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West By Northwest E-Books West By Northwest is honored to reprint the memoirs of Mr. Thompson, a retired nuclear engineer and active peace worker. His experiences capture the core of North American modern times from the farm boy dreaming of the answers of technology to the man who knows we must work for change. An especially wonderful section of this chapter is the diary entries of his first wife, Barbara, who recorded their trip West during the Great Depression when fresh out of school, they looked for a future. - PM Gray
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ENGINEERING
THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
We decided we wanted to live the rest of our lives in Seattle. We loved its big country
town ambience, including its steep hills with their cable cars, its lakes with their
houseboats. Times were still not good in Seattle in 1939; The Depression was still
on, good jobs were scarce, and we didn't have any money. Barbara still supported
my dream of becoming an engineer. We were ready for a change. We had nothing to lose.
Barbara and I investigated the University of Washington, found that they had an engineering school and a school of social work. We decided that I should enroll in the Engineering School. I went with considerable fear and trepidation to my interviews. Having been out of school now for three years, I felt very uncertain of my academic ability.
I was admitted conditionally, as a freshman, to a course leading to a degree in engineering in two or three years. The first official connection with the engineering school, required of all beginning engineering students, was attendance at the welcoming address by Dean Loew, an electrical engineer. He explained to us that the University was required to admit every student who applied, if that student had successfully completed high school in the state of Washington, but the University was not required to graduate those students. He instructed us, therefore, to look carefully at the man (there were no women in the engineering school) on the left, and then at the man on the right of us, and to realize that two of the three of us would probably not graduate.
Barbara, whose academic background was less questionable than mine, enrolled as a graduate student in the School of Social Work.
MAKING A LIVING
Because my typewriter job was full time, I had to give it up to become a student.
Economic survival, while we were at the University, depended on a succession of jobs.
For a while I tutored a man, Victor Clausen, who was then in his fifties, an old
man, we thought at the time. He had been successful as a practicing geologist in
Alaska. Now he wanted the satisfaction of having a university degree. He had small
patience with many happenings at the University. Victor lost that patience with his
geology professor, who disagreed with Victor's identification of a mineral. Victor
proclaimed, as he walked off, "It looks like a boid, it smells like a boid,
it flies like a boid, but it ain't a boid!" We decided that if we were to bet
on who was correct we'd put our money on Victor. Victor was generous with his tutors,
including such surprises as a Thanksgiving turkey.
Barbara partly supported us by working for the School of Social Work, where she was also enrolled as a graduate student. Then Barbara decided she wanted above all else to have another baby, and promptly became pregnant with Bruce. No pregnant students were allowed in the graduate program.
During the Christmas rush, Barbara and I both worked at Sears as sales people or shipping clerks. I was paid for doing a set of drawings for a local supplier of ships galleys to the United States Navy, in ink, as then required by the Navy.
After Bruce was born, Barbara could still help me with some of my paid jobs. Civil engineering professor Harris had a consulting job in connection with a lawsuit over contamination of oyster beds by the effluent from a paper mill. He paid me for doing a series of maps of tidal flows, with Barbara doing the art work. I wasn't environmentally aware, but now I suspect that our pay came from the wrong side of the argument. I remember Professor Harris coming to our house to consult with us on the work we were doing for him. He looked at Bruce in his basket, chided us for keeping him too warm, and removed a blanket.
I taught a section of Professor Warner's class in descriptive geometry. Professor Warner had written the book which was then widely used, and I felt quite bolstered by the assignment.
Barbara and I had a wonderful time in Seattle despite, or perhaps because of, our busy schedule. Besides her own work, Barbara was also involved with mine. She was allowed to sit in for me in a required-attendance class in engineering law with which I had a conflict, but I had to take the test. Barbara typed many of my reports. One report concerned an engineering device called a "rope brake." Barbara didn't know about rope brakes, but she did know that ropes sometimes "broke," so that's what she typed. Professor McIntyre, before he returned the paper, wrote on it, "I see I'm going to have to require Barbara to take the course."
For most of the time we were at the University, I worked for American District Telegraph, a company which provided security services for banks and other organizations. I received the same pay as the long time employees, forty cents an hour. The only promotion possible for a regular employee was to become a supervisor. When a burglar alarm went off at Sears, I'd strap on a revolver, about which I knew very little but I felt it might give a burglar an excuse to shoot me. Then I'd climb into the company's red car, and dash down to Sears. Once when an alarm tripped, two of us were dispatched to Sears. We entered the warehouse, and were running down the aisle, I following. Just as my companion turned a corner, he stopped suddenly and I crashed into him. Prominent in the beam of his flashlight was a lifelike clothes dummy, its arm outstretched threateningly toward us. I'm still surprised that my companion didn't shoot it.
On arrival at a bank whose alarm had tripped, I would first try to fix and reset it. If the alarm didn't readily reset, I was required to stay there the rest of my shift, calling in each hour to report that all was still well. Because my shift one night was from eight o'clock in the evening until four the next morning, and the next night was from midnight until eight the next morning, then off to class at ten minutes after eight, I sometimes had great trouble staying awake to call in at the required intervals. Then one of my co-workers suggested a way to handle this - set an alarm clock each time I called in so that it would go off an hour later. I tried this once but it didn't work. When I woke with a start the clock indicated a few minutes after the time I should have called and I thought, "Damn, it didn't go off." Thankful I had waked anyway from my drowsiness, I immediately called in, and was greeted with, "What's the matter with you. You already called me once."
One night toward the end of 1940 my work at ADT prevented me from accompanying friends to Tacoma to witness the antics of "Galloping Gertie," a new six million dollar suspension bridge with a span over the Tacoma Narrows somewhat more than one half mile long.
Professor Farquarson of the Civil Engineering Department had been testing his model of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, from which he forecast serious trouble. On that night a forty-five mile per hour wind proved him correct. The bridge gyrated wildly, tore itself asunder and fell into the water just after Professor Farquarson walked off it still taking pictures. The lessons learned from the model and from the bridge collapse changed the design of all future suspension bridges.
I knew that farm equipment and automobiles broke down from wear and tear and abuse, and maimed and killed people in accidents. This was my first experience of the need for large scale engineering projects to learn from their own fallibility. The insurance agent's faith in the designers of the bridge was so strong that he had pocketed the premiums for the insurance policy.
Many students besides me worked long hours while attending the university. An acquaintance who had a full time job at Boeing as well as a full schedule at the University carried on an active social life and was involved in various University activities. Once at a party, when asked how he did it, he responded, "I've found my head doesn't ache much worse on two hours of sleep than on four, so why bother with four." He was killed in an automobile accident while he was driving from the University to work.
THE TRANSMISSION
In fulfillment of a required senior project, I designed and built in the university
shops, a hydraulic transmission, intended by me to revolutionize the auto industry.
I assembled it into an old Studebaker which we had bought for $25.00. The transmission
didn't work, for reasons which I understood later, but didn't then. It was good experience,
requiring me to make molds, cast aluminum, and cut gears. I learned from my mistake,
as did the bridge engineers, that one should mistrust his design creations. Many
engineers never learn that.
The laboratories in which I built the transmission were under the supervision of Professor Schaller, who lectured from a scarred and battered wooden desk on which he kept a thin steel strap, perhaps thirty inches long, and an inch and a half wide. To get the attention of any student who started to look sleepy or absentminded Professor Schaller raised the strap, holding one end, then brought it down on the desk with great force. The sudden noise was like the sharp clap of thunder which accompanies a nearby bolt of lightning. From the person whose mind had wandered it demanded immediate attention.
Professor Schaller remarked that, because there were no steel plants west of Denver, the west coast exported all its trained engineers to the east, then imported junk from the east in the form of automobiles. One day Professor Schaller invited an unsuspecting salesman who had come to the University to sell him an automobile into the class to show his students a picture of the automobile. Professor Schaller asked how much the auto weighed and how much it cost and took out his slide rule to find the cost per pound. He dismissed the salesman with the comment, "That's too high a price for cast iron." He explained to the class that if he had bought the automobile today, tomorrow it would be junk.
WE LEAVE SEATTLE
Despite my original fears, augmented by Dean Loew's talk, I did graduate, in June
1941, a member of the engineering honorary society, Tau Beta Pi. Because there were
still essentially no jobs available on the west coast, in spite of our love of Seattle,
I accepted a job with Westinghouse, in Pittsburgh.
An impecunious graduate student couple had a celebrative party for us, with a delicious roast. One of the other guests was a visiting professor from Germany. On his third helping of roast, the German visitor congratulated our hosts on the quality of their roast, commenting, "In Germany, a roast like this would last us a week." Our host, looking somewhat sorrowful, said, "Well, ordinarily that roast would have lasted us a week."
We started across the country to the new job in August of 1941. Because we couldn't bear the thought of giving up our possessions, our old Studebaker was loaded almost to the roof. After all my work on it, Barbara couldn't stand to have me leave the transmission behind. At the top of the possessions in the rear of the car was just room for our new treasure, six-week old Bruce, in a clothes basket.
THE STUDEBAKER MADE IT, JUST BARELY
When we bought the Studebaker it worked well except that the clutch required a large
amount of force to disengage, and the gears shifted into low with difficulty. When
we had the car loaded and were ready to depart for Pittsburgh, the gear shift lever
broke, requiring a delay while a replacement lever was found in a junkyard, and installed.
As we started out on our journey, the car ran fine. Then, every so often as we crossed the State of Washington, it stopped running, as if it were out of gas. I suspected the fuel pump, which I then rebuilt with a new diaphragm and gaskets, thanks to transportation back and forth to a supply store provided by a kind passerby. The intermittent trouble continued. At one of our forced stops I noticed that the cam follower which worked the fuel pump lay to the side of the cam, rather than on top of it. When the follower was straightened the pump trouble stopped.
After crossing the states of Washington and Idaho, about eighty miles east of Billings, Montana, much in need of various services, we pulled into a motel for the night, ate, did our laundry, and had a good night's sleep. In the morning, refreshed and anxious for an early start, we drove up onto the slight hill leading away from the motel. Suddenly our protesting overloaded car halted, with an impressive clunk, followed by some grinding noises. We had broken a rear axle. After some arrangements made by telephone, we moved back into the motel, and waited for the delivery of a new axle on the next Greyhound bus from Billings.
I don't remember just when in the next few days it started to rain, but it rained and rained. Then we had tire trouble, lots of it. We weren't able to find new tires to buy. One second hand tire which we bought lasted about twenty five miles. At a point when frustration had completely wiped out whatever capacity I had to think rationally, I slammed the door on the passenger side, and the window shattered and fell out. It continued to rain, so that Barbara had to stuff pieces of cardboard boxes in the door to keep Bruce from becoming soaked.
Finally we reached Pittsburgh, where we parked in the street, still in the rain, while I went into the Westinghouse plant to make arrangements to be on their payroll. While I was away, a wonderful Russian Orthodox priest and his wife invited Barbara and Bruce into the comfort of their house. When I returned to them it was with the news from Westinghouse that we were to continue across the Country to the South Philadelphia plant of Westinghouse in Essington, Pennsylvania, and wonder of wonders, that my pay had been increased from $28.00 to $32.00 per week. It seemed we would live higher than we had anticipated.
Soon after we entered the Pennsylvania Turnpike, as suddenly as the other car happenings, the Studebaker lost power and started putting out tremendous billows of smoke. This time a valve stem had broken, and the loose valve had broken out the top of a piston, so that we were blowing oil from the crankcase directly into the exhaust pipe. What to do? We decided to continue driving, at not more than twenty miles an hour, until we arrived in Essington or until the car quit altogether, if that should happen first. With the consumption of gallons of oil we made it to Essington, shut off the engine, and I signed in at the Westinghouse plant. We found an apartment to rent near by. At that point the car, self-satisfied with its performance, and resting on its laurels, refused to start. It sat there until I was able to install a new valve and piston, as well as a new window, which restored it to running condition again, almost as good as new. Later we sold it after we bought a new Nash, with money loaned to us by Barbara's parents.
For a few years after our trip across the country I had occasions to remember our old Studebaker. Because the clutch was so hard to depress I started during the trip to have trouble with my left knee, which bothered me periodically for several years. Because it's now other joints which bother me, I must blame age rather than the Studebaker for my present troubles.
WESTINGHOUSE
The first week at Westinghouse we received two paychecks, one from Pittsburgh, the
other from Philadelphia, a grand total of $64.00. I reported the duplication to the
accounting office. Eventually the word came back that it would cost Westinghouse
more to correct the error than for us to cash both checks. Life hadn't seemed better
for a long time.
A HOME OF OUR VERY OWN
Soon after I started at Westinghouse, Barbara and I found that we didn't like the
apartment we were living in, and thought besides that we'd like to have our rent
money going toward paying for our own house. We borrowed money for a down payment
from Barbara's father to buy, for $2500.00, a run down house in a very run down neighborhood
in Primos, a few miles from the Westinghouse plant. We soon started having problems
we hadn't anticipated. First, we were all being bitten at night, by bed bugs as we
discovered. We moved out of the house so that it could be fumigated. Then we moved
back in and the bites continued. The second fumigation worked, and there were no
more bites. Then whenever wet weather came we discovered that we had a septic tank
in the back yard, and that it overflowed. The house had a basement, which of course
flooded in wet weather.
While we lived in Primos, Westinghouse sent me for six weeks to the Westinghouse Research Laboratories in Pittsburgh, where I took courses, for which I received graduate credit from the University of Pittsburgh. The courses were taught by personnel from the Research Laboratories who were also connected with the University. I felt I was learning about engineering subjects I really cared about. I decided I wanted to know more.
When I returned to Primos from Pittsburgh, I found Barbara with one hundred tomato plants which had just arrived in response to her order. We planted them, and they all grew, including about twenty five that we hoed into a ditch because we didn't have space to spread them out. We canned more tomatoes than we've ever seen since.
We started finding friends, many of them in Swarthmore, and Barbara particularly decided she wanted to live in Swarthmore. She found a house on Cornell Avenue which we could buy for $8,000.00 (How would we ever pay for it?) with a down payment of $1600.00. I remember the interest as being three percent. We sold the Primos house for $2550.00. We sold our car to get more money for the down payment. Gasoline was by then rationed, and scarce, and we could use public transportation and riding pools. The house had three stories, a fireplace, and was surrounded by large oak trees, and no bedbugs. What luxury!
This turned out to be a very good move for us. Many of our lasting friendships, starting at Westinghouse were formed with engineers with whom I was associated and their families. Many of our Westinghouse friends lived in Swarthmore. Other friends were neighbors in Swarthmore, a Quaker oriented town. We could shop at the Swarthmore Co-op. We still feel very much at home whenever we are in Swarthmore.
FRIENDS
The McCorkels
The McCorkels, Roy and Betty and their children, Jim, Betty Ann, and Mary Lou, lived next door to us in Swarthmore. They were the first friends to introduce us to Quaker Meeting. They became enduring family friends. While we were in Turkey, Roy died from a brain tumor. We still visit Betty when we are in her vicinity.
Jim and Ruth Malone
The attitude of Westinghouse toward questions about pay for its engineers was stated by members of management, "Don't worry about pay. It's not important compared with the excellent professional training you are receiving as part of the Westinghouse team." This philosophy, carried through the Depression had the interesting result that engineers who had been with the company for ten years, and who had responsible positions, were getting very little more pay than newly hired people, and we thought our pay was low. Because machinists were protected by the bargaining power of a CIO union, the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UER&MWA), they were much better off financially than the engineers, who had only a company sponsored union to represent them. In addition, Westinghouse, General Electric, and Allis Chalmers maintained a "gentlemen's agreement" which greatly restricted the movement of engineers among them. Some one whose whole experience had been with steam central station power plants had very little chance of useful employment outside these three companies.
One of the engineers with whom I worked at Westinghouse was Jim Malone, who, along with his family, has become a lifetime friend. Jim and his wife, Ruth, were warm and friendly to our children. Ruth was a writer for news journals whose work included a book for girls, Here No Evil.
Jim had been successful in persuading the UER&MWA to accept a representative of the engineers on their bargaining committee. Through Jim's persuasion I became the engineering representative, succeeding him. In that capacity I sent to the Industrial Relations Manager, J. George H. Morgan, a request for a meeting with the engineers to discuss pay increases. The request was turned down. At the next meeting of the bargaining committee, not realizing, I suspect, who I was, Mr. Morgan told the committee members that he had protected their interests by refusing to deal with the engineers because they were not members of the union. The engineers, I think, generally considered membership in the union beneath their dignity, but, when I reported to them in a memo what Mr. Morgan had said, their response was to join the union in a block. In succeeding bargaining sessions all the engineers received raises, some for the older engineers approaching fifty percent.
Charles and Christine Davenport
When I went to work at Westinghouse in 1941 as a beginning engineer, Charles Davenport was the experienced engineer to whom I was assigned. He was wonderfully patient, good-humored, and helpful. He was my teacher and a source of inspiration to become a good engineer and a good human being.
Because of Charles Davenport, I received an assignment to correct excessive vibration of a big old Westinghouse turbine in the central generating station in Reading, Pennsylvania. This particular turbine had a large hollow drum into which steam entered at the middle and was exhausted at the two ends. Ordinarily my new friend, Charles Davenport, would have had the assignment, but he was going off to balance a new high-pressure turbine more important to Westinghouse. I received the Reading assignment by default because there was no one more experienced to take it. I had studied the theory of balancing equipment, but I protested to Charlie that I had never actually balanced anything. He assured me that if I followed the theory I'd come out all right. Off to Reading I went.
When I arrived at the office of the operator of the power plant, the offending turbine was shut down. Ordinarily ,to prevent excessive vibration a large steam turbine is started turning gradually, to straighten out bending of the shaft caused by temperature maldistributions around its circumference. The normal starting process with so large a turbine takes about an hour. From the operator's office, in much less than an hour, I became aware of considerable vibration. In answer to my question, his response was, "I hope the damned thing blows up."
I made my measurements, requested a shut down, had a trial balance weight installed, and had the turbine brought back up to speed. Then I made calculations to determine where to put in the next balance weights. Installing the balance weights required a mechanic to climb in through an opened access port and to stand over the space above the roaring condenser, not a comfortable or reassuring position. The process of applying my newly learned theory to the positioning of balance weights was repeated several times, sometimes resulting in improvement, sometimes the opposite, making complete hash of my theory. Because I didn't know what else to do, I requested that the turbine be shut down and disassembled for inspection. Then, feeling quite insecure in contemplating my performance, I returned to Philadelphia.
In a few days I received a call from Reading saying that on disassembly several broken bolts had been discovered lying at the bottom of the hollow drum. These broken bolts would have come to a different resting place inside the drum each time it stopped rotating, complety negating any attempt to balance the assembly. The validity of my shaky decision had been supported by the evidence. When the broken bolts were removed, the damage repaired, and the turbine reassembled, the balance theory, to my immense relief, worked.
Charles had an important effect on my whole family. He was Uncle Charles to each of Bruce, Michael and Steven, all of whom adored him and his wife, "Aunt" Christine. Our relationship carried over to California when Charles came, with Christine, to work at North American while I was there. Their new house on Malibu Lake was like a second home for our sons. After Christine died Barbara and I visited Charles and his new wife, Marion, in California in 1987. Charles was a special friend until he died in 1990.
Rein and Dory Kroon
Rein Kroon, a slim, six-feet-seven-inch, red-haired immigrant from Switzerland, was from 1941 to 1946 my first engineering boss as Manager of Research and Development at Westinghouse. As my boss Rein represented authority, which I found threatening.
On one of my first tasks as a novice engineer, a skilled draftsman named Charlie Taylor was assigned to lay out my design. One evening when I had left the plant to go to one of my classes, Rein reviewed what Charlie had done, and suggested changes in part of the design. I think my ego was deflated by Rein's action, and I objected more strenuously than I should have. Rein, if he had been an insecure person could have taken offense, but he didn't. He said it was thoughtless of him and he wouldn't repeat his offense.
When I left Westinghouse in 1946 during their long strike, I wrote Rein a letter stating that I could not work as a strikebreaker and therefore was quitting Westinghouse.
Rein Kroon became my prized friend. For some time I had continuing correspondence with him about mind and matter and other subjects of mutual interest. In a letter in 1990, Rein Kroon said to me in a letter, "I have probably never told you but you have been to me an example of a person who lives according to his convictions and this I have admired very much. I am glad to say it now, because I have arrived at the point where love between people is more important to me than anything else. And often one is too reticent to bring it out. It has taken me all those years to become less shy."
When Bruce was working toward his doctorate degree at the University of Pennsylvania, Rein was for a time his teacher. Rein told me more than once how much he appreciated having the contact with Bruce.
Rein's wife, Dory, was stricken with multiple sclerosis, and for years was confined to the wheel chair in which we saw her when we visited them at their Quaker retirement home, Kendal, at Kennett Square outside Philadelphia. After Dory died, Rein married Barbara, also a resident at Kendal. Rein was driving home from a party to celebrate his eighty-fifth birthday when he carelessly pulled in front of a speeding car and was killed immediately. Millie and I have visited Barbara Kroon at Kendal.
Ole and Dorothy Rodgers
Ole and Dorothy Rodgers and Barbara and I have had many joint times in our lives. When Barbara was busy having Michael, Bruce lived with the Rodgers for a few days. Ole told of Bruce's request for help with his unhappiness at the temporary loss of his family, "Tear, Ole."
Ole was my advisor for my doctorate thesis, "The Dyadic Function in the Solution of Integral Equations." Ole and his whole family pitched in to help me finish my book, Thermal Power from Nuclear Reactors, when I was feeling overwhelmed by the task.
Ole has developed a whole second career for himself at the University of Delaware in the theory and practice of violin making.
Luke and Molly Stein
A couple we knew in Swarthmore passed on to us an invitation to attend a discussion group for couples led by Molly Stein, often attended by her husband, Luke, a Presbyterian minister. Mollie was a psychotherapist who had studied with Fritz Kunkel. Mollie cheerfully took on for mitigation all the "couple" problems generated by the members of our group. I remember a serious discussion of the unreconciled differences between men and women which seemed to cause trouble for many of us. At one point when the controversy had become quite intense, Luke relieved the tension, stating in his deep voice, "Mrs. Stein, you come with me behind the kitchen door, and I'll show you the difference between men and women."
For as long as the Steins lived, they were our friends who helped Barbara and me reconcile the difference in our lives.
THE JOB
Aside from the low pay, the Westinghouse job turned out to be, in many ways, my most
satisfying professional job, and a great learning experience. Several engineers in
the Research and Development Section were effective and willing teachers of mechanics,
design, thermodynamics, aerodynamics, heat transfer. Because of unsettled conditions
in Europe and the depression in the United States, some outstanding engineers who
were refugees from their own countries had been willing, at least temporarily, to
work at Westinghouse. These included Arpad Nadai, from Hungary, from whom I took
a course in plasticity at the Westinghouse plant in Pittsburgh, and Steven Timoshenko,
from Russia. Both had written books which defined mechanical design problems of engineering,
and had helped to establish many of the design methods used in the steam division.
During all the time at Westinghouse, after my return from the six-week period in Pittsburgh, I took graduate courses at the University of Pennsylvania. At the time I was often working as much as 72 hours a week at the plant. Typically, I'd leave the plant with my briefcase at quitting time, take the #37 street car across the South Philadelphia swamps to the University for evening classes, then take the train back to Swarthmore, arriving too tired to do any study. In 1949, three years after I left Westinghouse, and at completion of a thesis, I received a Ph D degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
The Research and Development Section at Westinghouse devised new equipment and new methods of design, and solved problems of malfunctions of existing steam power equipment. There was a basic honesty in the engineering members of the section, a willingness to consider seriously the difficulties which had developed or might develop in a project on which the group was working. From this experience I gained new respect for the inevitability of accidents and the necessity to learn from them. Continual vigilance was required to limit the number of failures from causes within past experience and a willingness to recognize and accommodate dangerous new phenomena when they appeared.
For a few months I worked in the department's research laboratory, which was run by Boris Anoshenko, a refugee from Russia. Once during that time Mr. Anoschenko came to his office with all the fingers on his left hand in bandages. He had dropped his straight razor while shaving, and had caught it in midair thus preventing damage to the razor, an extreme example of dedication to the preservation of mechanical equipment. In at least one situation I found myself overly dedicated to a cause.
Some trouble had been experienced in Victory Ships. Rolling of the ship in rough seas dumped dangerously large slugs of boiler water into the propulsion turbines, threatening turbine failure. Mr. Anoshenko had set up an experimental rig on the test floor to duplicate this effect. Measured quantities of water were dumped into the steam supply entering a 5000 horsepower test turbine operating at full power. I was assigned the job of operating the dumping mechanism, standing for that purpose on a steel platform next to the turbine. I was too innocent at the time, and too impressed with the importance of what I was doing, to know that I should have turned down the assignment for reasons having to do with my own safety. I can still feel in my imagination the way the platform and everything around me screamed, shuddered, and shook when the water hit the protesting turbine. The worst that happened to me was that I backed against a 600 degree Fahrenheit steam pipe, which burned through several layers of my clothing.
I remember spending a twenty four hour period aboard a victory ship in a test cruise around Chesapeake Bay. Performance of the turbines was routine so that there was little for me to do. Finally, in extreme weariness I lay down in a bunk but could not sleep. Oscillations of the hull rebounded off the shallow bottom of the bay so violently that my head hammered on the bunk.
TURBOJET ENGINES
After I had been at Westinghouse a short time, the Company received a contract to
develop an aircraft turbojet propulsion engine. The Research and Development Section,
of which I was a part, received the leading role in this new and, to me, exciting
development. I knew nothing about turbojet engines except that I had read in one
of my engineering books that they probably couldn't be made to work because of inherent
aerodynamic losses of efficiency, primarily in the compressor. I didn't know then
that the British and the Germans already had jet engines in operation. There was
fear at the time on the part of the people who did know the situation that the Germans
might win the war based on their possession of operating jet engines.
After a time I was made responsible for the mechanical design of the engines.
After I came so fortuitously into the jet propulsion business, I felt very much part of the war effort, and very much committed to carrying out my part of it. One important but tedious part of designing either a steam or gas turbine is to assure that the turbine or compressor blades are adequate for both the steady and vibrational forces to which they are subjected. I developed analytical methods, based on data from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which reduced the time required for the calculations, which in those days were done by cumbersome, error prone, trial and error procedures on electric calculators .
Soon afterward, anticipating the end of the war, the Engineering Section of the Steam Division decided to develop a commercial gas turbine. I was drafted to do the blade section calculations, an assignment which I resented because it took me away from what I considered my important war work. But I started to carry out the necessary calculations, doing the work according to the methods I had developed. One day, Joe Conrad, the head of the calculation group, came to see what I was doing, and ordered me to change back to the even more time consuming Westinghouse method. He reminded me that he was higher in the organization than I was, and therefore entitled to make such decisions whether I liked them or no. I reminded him that there was a war going on, and that I had been taken off work which I considered important, and refused to make the change. I expected to be fired. From where I sat I could see Conrad go into the office of Frank Hague, the Manager of Engineering. Then my boss from Research and Development, Rein Kroon, went in to join them. Finally the meeting broke up, and Mr. Hague called me into his office and asked me to explain to him the method I was using. He asked questions, then told me he liked what I was doing. I was transferred back to the Research and Development Section, where I wanted to be, and Mr. Hague ordered the Steam Division to develop methods for their blades similar to mine. Whether they did or not I don't know. At least they never talked with me about it.
By 1946, when the war ended, Westinghouse had developed a successful line of turbojet engines, but the company was in the process of abandoning the effort. I understood that the Navy had offered Westinghouse facilities for the production of engines if Westinghouse would furnish the equipment. Management had turned down the offer on the basis that this was not a line of business the company wanted. Then the union went on strike, shutting down the whole plant. The company offered several of us engineers promotions to the lowest category of management. I accepted the promotion. Jim Malone turned down his offer, anticipating correctly that this was the first move in a strike breaking campaign. Those of us who were now part of management received instructions to start meeting off company property to carry out company work. Then I wrote a letter of resignation to my boss, Rein Kroon, explaining that, as a former member of the union, I could not be part of a strike breaking effort on the part of the company as a substitute for efforts to settle the strike by negotiation. I remember that the strike continued for a long time.
It is interesting perhaps to conjecture what might have happened to me had I not left Westinghouse in 1946. Soon after we left, Westinghouse reversed its previous decision not to compete in the jet engine business. The Company then acquired a plant in St. Louis, Missouri, in which to manufacture jet engines, and moved all the employees there from Philadelphia. A new jet engine which the Company designed and built was overweight and therefore not competitive. Westinghouse then went out of the jet engine business, and the employees either found new jobs or were moved to other Westinghouse facilities, including return to the Philadelphia plant.
After I left Westinghouse, I worked for a time for the Research Laboratory at Franklin Institute, in Philadelphia, but the job was dull, mostly reviewing reports on army equipment. This was a period of stress for us. Job offers came from other parts of the Country, but we liked living in Swarthmore. Bruce had lived there for a good part of his life, Michael for all of his, and Steven had been born in Swarthmore. Barbara and I, and our children, had many friends there. An invitation came for me to work on the development of nuclear energy, in California, and we decided to take it. I think the children may not have been aware of what they would miss in the move, and we were all excited about the idea of living in California.
CALIFORNIA
On New Years Day in 1947, after a trip across the frozen Country, we took up life
in our tract house built in a former bean field in West Los Angeles around which
we planted orange and lemon trees and other subtropical plants not previously possible
for us.
While working at Westinghouse I had applied for patents on several devices for use on jet engines, and on equipment for jet engine test cells. The company had a policy by which they paid $25 for patentable ideas, and then $50 at the time they applied for a patent. After we moved to California, I received papers from Westinghouse to be signed in connection with applications for patents, but no $50 payments. I wrote protesting the situation, to which I received the reply that I could not be paid because I was no longer an employee. To me my course was obvious. Being no longer an employee, I didn't need to sign the papers. When Westinghouse demanded the signatures, I wrote explaining my position. Sometime later I received in the mail a check for $200.00. I heard that in order to pay me they had changed the company policy, so that from then on everyone in a similar situation would be paid. Barbara and I were pleased to receive the money.
NUCLEAR REACTORS
While I worked at Westinghouse, Bill Bollay had been the representative of the Bureau
of Aeronautics of the US Navy on the jet engine project on which I was employed.
At the end of 1946, Bill became head of a new Laboratory at North American Aviation,
in Los Angeles, to develop engines for space propulsion. Bill invited me to join
his laboratory to study "peacetime" uses of nuclear energy, including space
propulsion.
As I grew up on a dairy farm in northern New Jersey among honest, hard-working country people who helped one another survive during the Depression, I wanted to be an engineer because then I could use technology to help people improve their living conditions. Nuclear reactors seemed to promise the ultimate technology.
The potential of nuclear energy for destruction had been demonstrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now it was claimed by almost everyone in a position to know that nuclear energy would provide limitless energy for peacetime purposes, including the generation of electricity and propulsion into outer space. A non-military government agency, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), would cooperate with American companies in the development. I was pleased to accept the opportunity to be in at the beginning of so promising a new development.
I hadn't the information to know that much of what was claimed for the potential of nuclear energy was nonsense. The judgments came from scientists, winners of the Nobel Prize, university heads. David Lilienthal, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, spoke of "---- almost limitless beneficial applications of atomic energy." Robert Hutchins, Chancellor of the University of Chicago, said "----utilities will be so cheap that their costs can hardly be reckoned." No one talked in public about the long-lasting dangers of radiation from nuclear reactors. Instead medical clinics were invited to hear about the beneficial uses of radioactive waste materials for medical analysis and therapy. Except for a very few dissidents, the desirability of nuclear reactors was never in question. One exception, James Bryant Conant, the President of Harvard University and science adviser to President Eisenhower, commented that peacetime nuclear power "is not worth a candle."
The people to whom I talked foresaw a bright future and said they wanted my engineering help to reach the goal. My experience with steam and gas power plants would help in this new field.
OUR NEW HOME
I went to California ahead of the family and bought a house in a new development,
called Loyola Village, in the bean fields of West Los Angeles under the flyway a
short distance from the Los Angeles airport. While I was in California, Barbara sold
our Swarthmore house. We had not had a car during the war, but decided we needed
one in Los Angeles. New cars were not yet available after the war. Barbara bought
a second-hand, 1941 Packard. I returned to Swarthmore to rejoin my family.
We drove across a frozen country, with snow threatening and a temperature of 17 degrees in the Texas Panhandle. All the boys, particularly Steve, were suffering from colds. Leaving New Mexico we drove up the icy slope of the Peloncillo Mountains, dreading the descent on the other side. But the sun was out in Arizona, and we approached Tucson surrounded by warmth amid palm trees.
We arrived in sunny Los Angeles on the last day of 1946. The whole family was warm and in good health. An invitation awaited us to a New Year party at the home of Bill Bollay and his wife Jeanne. The party turned out to be a trick perpetrated by some of Bill's employees, who had sent the invitations, but had not told the Bollays. The surprised Bollays carried off the party with aplomb, serving drinks in a house full of their new employees.
Soon after we moved into our new house we were visited by Reverend Swanson, a pleasant former-advertising-executive-turned-minister of a small new Lutheran church in Loyola Village. We were pleased that he invited our children to come to his Sunday School classes. I went with them and decided I didn't want my sons exposed to the indoctrination I heard.
Soon after our arrival we received an invitation to attend a meeting of the "Loyola Village Homeowners Association." Reverend Swanson, President of the Association, conducted the meeting, at which brochures were distributed describing a two tiered structure of membership in which a few higher paying members could vote their way against the lower paying general membership. I made a brief argument against oligarchies. My proposal for a more democratic organizational structure was supported by the meeting.
I invited a new friend, Fred Brown, a respected solid-state physicist, to the next meeting of the Loyola Village Homeowners Association. Reverend Swanson announced to the assembly of members that he found himself wearing two hats, one as President of the Association with a duty to keep a Mexican family from moving into the area, the other hat as a minister of the gospel committed to tolerance. I arose, stating that I could not accept his wearing two such hats. Again there was community support, and intolerance of Mexicans in Loyola Village was denied. Later I met Fred Brown's Mexican wife, named Jovita, who, with her children, became family friends.
Barbara and I visited Reverend Swanson at his home to protest his stand on Mexicans. He argued that people should stay where they belonged, the Mexicans in Mexico and the Negroes in Africa where God had seen fit to put them. I was pleased that Barbara responded, "And where did God put your ancestors down? And where did He put the Indians?"
We heard later that Reverend Swanson had given up the ministry, and returned to his advertising career.
Fred Brown
When I think of Fred Brown, the terms "solid," "dependable," and "authoritive," come to mind. When I think of Fred's Mexican wife, Jovita, the words become "fiery," "fun-loving," "determined." I shared driving to work with Fred. One day Fred explained why he said occasionally, "God damn trousers." For the several years in which they had been married, Jovita had been burdened with buying Fred's clothing, and had tired of the job. So she bought a pair of trousers several sizes too large. When Fred complained, she took them in with a tuck in the middle of the back. Not only was the tuck uncomfortable, but access to the side pockets, moved so far to the rear, was difficult. In a mixture of annoyance and admiration for his wife's determination, Fred decided that he would, in the future, buy his own trousers. Economic considerations, however, countered the desire to discard the current trousers.
My friendship with Fred Brown lasted many years. In 1975 we were both in Washington, DC, I at Howard University and Fred looking for a job after the scientific company he had formed went bankrupt. Jovita had died from cancer, and Fred was then married to Betty. Fred called me on a Friday asking for a Monday meeting to discuss his job prospects. On Saturday Betty called to say that Fred had died of a heart attack. Later as I sat in a room at the mortuary waiting to perform my duty as one of his pallbearers I had the distinct impression of Fred's authoritative voice saying in wry amusement, "Stan Thompson, what the hell are you doing here?"
NORTH AMERICAN AVIATION
North American Aviation, located at the edge of the Los Angeles airport, built military
aircraft, orders for which were about to disappear with the end of World War II..
To supplant its lost military business, the Company designed and built a private
plane, but sold it to Ryan Aircraft to avoid anticipated losses on its continued
manufacture and sale. A study to determine other products the company could make
and sell to replace military airplanes concluded that aluminum pots and pans, and
any other consumer goods, could ber bought cheaper at Sears than the Company could
make them. Fortunately for them, the bleak prospects for all suppliers of military
products were leavened by United States adventures in Korea and Vietnam. In addition,
North American now had a government contract to copy a captured German rocket with
help from captured German engineers, and a promising new nuclear reactor business
to be developed by atomic bomb physicists.
Chauncey Starr, a former bomb physicist, was made head of the nuclear energy project at North American. I was put in charge of engineering development in his project. There were also physics and chemistry groups, and a laboratory. The first task assigned us was an investigation of the possibilities for nuclear propulsion in space. Graphite, the moderator and structural material used in the plutonium-production reactors at Hanford, would be impregnated with enriched uranium to form a reactor to heat a propulsion gas. In laboratory experiments at North American electrically heated hollow graphite rods raised the temperature of circulated helium gas as high as 3000 C. At that high temperature the graphite disappeared rather fast from the rods by sublimation, being then deposited on any cooler surface available, including the walls of the laboratory. At the lower temperature of 2600 C graphite was found to be twice as strong, and twice as rigid, as at room temperature. As contrasted to its brittleness at room temperature, graphite showed at high temperature considerable ductility - a promising high temperature material. Theoretical studies were made of the rocket thrust which might be expected from gases heated to the high temperatures which seemed possible.
The report concluded that there were possibilities for high temperature graphite reactors, but that a realistic nuclear propulsion system, even for near space, was of far in the future. More experiments were recommended. I thought the report was fair and informative.
This report and almost everything written passed into or out of the group with a secret stamp. In a meeting at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica a puzzled visitor without secret clearance questioned his right to see the "secret" papers being circulated among us. He was told, "These aren't really secret; our paper comes stamped that way." I do not know whether the security system inhibited foreign agents in their search for our secrets, but I was convinced that secrecy had deleterious effects on our own work. The limitations of access made it cumbersome to obtain, or even to know about, needed information within the Atomic Energy Commission, and completely shut out any injection of creativity from outside the AEC. It also protected from outside scrutiny incompetent work on atomic energy.
North American Security
The security system at North American was enforced by armed guards who protected
company property and policed the company's caste system, as well as protecting government
secrets. On my first day, I walked out of the plant with Bollay. I didn't have the
proper identification to pass the guard. Bollay politely asked what was needed and
returned to his office to get it. The next day I walked out with Bill's boss, Larry
Waite, Vice-President for Engineering. This time I had the proper identification,
but Larry had forgotten his badge. When the guard challenged him, Larry refused to
go back for his badge, saying, "You son-of-a-bitch! If you want to keep your
job, get out of my way, or I'll break your ass." We walked on out.
The guards, in their turn, freely abused lower echelon employees. Men's toilets in the shop had no doors, enabling the guards to check on and report malingering employees. New laboratory personnel complained, and doors were placed on their toilets. My secretary told me that the doors on the women's toilets had no locks. A female guard, referred to as "Dickless Tracy," opened toilet doors to check the women.
Bollay, at my suggestion, hired an engineer, Lee Woodward, paying his moving expenses from the east coast. Woodward, on his first day at North American, went to the parking lot to get his car for an emergency dentist appointment. He was challenged by a guard because he had no pass to leave. The argument which ensued ended with Woodward's "Take your foot off my running board, or I'll run over it." The Company had a long list, posted on bulletin boards, of "demerits" assigned for various acts ranging from slandering the Company or its products to destruction of property. More than one hundred demerits required firing the employee. Woodward was assigned one hundred and ten demerits. Through a long series of meetings, Bollay succeeded in persuading the security department to reduce the penalty to ninety demerits. When Bollay came to announce the good news to Woodward that he wasn't fired, and could work off the rest of the demerits by good behavior, Woodward informed him with a smile that he had just taken another job with the Rand Corporation, in Santa Monica.
I was given a badge, denoting my status as a specialist and a supervisor, with which I could move freely inside or outside the plant. Because I was in the favored class I was expected to like the system. Many of the employees in my group, not so favored, had badges which restricted them to the office during working hours. Passes were required to take personal poperty out of the plant. Use of the front door of the office building was assigned as a mark of privilege to the holders of special badges. One new employee, who had been crippled by polio and walked with difficulty, was challenged by the guard as he left the plant through the forbidden front entrance and without a pass for his slide rule. He asked the guard, "What will you do if I go on out. Will you shoot me?" He was told, "No, but I'll report you to your boss." "All right, then, report me to my boss." Out he went. I sympathized when he told me about it.
I wrote a letter to President Lee Atwood reminding him that I had heard his talk asking us to report conditions which interfered with the company's ability to carry out its business. I explained that the North American caste system aroused resentment among lower-caste employees, and interfered with my ability to function as a supervisor. I received no answer.
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By A. Stanley Thompson
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