1936

How pertinent to each of us are interesting incidents in the lives of classmates which will be presented here as received. Please send yours along.

Bax Fullerton tells his experience as late '60s vice president, sales, of Warner & Swazey, large Cleveland machine tool builder, in the search for a new-concept computer-controlled metal turning machine.

"One afternoon," he writes, "I was doodling with an engineering department sketch of a flat, round indexing tool holder, designed to bring a succession of cutting tools to the workplace a conventional idea and noticed that if we would bring all of the tools out to the periphery of the device we cut in half the amount of cross travel required for machining a work piece. At 4:30 the next morning. I woke with the idea of elongating the device so that tools could be placed in different lateral positions to halve the lateral travel required.

"With no paper available, I pulled a shirt cardboard from the bureau drawer and sketched the idea on it. That morning I asked one of our engineers if he could design a machine using these concepts.

"He thought he could and out of that in the next few years came a line of several machines of all sizes representing two-thirds of Warner & Swazey business. A Japanese company copied our machine and were giving us fits on prices until we won, a patent shirt cardboard as exhibit one.

"I'm sure that the mind doesn't stop work while we are asleep! I know, also, that a liberal arts graduate who is one of the world's worst mechanics can contribute to a mechanical-type business."

Did you know that only George Washington, Winfield Scott, and U.S. Grant had the army rank of lieutenant general until World War II? After World War I, John J. Pershing was general of the armies for the rest of his life.

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