The heavy rains of the evening before cleared just in time for members of WPI's Class of 2000 to receive their degrees outdoors on the Quadrangle on May 19, as had members of the past 15 graduating classes. C. Michael Armstrong, chairman and CEO of AT&T, addressed the 871 graduates and an estimated 5,000 friends and family members. A flight of four Air Force A-10 aircraft introduced Armstrong's talk in dramatic fashion.

The degrees included 598 bachelors of science, 198 masters of science, 29 masters of engineering, one master of mathematics for educators, 28 M.B.A.s, and 17 Ph.D.s. Honorary doctor of engineering degrees were awarded to Armstrong and to William N. Giudice '76, vice president and general manager of broadband internetworking systems for Conexant Systems Inc. and Michael C. Ruettgers, CEO of EMC Corp.

Leading the Commencement procession was Pamela J. Weathers, professor of biology and biotechnology, the recipient of the 2000 Trustees' Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Scholarship. The senior class speaker was Simon P. Nance.

Earlier in the day, Rear Admiral Peter A.C. Long, provost of the Naval War College, presided over an ROTC ceremony during which 19 WPI graduates were commissioned in the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines.

The day before Commencement, 406 members of the Class of 2000 who had completed project work at 19 off-campus sites were recognized for their accomplishments and presented with medallions at the annual Global Perspective Program awards ceremony. Later that day, an overflow crowd attended the baccalaureate ceremony in Alden Memorial. The event, an inspirational program of music and student reflections, included a talk by George R. Oliver '82, vice president and general manager of General Electric Aircraft Engines Supply Chain.

Who was Harold Black?

A brainstorm by a WPI graduate 73 years ago has been getting a lot of attention lately. The graduate was Harold Black '21, who was a young engineer at Bell Laboratories in New York City when he invented the negative-feedback amplifier in 1927. Black's invention was mentioned in the Commencement address that C. Michael Armstrong gave to the members of the Class of 2000.

Armstrong called the amplifier Black invented "a device that played a vital role in 20th-century electronics. It eliminated distortion from telephone calls, it was used in gun-control systems during the Second World War, and it was key to a range of postwar electronics, from computers to pacemakers to high-fidelity recordings."

In a recent issue of Spectrum, the magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Black's achievement receives prominent mention in an article covering the major milestones in electrical engineering during the 20th century. The article notes that the invention is still widely used in control and communications systems today. It also noted that in 1957, Mervin Kelly, then president of Bell Labs, called the achievement one of two inventions that had the broadest impact on electronics and communications during the previous half century.

Black's invention solved a problem that had hindered the advance of long-distance telephone service. To get telephone signals to travel over long spans, one had to amplify them several times, with each amplification introducing new distortions. Black's insight was that by feeding part of the signal back into the amplifier, in negative phase, and comparing it to the original signal, the distortion could be greatly reduced.

Black's technical accomplishment was important enough to earn him eternal recognition (as just one example of the honors he received, he was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame, along with Robert Goddard '08). But the story of his discovery is also the stuff of legend. In 1927 he was taking the Hudson River ferry to his office when he suddenly thought of the solution to the distortion problem he'd been absorbed in for some weeks. Having nothing else to write on, he sketched his idea on a page of The New York Times that had been printed quite faintly. He signed and dated his notes and then had a colleague do the same when he got to work.

During his Commencement address, Michael Armstrong held up the actual page of the Times that Black wrote on; it has an honored place in the AT&T archives, he said. The patent Harold Black won for the negative feedback amplifier was one of 63 U.S. and 278 foreign patents he earned in a long and distinguished career at Bell Labs.