he wished to express. This experience was valuable to me later in writing specifications.

"My biggest job prior to the Depression was the design of a cantilever bridge for the City of Pittsburgh. Its center span was 550' and overall length 1100'. It was a deck span, with the bottom chord in the form of an elliptical arch. It was quite high, being 220' vertically from center of bridge to ground below, and wind stresses exceeded the live load by a considerable margin. It was erected in 1929, and, since it's still standing, I guess my assumptions were correct.

"My first job after the Depression was with the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Co. in Philadelphia on the stress analysis for the stainless steel cars of the first Burlington Zephyr (the first streamlined train in the U.S.)- After that for 12 years I worked in the Railroad Research Bureau of the U. S. Steel Corp. on the design of two streamlined trains and varieties of freight cars.

"In 1952, on looking over a Standard & Poor's booklet on stocks, I worked out a formula for stock evaluation, and on the strength of it got a license from the Pennsylvania Securities Commission as an Investment Advisor which I hold to this day. It is an interesting occupation in these retirement years."

Sam Florman CE '46, a pro-technological humanist, who has published a book and articles on the inter-relations of technology and society, has taken on two authors, who have great appeal for the anti-technological chic. They are Jacques Ellul in his "The Technological Society" and Rene Dubos and his "So Human an Animal." Sam would consider them silly if they were not misleading and dangerous. Says Sam in his article entitled "Anti-Technology: The New Myth," appearing in Civil Engineering (Jan. 1972): "To the extent that the misconceptions of men like Ellul and Dubos continue to be favorably received, the prospects for rational (technological) solutions to our many serious problems are correspondingly reduced."

All in all Sam maintains that technology, which has been the means by which mankind has emerged from savagery and progressed from barbarism to 'civilization,' can't be all bad.

Sam is co-owner and General Manager of Kreisler Borg Florman Construction Co., Scarsdale, N. Y., and a partner in Borg and Florman, Consulting Engineers, besides being a Thayer overseer.