The Two Towers: Main

and microwaves, even in the high frequency sounds made by queen bees; Mechanical Engineering in materials, stress, and grinding; Civil Engineering in civil defense, properties of construction materials, concrete mixes, and urban planning. There was also the activation analysis available from the nuclear reactor facility, which periodically had been extended since its installation in 1959. This analysis was further extended by the Van de Graaff accelerator, which directed, with impressive results, much fundamental research in nuclear structure.

Boynton Hall was not exempt from research activity. Joseph F. Zimmerman, professor of Economics, had conducted surveys for the government in research facilities, public administration, housing, and atomic energy. He was also active in local government, the Citizens for Neighborhood Improvement, and the Citizens Plan E Association. Edwin Higginbottom, head of the English Department, had served on Worcester's School Board.

The Institute's one facility which outclassed all others in research experience, of course, was the Alden Laboratory, which had become as well known internationally as nationally. Within a ten-year period its productivity had doubled under the supervision of Leslie Hooper and Lawrence Neale. Its experimentation had turned from empirical hydraulics to fluid mechanics when aeronautics had first emphasized the similarities rather than the differences between air flow and water flow. At Tech the merger of practical and theoretical fluid dynamics had been effected neatly when the research on air flow formerly done by the Aeronautical division was transferred to the Alden Lab, which had always before concerned itself only with water. This merger had been innovated by Gleason MacCullough's early teaching in Theoretical Aerodynamics and the aerodynamic tests of the old Aero lab. The files of the Aero division also showed that long before automobiles were streamlined in their design, Professor Merriam had one day mailed his theories about flow patterns to a Detroit manufacturer. "It would look too bizarre; no one would buy it," replied the consulting engineer. "You'd better stick to airplanes." Years later the first car of "bathtub" design appeared on the market. "And sure enough," reported Professor Merriam, "no one would buy it."

The interrelation of engineering knowledge became nowhere more apparent than at the Alden Hydraulic Laboratory when the various departments of the school began making overtures toward the sprawling facility seven miles away from campus. The first to venture out to Chaffinsville was Electrical Engineering in instrumentation. When someone now called for "Prof," it was not for Charlie Allen as he had been familiarly known for so many years, but likely for Professor Newell from the E. E. Department. Cavitation, a problem common to Materials Engineering and hydraulics, was now overlapping. Civil Engineering projects, such as water seepage, constituted another area of dual research.