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Urbana (University
of Illinois 1964-1965)
Most engineers I worked with at Lockheed had
a master's degree. I just had to know more to get ahead. I took some courses at
Georgia Tech, but that was too slow and not as exciting as my work. I saved
enough to afford a year of graduate school. It took two years, but I came away
with more money than I started with. The University of Illinois was virtually
free for veterans. I had an assistantship in the ILLIAC lab that paid a salary.
I was too busy to spend money.
I was in Aeronautics and Astronautics as
before but did most of my work in the computer lab of the ILLIAC II, which had
no department. Computer Science had not yet become a thing or degree. ILLIAC II
was the first all-transistor super-computer and was a wonder. It took up a
whole building, and each module was two stories tall (what is now a
fingernail-sized chip weighed half a ton). It had just calculated the world's
largest prime number. None of the vacuum tube-based computers of the day could
keep running long enough to compute.
I did all sorts of odd jobs in the lab,
trying to support exploding demand for access. We were putting in a variety of
terminals and time-sharing experiments. This was way before PCs and networks. I
supervised paid undergraduates debugging the Dartmouth BASIC system that GE had
just bought. We used individual telephone lines and acoustic couplers to
connect teletype and other terminals to Hanover, NH. IBM was in the lab in a
big way to try and learn why the students hated their equipment (IBM insisted on
designs that locked up the keyboard if the computer wasn't ready for the next
character). It was a fun time. IBM offered me a job in Detroit, but I wanted no
part of their culture.
I wrote my thesis on the design of a
timeshare system for a small computer without interrupt capability. I took
courses and attended seminars on aero subjects. My advisor was the head of
the Aero Department. His specialty and mine was viscoelasticity, the structural
properties of Jello-like substances such as solid rocket fuel: all math, no lab
work.
U of I has a giant
air program and airport. I rented Cessna 150s there and was a member of the
Glider Club. My interest in airplanes was waning, and my eyesight was becoming
a problem, so I did not do much flying. Computers and computer
languages were my new things.
Glider flying is a hoot. We had a big clunky
2 place training glider with an enormous wing, single tire, rudimentary
instruments, and no radio. We were towed up on a long thin polyethylene rope by
a little Piper Cub with a big engine. It takes a team to launch a glider. A
runner on each wing tip to keep the glider upright (when you land, one tip will
hit the grass and spin you around to a stop). You unhook at about 2,000 ft. and
start hunting for an updraft. Illinois is very flat, so there is no hill soaring.
The only updrafts come from freshly plowed farm fields where the sun heats the
earth. An updraft is detected by a variometer, a simple instrument made from a
Quaker Oats box connected by a tube to a plastic whizz displaying two pith
balls. A green one is for air rushing out of the box (ascending), and a red one
is for air going in (descending). When you see the green pith ball go up, you
rack the plane into a very steep turn to keep in the rising air column. The
artistry is to watch the pith balls as you feel for the column's interior.
Sometimes, you can see the farm field producing the updraft and the cloud that
sometimes forms above you from the moisture in the column. Some pilots can tell
by the feel of the controls or 6th sense when the plane goes up or
down. I could not get the hang of that and was a poor glider pilot. My few flights
were mainly tow up, searching for an updraft for a few minutes, and then
returning to the airport.
U of I is only 150 miles from my folks, and I
visited them and my Chicago area relatives often. I lived in a dorm and
had almost no social life. Most of the graduate students I worked with were
married. Only a few of them became friends.
In retrospect, the University of Illinois was
where I should have been undergraduate. Close to home, co-ed, inexpensive, with
an airport, and much less academic pressure and workload.
Betsy entered graduate school at the
Episcopal Theological Seminary near Harvard Square. Jack and Jill asked us to
attend them at their wedding in Copley Square. We had a frantic time assembling
an English wedding in Boston to the standards of Jill's mom (Jill is
English). Betsy and I spent most of the night before the wedding typing up
individual menus for the reception. It was many years before I got back
together with Betsy in 1971. We stayed connected through Jack and Jill and by
letters.
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