LM Rozema African American History, Faculty, University History

Climbing the Water Tower: How Women Went from Intruders to Leaders at Virginia Tech

In the early 1920s, the first female students at Virginia Tech were not quite welcome. They had special rules to follow, there were no dormitories for women, and male students would throw water on them as they passed by the dorms. But one day, Ruth Terrett, a civil engineering student, decided to show the men she could do just as well as them. She donned a cadet uniform and climbed the university’s water tower, a tradition the male cadets undertook to prove their strength and ability. That day, Ruth proved that women, when given the chance, could do what men could.

Women throughout Virginia Tech’s history have encountered many obstacles, and have consistently overcome them. Sam Winn and I recently searched through Special Collections’ holdings to document these women and their achievements in the university’s history. Our work culminated in an exhibit at the Alumni Associations Women’s Weekend and a slideshow, entitled “Climbing the Water Tower: How Women Went from Intruders to Leaders at Virginia Tech.” Let me share with you a few of those milestones now, or you can view the PDF of our slideshow here.

Women join the student population

Many people know the story of the first female students: twelve women, including five full-time students, enrolled in 1921. Two years later, transfer student Mary Brumfield received a bachelor’s in applied biology, earning her master’s from VPI in 1925, the first woman to achieve either degree. But, did you know women began attending VPI several years earlier? They were allowed to sit in courses during the fall and spring for no credit and were admitted to summer classes, starting in 1916. 1921 was still a milestone year as it was the first all courses were open to women seeking a college degree, because there was “no good reason for not doing so,” as the university bulletin states.

First female graduates: Mary Ella Carr Brumfield (23; 25); Ruth Louise Terrett (25); Lucy Lee Lancaster (25); Lousie Jacobs (25); Carrie Taylor Sibold (25)
First female graduates: Mary Ella Carr Brumfield (’23; ’25); Ruth Louise Terrett (’25); Lucy Lee Lancaster (’25); Lousie Jacobs (’25); Carrie Taylor Sibold (’25)

The first coeds, it must be admitted, were more than likely all white, given that segregation was legal due to Jim Crow laws and the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upholding separate but equal racial segregation in the public sphere. It’s not clear when women of color were first admitted to the university, but international students from Mexico, China, Puerto Rico, and other places were already attending VPI by the 1920s. However, it wasn’t until 1966 that the first six African American women matriculated, thirteen years after the first African American man and 55 years after the first women. In 1968, Linda Adams became the first African American woman to graduate from Virginia Tech. (Read more about her on our previously blog post.)

There wasn’t much for women to do athletically in the early years, so Ruth Terrett, mentioned above, started an informal women’s basketball team before graduating in 1925. Women joined the cheerleading team in 1941, but were not officially recognized as members until the 1955-1956 school year. The first intramural women’s sport was basketball in 1967. Three years later, swimming became the first intercollegiate sport for women, and women were allowed to compete on the gymnastics team.

Because the Corps of Cadets did not admit women, Patricia Ann Miller was denied permission to enroll in Corps classes. Despite this, in 1959, she became the first woman commissioned during graduation when she successfully applied for a commission from the Army Women’s Medical Specialist Corps. Finally, in 1973, the Corps formed the L Squadron, exclusively for female cadets. Deborah J. Noss became the first female squadron commander and Cheryl A. Butler the first Black female cadet (and first Black female squadron leader the next year). In 1975, women were admitted to join the cadet band, and four years later, the L Squadron was disbanded to order to integrate women into the formerly all-male companies. In 1987, Denise Shuster became the first female regimental commander and in 2005, Christina Royal the first African American female regimental commander.

Female students who were not athletes or cadets had other ways of breaking the glass ceiling. In 1953, Betty Delores Stough became the first woman to receive a doctorate, in parasitology. Jean Harshbarger was the first woman elected class president for the Class of 1974. In 1968, Jaqueline D. Dandridge was the first woman of color in the homecoming court, and Marva L. Felder became the first Black homecoming queen in 1983.

Women join the workforce

What about the women working at VPI? Ella Agnew is often remembered as the first female home demonstration agent in the nation in 1910. When VPI became the headquarters for the Virginia Cooperative Extension in 1914, Agnew and the other agents became staff of the university. Agnew was also the first woman to receive VPI’s Certificate of Merit in 1926, and Agnew Hall was the first campus building named after a woman, in 1949. However, few realize she was not the first woman to work at Tech. In 1902, Frances Brockenbrough became Superintendent of the Infirmary, and the next year Mary G. Lacy became the first female Librarian and Margaret Spencer the President’s Secretary.

Other female agents worked for Extension during its early years at the university. In fact, although the African American division was headquartered at Hampton Institute, the agents were considered non-resident staff of VPI, first listed in the 1917 university catalog. One of these women was Lizzie Jenkins, who became the first Black female home demonstration agent in Virginia in 1913.

Women faculty members are first listed in the university catalog for 1921-1922. Mary Moore Davis ranked as a professor and worked as a state home demonstration agent in the Extension Division. She also established the home economics degree program at VPI. The first Dean of Women was Mildred Tate, who served from 1937 to 1947, and the first female academic dean was Laura Jean Harper, who in 1960 became the first Dean of the School of Home Economics. (Read more about her on our previously blog post.) Heidi Ford in 1970, Ella L. Bates in 1974, and Johnnie Miles in 1974 became the first female African American faculty members at Virginia Tech.

Women began achieving executive positions in the 1980s and 1990s. Sandra Sullivan was named Vice President for Student Affairs in 1982, and Peggy S. Meszaros served as the first (and currently only) female Provost from 1995 to 2000. Women started serving on the Board of Visitors in 1944, when VPI and Radford College merged. However in 2014, Deborah L. Petrine became the first female Rector in the university’s then 142-year history.

Women by the numbers

Virginia Tech has gone through enormous changes since its founding in 1872, especially in the growth of opportunities for women. Women on the staff have grown from one female administrative officer in 1902 to five women faculty members (only 4.7% of the faculty) in 1921 to 1,525 or 39.5% of the faculty in 2014. The student population has grown from 12 women or 1.3% of the students in 1921 to 13,241 women or 42.4% of the student population in 2014.

According to the Digest of Education Statistics, in Fall 2013, women accounted for 54.6% of enrolled students, 48.8% of faculty, and 54.5% of total employees (including faculty) in degree-granting public institutions in the U.S. However, the Digest also shows that women received only 30.8% of the degrees conferred by STEM schools in 2012-2013. So, as far as women have come, there’s still more to do.

 

Updated 10/28/2021: A reference to Kamini Mohan Patwary (M.S., 1955) was removed, as the information could not be confirmed.

vtspecblogger Physics, Science and Engineering, University History

The First Rochester Conference on High Energy Physics . . . . . . . . A Unique Discovery

Typescript Cover for Manuscript Proceedings and Notes, First Rochester Conference on High Energy Physics
Typescript Cover for Manuscript Proceedings and Notes, First Rochester Conference on High Energy Physics
Robert Marshak in 1979
Robert Marshak in 1979

Original materials. One-of-a-kind documents. This is what one expects to find in Special Collections. Any Special Collections. All Special Collections. It is our business. But every once in a while, you come across a unique document and, “surely,” you say to yourself, “there must be another copy of it somewhere.” Yes, it is unique because it is a particular individual’s copy, maybe with his or her annotations, but this can’t possibly be the only copy that exists! And then you find out, maybe, it is. Could the proceedings from the first Rochester Conference on High Energy Physics, part of the Robert E. Marshak Papers, 1947-1990, be such a document?

The first Conference on High Energy Physics to be held in Rochester, NY took place on 16 December 1950. It was organized largely by Robert Marshak, then the new chair of the Physics Department at the University of Rochester. Marshak had started at Rochester in 1939 and, following the outbreak of the war, worked first in Boston on furthering the development of radar and then, in Montreal, contributing to the British effort to produce an atomic bomb. In 1944, he joined the American atomic effort at Los Alamos, where he was a deputy group leader in theoretical physics. With the end of the war, however, inquiry into the realm of nuclear and particle physics no longer needed to be restricted to its practical aspects.

That first meeting in Rochester followed by 20 months the last of the three Shelter Island conferences that had been organized by Robert Oppenheimer between 1947 and 1949. Marshak, who attended these meetings and at which he first proposed the influential two-meson theory, described them as having been “limited to a small number of theorists, with a couple of ‘token’ experimentalists,”* nearly all American. The goal for the Shelter Island meetings, which involved approximately 25 attendees, was to assess the post-war status of particle physics and to provide an outlook for future developments. Marshak’s vision was to invite a more equal mix of theorists, accelerator experimentalists, and cosmic ray experimentalists and to make the meeting truly international. The increased emphasis on the experimental aspect of the field reflected not only Marshak’s interests, but also the fact that five new high-energy accelerators had been built in the U.S. since the end of the war—including one at Rochester—and they were producing results.

An early proposal for the Rochester conference was sent to the University of Rochester’s provost, Donald Gilbert, on 11 January 1949, before the last of the three Shelter Island meetings. The proposal was for a five-day event that included a one-day trip to the accelerator facilities at Cornell. It came with a request to the university for $7500. A letter written by Marshak to Joseph C. Wilson, head of The Haloid Company (which would become Xerox Corp.), dated 22 January 1950, makes clear that funding for the proposal would need to come from private sources.

Conference Invitation, 29 November 1950
Conference Invitation, 29 November 1950

Click here to see Invitation, Annotated Attendee List, & Attendee Sign-in. (Will Open in New Window)

By the fall of 1950, the conference was planned as a one-day event and scheduled for 16 December. The Physics building on campus would remain open the following day for post-conference meetings/ presentations and Professor Wolfgang Panofsky extended his visit for a week to include a public lecture and special colloquia on new frontiers and recent experiments. A first round of invitations to general attendees may have been sent out in late October or early November, as the earliest acceptance among the materials is dated 7 November. Another general invitation in the collection is dated 29 November. Invitations were sent to approximately 100 top physicists as well to interested representatives of local industries, including Haloid, which provided financial support for the conference.

Interestingly, in a hand-written reply to a request that he participate in some of the post-conference discussion, Richard Feynman wrote:

Richard Feynman's Reply, 13 December 1950
Richard Feynman’s Reply, 13 December 1950

O.K. I’ll stick around a couple of days more and talk things over. We’ll worry about what the lectures are later. In the meantime something general like ‘Field Theory’ or something will do as a title I guess. You make the title, I’ll talk on it.

Three sessions were scheduled for the day-long program: a morning session dealing with experiments with nucleons, chaired by Abraham Pais; an afternoon session on experiments with mesons, chaired by Robert Oppenheimer; and an evening session chaired by Hans Bethe on experiments with photons and electrons. In a June 1970 article for “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,” Marshak wrote:

There were three sessions of invited papers at this first Rochester Conference, chiefly experimental reports on nucleon elastic scattering and meson production by nucleons and photons. Theoretical discussion on the experimental findings was useful, but I do not recall any breakthroughs.

Scientific Program, Original, page 1
Scientific Program, Original, page 1

Click here to See the Scientific Program for the Conference, both Original and Annotated. (Will Open in New Window)

The manuscript of the proceedings begins with a 6-page summary of the morning session written up by R.S., possibly R. Scalettar, a colleague of Marshak’s from Rochester’s Physics Department. What follows are approximately 120 pages of marked-up typescript, a transcript of the days presentations and discussion. As is clear from the manuscript, the days events were recorded on audio tape, which provided the basis for the transcription. (The fate of the original tape is anyone’s guess.) In addition to notes on various pages regarding “reel” and “side” numbers, the following note is found very early in the transcription of the morning presentation:

about 3 minutes of Ramsey’s speech is not available to us at this point because the plug to the recording machine was kicked out of wall.

Is it comforting—or, perhaps, simply humbling—to recognize that our knowledge of this conference of the most esteemed representatives of the most advanced technology of the day depended, in part, on the recognition that an electric plug had been kicked out of the wall?

There is also the following note from the person producing the transcript:

(broke tape at this point, after spending nearly two hours learning operation of machine and taking notes. It took from 30 to 45 minutes to learn the machine and listen to the speech once and the rest of the time was taking notes, a few words at a time and rewinding frequently when I couldn’t keep up or missed a word. B.)

There is some indication that written proceedings were to be distributed to the participants in the conference. It remains unclear whether this was done, but it appears doubtful. John Polkinghorne, in his 1989 book, Rochester Roundabout: The Story of High Energy Physics, states unequivocally, “No Proceedings are publicly available of the first Conference.” (p.198). I have found no others. In his 1986 book, Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World, Abraham Pais, a participant in the 1950 conference, notes his thanks to Robert Marshak for “making available to me an unedited transcript of that meeting.” (note, p.461). These are, presumably, copies of the typescript held here in the Marshak Papers. Lastly, in June 2014, a set of the proceedings of the First through Seventh Rochester Conferences on High Energy Physics was sold through Bonhams auction house. The description specifies:

Nuclear Physics, Rochester Conferences: Bonhams Auctioneers
Nuclear Physics, Rochester Conferences: Bonhams Auctioneers

Vol. I: mimeographed typescript draft with ms corrections, in 3-ring binder, with ms note to Abraham Pais from Robert Marshak, founder of the Rochester Conferences. (http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21652/lot/130/ last viewed 10 July 2015)

Can we presume that this is the copy Pais refers to in his book? Are there any others? Perhaps not.

Marshak’s initial conference grew to become the event of lasting and international significance that he envisioned. The Third Conference, held December 18–20, 1952, had 150 participants, had governmental support for the first time, and included scientists from Great Britain, Italy, Australia, France, Holland, and Japan, among other countries. The Sixth Conference, held in April 1956, saw the attendance of the first Soviet delegation. The following year, 300 scientists from 24 countries attended the Seventh Conference, which ran for 5 days. It had become what John Wheeler, physicist from Princeton, called the “premier opportunity for the physicists of the world to exchange ideas.” After the Seventh Conference, the newly organized High Energy Commission of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) decided to establish a three-way rotation for the annual conference with the 1958 meeting in Geneva and the 1959 meeting in Kiev. In 1960, the Tenth Conference&—lasting eight days and with 36 scientific secretaries also participating—was back in Rochester, but for the last time before the officially named International Conference on High Energy Physics left permanently for more varied venues and a biennial schedule.

Robert Marshak joins faculty at Virginia Tech, 1 Sept. 1979
Robert Marshak joins faculty at Virginia Tech, 1 Sept. 1979

In 1970 Marshak left Rochester to become president of the City College of New York, and in the fall of 1979 became a University Distinguished Professor of Physics at Virginia Tech. He retired as Emeritus University Distinguished Professor in 1987. Robert E. Marshak died on 23 December 1992.

Although the conference that began with Marshak’s small one-day event is now being held around the world, it is still commonly referred to as the Rochester conference. The proceedings of that first meeting are now publicly available, likely for the first time.

First Rochester Conference, Manuscript Notes and Proceedings, page 1
First Rochester Conference, Manuscript Notes and Proceedings, page 1

Click here for the Full Text of the Proceedings and Notes of the First Rochester Conference on High Energy Physics, held 16 December 1950. (Will open in a new window.)

All of this material and more will eventually find its way to this department’s platform for digital content, Special Collections Online, but until then, for this material, this post will have to serve in its place.

Notes:

*Marshak, Robert E., Scientific impact of the first decade of the Rochester conferences (1950–1960, in Pions to Quarks: Particle Physics in the 1950s, Laurie M. Brown, Dresden, and Hoddeson, eds., New York: Cambridge University Press, 198

LM Rozema University History

Ringing in the Junior Year

As a relatively new employee at Virginia Tech, I’ve been learning about the university by working occasionally on records in the University Archives. Currently, I am working on memorabilia and documents regarding the Ring Design Committee and the annual Ring Dance in the Virginia Tech Ring and Class Collections, RG 31/13/3. You may already be aware of the tradition of the Virginia Tech class rings, but if not, then let me share what I’ve learned from our materials!

Class of 2005 Example Ring Mold
One of several ring molds for the Class of 2005

Each class at Virginia Tech designs their own class ring, rather than having one school ring for multiple classes. The tradition began in 1911, when the classes of 1911 through 1914 designed the first class rings at Virginia Tech. Each class since then designs and premieres their rings in the fall of their Junior year. A committee of class officers and student body appointees works with the Virginia Tech Alumni Association and a vendor to design a ring unique for that class but with traditional elements, such as eagles, the American flag, campus buildings, and a chain symbolizing class unity surrounding the school name and stone. Each ring collection since 1991 is named in honor of a distinguished alum or important associate of the university. (On a related note, the Class of 2011’s class gift to the university is a statue of a class ring merging the designs from the 1911 and 2011 class rings, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the tradition.)

In addition to ring proposals and committee planning documents, the University Archives has many wax molds like in the picture above and ring brochures, exemplified below.

Class of 1965 Ring Brochure
Class of 1977 Ring Brochure
Class of 1984 Ring Brochure
Class of 1990 Ring Brochure
Class of 2015 Ring Brochure

One of the ring brochures discusses a a new tradition started in 2012 by alums of the Class of 1964. The Hokie Gold Legacy Program allows alumni to donate or bequeath their class rings to be either displayed or melted down for reuse in new class rings. The Class of 2014 received the first class rings made with the donations. This is a really neat initiative to bring together the past, present, and future students at Virginia Tech and to promote sustainability through reuse.

Another part of the Virginia Tech class ring tradition started in 1934. Each class holds a Ring Dance in the spring of the Junior year to symbolize the transition from junior to senior. At the dance, each student wears their date’s ring on a ribbon of one of the class colors. The Corps of Cadets form the shape of the class year and perform a sabre arch. Then, couples exchange their rings, during the song Moonlight and VPI, written by Fred Waring and Charles Gaynor for Virginia Tech. Over 30 years ago, one company of the Corps of Cadets released a small pig onto the dance floor after the ring exchange as a prank, and the Virginia Tech Swine Club continues the tradition to this today! At the end of the night, attendees go to the Drillfield to watch fireworks, hear the playing of Silver Taps, and witness the firing of the Corps cannon, Skipper. The students also receive gifts with the class logo and ring dance theme, such as t-shirts, drink glasses, and koozies.

The University Archives receives some memorabilia as well as invitations and tickets to the Ring Dance and Ring Week:

Class of 2014 Ring Week List of Events and Ring Dance Ticket and Invitation
T-Shirts for the Classes of 2013 and 2014
Various items given out to Classes from 1991 to 2015
Drink glasses for various classes

If you want to see some of the class rings, check out the Virginia Tech Alumni Associations website. Also, visit the History of Virginia Tech (2010) website to learn more about university traditions.

(This post was updated on Jan. 12, 2021, with a link to the finding aid for the Virginia Tech Ring and Class Collections, RG 31/13/3.)

vtspecblogger Aviation, Just for Fun, Local/Regional History, University History

Not Every University Has One of These. . . .

It’s graduation weekend and maybe you’d expect us to serve up some nice photographs of past graduations, the whole pomp and circumstance thing. Well, certainly congratulations to the graduates!!! But, no, we’ll have no old caps and gowns this time. No historic commencement addresses. Not this year. After being in Washington, D.C. this past weekend, I was reminded of a small part of Virginia Tech historyMontgomery County history, reallythat just might offer some bragging rights to graduates and alumni alike. Of course, some might shrink from this decades-old bit of business, but I get that, too.

Look around this campus and you’ll see the Virginia Tech name and/or logo on many different kinds of objects. Banners, posters, rings, flyers, diplomas(!), buildings, and signs just to mention a few. But how many universities have had their name emblazoned on a Boeing B-29 Superfortress? That’s right, 99 ft. long, a wingspan of 141 ft 3 in, and a top speed of 365 mph . . . and “Virginia Tech” written right across the nose. How did this come about?

B-29 "Virginia Tech" from The Techgram, 15 August 1945
B-29 “Virginia Tech” from The Techgram, 15 August 1945

VT_B-29_Image2

 

 

 

In May 1944, The Techgram, a V.P.I. publication, ran its first announcement for a war bond drive that, if successful, would result in a B-29 named “Virginia Tech.” This effort was administered by the war bond committee of Montgomery County. It ran from 12 June to 8 July and was part of the fifth nationwide War Loan Drive. Over $500,000 in Series E bonds would have to be sold in or attributed to Montgomery County for the drive to be successful. (That’s nearly $7 million in today’s money!) The article also claimed that if the required total was reached, an attempt would be made to have the bomber’s crew be made up entirely of Tech graduates.

Techgram, 15 May 1944, announcing the war bond drive to name a B-29 "Virginia Tech."
Techgram, 15 May 1944, announcing the war bond drive to name a B-29 “Virginia Tech.”

By 8 July, the drive was still $75,000 short, but purchases reported through 31 July could still be credited towards the necessary total. An article in the 15 July issue of The Techgram reminded readers that purchases from folks outside of Montgomery Countyespecially from university alumscould be counted towards that figure. The 15 August edition announced, “Soon a bomber named “Virginia Tech” will be flying against enemies of the U.S.” The drive had been successful, though as later articles would announce, the plan to have only “Techmen” serve onboard the new airplane was not feisible.

Techgram, 1 October 1944
Techgram, 1 October 1944

The “Virginia Tech” (serial number 44-61529) arrived on Tinian in the Pacific at the end of May 1945 as part of the 45th Bombardment Squadron, 40th Bombardment Group, 58th Bomber Wing, 21st Bomber Command. First Lieutenant C. Thornesberry was listed as the airplane commander. “Virginia Tech” was first deployed on 7 June on a mission over Osaka, Japan. It flew eight missions over Japan that month, each lasting approximately 15 hours. It continued to fly with a variety of crews until the war ended following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August, respectively. (The only atomic bombs/nuclear weapons ever used during wartime were, of course, dropped by B-29s. That’s where the potential ambivalence comes in.) On 8 October 1945, “Virginia Tech” received orders to return to the States via Kwajalein to Mather Field, California. Under the command of Captain John Mewha, it arrived home sometime around 14 October and by the end of November 1945 was assigned to March Field in southern California.

Whether or not the “Virginia Tech” flew missions in Korea is unclear, at least to me. How long it kept its name is also unclear. In the post-war era, nose art and named designations for individual aircraft started to become less common than they had been during World War II. We know that when B-29 serial #44-61529 met its end in 1951, it was part of 22nd Bomb Group, 19th Bomb Squadron, a unit that did serve in Korea. We also know, according to US Air Force accident reports, that on 2 April 1951, while stationed at March Field and under the command of Captain Max G. Thaete, the B-29 formerly(?) known as “Virginia Tech” crashed in the California desert, about 20 miles ENE of Desert Center. An engine fire was reportedly the cause of the accident. No one onboard was seriously injured, but the airplane was damaged beyond repair.

Owosso Argus Press, 3 April 1951
Owosso Argus Press, 3 April 1951
St. Petersburg Times, 3 April 1951
St. Petersburg Times, 3 April 1951

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

So, the next time you speak with your friends from some other university and you’ve unaccountably run out of things to say about Virginia Tech, you can ask whether their school has an airplane of the type that brought World War II to a close named after it.

And if you’ve never seen a B-29, there is only one still in flying condition (named Fifi, by the way) and it flew over Washington, D.C. just last week to commemorate the 70th anniversary of V-E Day along with over 50 other WWII warbirds.

B-29 Over Washington, D.C., 8 May 2015
B-29 Over Washington, D.C., 8 May 2015

Or, if you’re just needing to see a photograph of a Virginia Tech graduation . . .

From the Col. Harry Temple Collection, Ms1988-039: Cadets in cap and gown at commencement - VPI
From the Col. Harry Temple Collection, Ms1988-039: Cadets in cap and gown at commencement – VPI

Congratulations!!

vtspecblogger International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA), Science and Engineering, University History

An Office of One’s Own: Women Professionals in the Special Collections

To celebrate womens history month, we are highlighting a small selection of the pioneering women professionals in our collections. These particular women entered their respective careers in the 1950s and 60s, a time when women had limited access to higher education and professional opportunities. Women in historically marginalized groups (including LGBTQ communities, rural communities, and communities of color) faced additional challenges beyond gender barriers. The four women profiled below overcame several obstacles to work as accomplished professionals in fields traditionally dominated by men.

ChemistryLab
VPI students Caroline Turner and Harriet Shelton at work in a chemistry lab, January 1950

Marjorie Rhodes Townsend: Aerospace Engineer, Patent Holder

Marjorie Townsend was named " Townsend Knight of the Italian Republic Order" in 1972 for her contributions to US-Italian space efforts
Marjorie Townsend was named ” Townsend Knight of the Italian Republic Order” in 1972 for her contributions to US-Italian space efforts

In 1951, Marjorie Rhodes Townsend became the first woman to earn an engineering degree at George Washington University. One of few women in a traditionally male-dominated field, Townsend experienced significant discrimination from both coworkers and managers. In spite of these challenges, she enjoyed a lengthy and distinguished career at the forefront of aerospace technology. Townsend spent eight years with the Naval Research Laboratory developing sonar signal-processing devices for anti-submarine warfare. Townsend went on to work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations Goddard Space Flight Center from 1959-1980. As a project manager for NASAs Small Astronomy Satellite (SAS) program, Townsend helped coordinate some of the earliest advances in satellite technology and spacecraft systems design.

Learn more about the Marjorie Rhodes Townsend papers here:
http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=vt/viblbv00183.xml;query=;

L. Jane Hastings: Architect, Business Owner

Drafting tools used by L. Jane Hastings
Drafting tools used by L. Jane Hastings

As an eighth-grade student, L. Jane Hastings was told that women could not be architects. When she secured a coveted spot in the University of Washingtons architecture program, Hastings recalls being asked to give up her place to make room for returning veterans. Hastings received her Bachelor of Architecture degree with honors in 1952, having worked full-time throughout most of her program. In 1953, she became the eighth licensed woman architect in the State of Washington. Hastings founded her own practice in 1959 and went on to form the Hastings Group, a prestigious firm that completed over 500 residential, commercial, and university projects across the greater Seattle area. In addition to practicing and teaching architectural design, Hastings was active in several professional organizations. In 1992, Hastings was appointed the first woman chancellor in the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows.

Learn more about the L. Jane Hastings Architectural Papers here:

http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=vt/viblbv00138.xml

Dr. Laura Jane Harper: Academic Dean, Advocate

Dr. Laura Harper, first woman to serve as academic dean at Virginia Tech (VPI)
Dr. Laura Harper, dean of the Virginia Tech College of Home Economics from 1960-1980

Dr. Laura Jane Harper was the first woman to serve as an academic dean at VPI. She lead the College of Home Economics from 1960-1980, chartering a new program that emerged from the consolidation of the Home Economics programs at VPI and Radford University. Dr. Harper was lauded for mentoring other women and supporting them in leadership positions throughout the university. In her 1999 Masters thesis A Fighter To The End: The Remarkable Life and Career Of Laura Jane Harper, Saranette Miles recounted Dr. Harpers decision to turn down a marriage proposal for the sake of her career (p. 55) and how she frequently challenged VPI President T. Marshall Hahn to uphold his commitments to create meaningful opportunities for women at the university (p. 70-75) .

Read more about Harpers career and her contributions to the Peacock-Harpery Culinary Collection:
https://whatscookinvt.wordpress.com/2015/03/06/whm-laura-harper/

Linda Adams Hoyle: Statistician, Trailblazer

Chiquita Hudson, Marguerite Laurette Scott, and Linda Adams Hoyle, right, were among the first black women to attend Virginia Tech.
Chiquita Hudson, Marguerite Laurette Scott, and Linda Adams Hoyle, right, were among the first black women to attend Virginia Tech.

Linda Adams Hoyle (class of 68) was the first black woman to graduate from Virginia Tech. As a statistics major, Hoyle was frequently the only woman in her classes and one of few black students. Her experiences on campus – friendships, dorms assignments, political activism, and safety concerns – were shaped by the intersection of race and gender. After graduation, Hoyle went on to work as a statistician for the Census Bureau in Washington, D.C.In her oral history interview for the Black Women At Virginia Tech History Project, Hoyle discussed the challenges of raising a family while pursuing a career:

.. So when you have this full time career–my job at that time was extremely demanding. It was difficult because I had to attend to my children as well as do the job.My husband, the way he worked, it was difficult. He could not just stop in the middle of a job say to pick up a sick child. His work did not permit him that flexibility. Those were things I had to do.

Read Linda Adams Hoyles Oral History Interview:
http://spec.lib.vt.edu/archives/blackwomen/adams.htm

Learn more about the experiences of Virginia Tech’s first black students:
http://www.vtmag.vt.edu/sum14/trailblazers-black-alumni-60s-70s.html

vtspecblogger Feature Items, University History

Panoramas of Campus to Immerse Yourself in the Not-too-distant Past

Panorama of the Duck Pond, from 1995

This week I wanted to share a small collection of panoramic photographs that were taken of various locations around the Virginia Tech campus back in 1995 (and a couple from 2000). The photographs were made by University Relations, and although they were taken recently (well, relative to most of our collections!) they were still captured non-digitally on film and given to us as oversized 2.5″ X 16″ photographic prints. Seeing a flat 360 degree view is one thing, but once we scanned them and installed a panoramic viewer on our Special Collections Online site, they really came to life in a very immersive way. You can see the above picture of the Duck Pond with the viewer here.

Spring Graduation at Lane Stadium, 1995

Most of the photos will look pretty familiar, with one noticeable difference being the smaller stands in Lane Stadium with roughly 15,000 less seats. You can immerse yourself in the 1995 Spring Commencement ceremony here. Another would be the absence of Torgersen Bridge behind the Pylons in this view of the Drill Field. Torgersen Hall and the bridge over Alumni Mall were not completed until 2000.

You can see all the panoramic photos in this collection here.

But I’ll leave you with one more panorama here, a vertigo-inducing shot from the floor of the War Memorial Hall foyer looking straight up at the vaulted ceiling. This one might best be seen without the viewer!

Ceiling of the War Memorial Hall foyer
LM Rozema Faculty, New Acquisitions, University History

John Redd Hutcheson, 9th President of Virginia Tech

Dr. John Redd Hutcheson
Portrait of Dr. John Redd Hutcheson, circa 1940s, from the John R. Hutcheson Family Collection, Ms2015-001

Recently, Special Collections received a new collection, the John R. Hutcheson Family Collection, containing letters, newspaper clippings, photographs, and more documenting the life of Virginia Tech president John R. Hutcheson.

Although only president of Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI, as Virginia Tech was then known) for two years from 1945 to 1947, John Redd Hutcheson (1886-1962) devoted himself to serving his alma mater and the people of Virginia. He enrolled at VPI in 1903 at the behest of his brother Tom. In order to pay for college, the brothers lived in the dairy barn on the college farm, where they milked 17 cows a night for 8 cents an hour each (roughly $2.15 an hour in 2015!) After saving his earnings, Hutcheson moved into the barracks and then waited tables in the school dining hall. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1907 and master’s in 1909.

Following several years teaching high school in Virginia and Mississippi, Hutcheson received a letter from Joseph D. Eggleston, VPI president and director of the Virginia Agricultural Extension Service (now Virginia Cooperative Extension), urging Hutcheson to join his staff. He accepted, becoming an animal husbandry specialist in 1914. In 1917, Hutcheson was appointed assistant director and two years later succeeded Eggleston as director of the Extension. Over the next 25 years, Hutcheson helped to organize the Virginia Farm Bureau and Virginia Agricultural Conference Board, to reestablish the Virginia State Grange, and to develop a long-range program for developing the state’s agriculture. All of his work developing the farm and home demonstration program in Virginia earned Hutcheson an honorary doctorate from Clemson University in 1937, along with his brother Tom, VPI professor T.B. Hutcheson.

"Clemson's First Honorary Degrees Go to Hutcheson Brothers of V.P.I."
Article entitled “Clemson’s First Honorary Degrees Go to Hutcheson Brothers of V.P.I.”, about John R. and T.B. Hutcheson, May 12, 1937, from the John R. Hutcheson Family Collection, Ms2015-001

In 1944, the Board of Visitors appointed Dr. Jack (as Hutcheson was affectionately known) acting president of VPI, and the next year he succeeded Dr. Julian A. Burruss as the ninth president. During his tenure, the student population swelled following the end of World War II, and he was responsible for making accommodations for the new civilian population (made up almost entirely of veterans), who outnumbered the cadet students for the first time in VPI’s history. Temporary trailer courts were established on campus to house the veterans, and Dr. Jack would personally visit them to ensure they had fuel for their homes.

"Dr. John R. Hutcheson Named President of Virginia [Polytechnic Institute]"
Article discusses the nomination of John R. Hutcheson as V.P.I. president, Roanoke Times, August 15, 1945, from the John R. Hutcheson Family Collection, Ms2015-001

The enormity of his duties necessitated the creation new executive positions during Dr. Hutcheson’s presidency. He created the office of admissions, director of student affairs, director of buildings and grounds, and a university business manager position. The Board of Visitors, at Dr. Jack’s suggestion, appointed Walter S. Newman as the university’s first vice president – all within two years!

Page 2 of obituary for John R. Hutcheson, [January 1962], from the John R. Hutcheson Family Collection, Ms2015-001
Page 2 of obituary for John R. Hutcheson, [January 1962], from the John R. Hutcheson Family Collection, Ms2015-001

"Former VPI President Diest at 76"
Page 1 of obituary for John R. Hutcheson, [January 1962], from the John R. Hutcheson Family Collection, Ms2015-001
Unfortunately, just 16 months into his presidency, Hutcheson entered the hospital and had to take sick leave. Newman became acting president until Sept. 1947, when he succeeded Hutcheson. Simultaneously, the Board of Visitors elected Dr. Jack as the first chancellor of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the next year named him the first president of the newly formed VPI Educational Foundation, Inc. (now the Virginia Tech Foundation, Inc.) Dr. Jack remained chancellor until 1956 and president of the foundation until his death in 1962.

The legacy of Dr. Hutcheson’s tenure at Virginia Tech is still visible today from the continuing work of the Virginia Cooperative Extension to the numerous offices he created still operating. And of course, you can visit Hutcheson Hall on the Blacksburg Campus, dedicated to John R. and T. B. Hutcheson in 1956.

Look for the completed finding aid in the next week for the John R. Hutcheson Family Collection, Ms2015-001. In the meantime, you can find out more about Dr. Jack in the John Redd Hutcheson Papers, RG 2/9 and Edgemont Farm Papers, Ms2003-022, documenting the administration of the Hutcheson family farm.

(This post was updated Jan. 12, 2021, with a link to John R. Hutcheson Family Collection, Ms2015-001.)

archivistkira University History

You’re Accepted!

We seem to be on a roll lately with posts about Virginia Tech history. While that isn’t all we’re about, I’m not oneto ruin a good thing. Plus, as I was looking for this item the other day, I thought it might be fun to post. It’s an acceptance letter to Virginia Agriculture and Mechanical College, dated September 23, 1873. (For those of you keeping track, that’s only the second year VAMC was accepting students!)In some ways, this item is a sneak peek. It’s part of a collection that has yet to be processed (more on that in a moment), but it’s one of those tidbits that was begging to be shared.

Acceptance letter to Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, to "G. D. Showacre, Esq.," dated September 23, 1873.
Acceptance letter to Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, to “G. D. Showacre, Esq.,” dated September 23, 1873.

The handwriting is a bit squashed in places, but this letter reads:

G. D. Showacre, Esq.

Dr Sir, I have the pleasure of informing you that the Faculty has appointed you a State student in this College. You will please report in person as soon as practicable, and a failure to do so within thirty days will forfeit the appointment.

Very respectfully yrs

V. E. Shepherd

Secretary Faculty

Actually, it’s less a letter and more of a note. Formal, to be sure, but still only two sentences: You’re accepted. Show up in the next month or don’t show up at all.Quite direct and to the point. In any case,”G. D. Showacre” is actually George D. Showacre from Greene County, Virginia. He attended VAMCfor three years, from 1873 to 1876–clearly, he showed up! This is an exciting piece of university history for us and we’re lucky it survived this long.

This item is part of a donation received by Special Collections last year. The collection hasn’t been processed yet, but once it is, it will be available as the Showacre Family Collection. In addition to the letter, it includesa handwritten copy of a funeral sermon for Charles Showacre delivered by William Runyan on May 22, 1864. That being said, just because a collection isn’t processed, doesn’t mean it’s off limits! If you’d like to see the letter in person, you’re welcome to visit us. We’ll be here.

vtspecblogger Faculty, Local/Regional History, Science and Engineering, University History

I. J. (Jack) Good: Virginia Tech’s Own Bletchley Park Connection

Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges, first published in 1983
Alan Turing
Poster for the 2014 movie, The Imitation Game, loosely based on Hodges’ book

Enigma, Ultra, Alan Turing, Bletchley Park, the British efforts to break German codes in World War II. Maybe you’ve seen or are waiting to see the 2014 movie, The Imitation Game, which tells part of this story with Turing, quite rightly, as its central character. Perhaps you became aware of this highly classified historical episode when the secrecy surrounding it gave way to public sensation in the early 1970s, almost thirty years after the end of the war . . . or in the many books and movies that have followed. An interest in wartime history, cryptography, or the early development of computers provide only a few of the possible avenues into the story. But did you know that one of the primary characters in that story, a mathematician who earned a Ph.D from Cambridge in 1941 with a paper on topological dimension, was a professor of statistics at Virginia Tech from 1967 until his retirement in 1994, and lived in Blacksburg until his death just a few years ago at the age of 92? Maybe you did, but I didn’t. His name was I. J. Good, known as Jack.

Jack Good, an early photo
Jack Good, 1979
Jack Good at his 90th birthday celebration, 2006.

He was born Isidore Jacob Gudak in London in 1916, the son of Polish and Russian Jewish immigrants. Later changing his name to Irving John Good, he was a mathematical prodigy and a chess player of note. In a interview published in the January 1979 issue of Omni, Good says of the claim that he rediscovered irrational numbers at age 9 and mathematical induction and integration at 13, “I cannot prove either of these statements, but they are true.”

A three-rotor German Enigma Machine
Mansion at Bletchley Park
Turing’s codebreaking machine, a Bombe, designed in 1939, built first in 1940

In 1941, Good joined the code-breakers at Bletchley Park, specifically, to work on the German Naval Enigma code in Hut 8 under the direction of Alan Turing and Hugh Alexander, the mathematician and chess champion who had recruited him. This is the story that is told in The Imitation Game, in which Jack Good is played by actor James Northcote. Along with Turing’s story, it is the story of the development of the machines that would break the German Enigma codes. The Enigma machine was an electromechanical device that would allow the substitution of letters–and thus production of a coded message–through the use of three (later four) rotors that would accomplish the substitutions. If you knew which rotors were being used and their settings, (changed every day or every second day), one could decode a message sent from another Enigma. If you didn’t know the rotors and the settings, as James Barrat writes in Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, “For an alphabet of twenty-six letters, 403,291,461,126,605,635,584,000,000 such substitutions were possible.”

This is the world Jack Good entered on 27 May 1941, that and the world of war and the urgent need to defeat the Axis. Turing had already built some of the first Bombes, electromechanical machines–among the earliest computers, really–and had achieved initial and significant success. Good belonged to a team that would make improvements to the process from an approach based in a Bayesian statistical method that Good described in 1998 speech as “invented mainly by Turing.” He also called it “the first example of sequential analysis, at least the first notable example.” For the duration of the war, Good would work to further the British code-breaking technologies, adding his knowledge and understanding of statistics to the development of machines known as the “Robinsons” and “Colossus.” The program was remarkably successful. In its early days, it is credited with helping in the effort to sink the German battleship Bismarck; then helping to win the Battle of the Atlantic, directing the disruption of German supply lines to North Africa, and having an impact on the invasion of Europe in June 1944. What came to be known as “Ultra,” the intelligence obtained by the work of the Bletchley Park code-breakers, is, generally, thought to have shortened the war by two to four years. Jack Good, who worked with Alan Turing both during and after the war, said, “I won’t say that what Turing did made us win the war, but I daresay we might have lost it without him.”

After the war, Good was asked by Max Newman, a mathematician and another Bletchley Park alum, to join him at Manchester University, where they, later joined by Turing, worked to create the first computer to run on an internally stored program. A few years later, he returned to Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) for another decade of classified work for the British government. A three-year stint teaching at Oxford led to a decision in 1967 to move to the United States, but not before he served as a consultant to Stanley Kubrick, who was then making 2001: A Space Odyssey. The HAL (Heuristically-programmed ALgorithmic computer) 9000–the computer with a mind of its own–presumably owed much to the mind of Jack Good.

The camera eye of the HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's 2001 : A Space Odyssey
The camera eye of the HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 : A Space Odyssey
Jack Good (right) at Hawk Films Ltd., 1966, as adviser on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey
Jack Good (right) at Hawk Films Ltd., 1966, as adviser on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

At Virginia Tech, Good arrived as a professor of statistics. Always a fellow for numbers, he noted:

I arrived in Blacksburg in the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month of year seven of the seventh decade, and I was put in apartment seven of block seven of Terrace View Apartments, all by chance.

Later, he would be University Distinguished Professor and, in 1994, Professor Emeritus. In 1998, he received the Computer Pioneer Award given by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society, one of a long list of honors. Good’s published work spanned statistics, computation, number theory, physics, mathematics and philosophy. A 1979 Omni article and interview reports that two years earlier a list of his published papers, articles, books, and reviews numbered over 1000. In June 2003, his list of “shorter publications” alone included 2278 items. He published influential books on probability and Bayesian method.

In that Omni interview, the conversation ranges over such topics as scientific speculation, precognition, human psychology, chess-playing computers, climate control, extraterrestrials, and more before settling in on the consequence of intelligent and ultraintelligent machines. On the latter topic, in 1965, Good wrote:

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.”

Special Collections at Virginia Tech has a collection of the papers of Irving J. Good that includes 36 volumes of bound articles, reviews, etc. along with a videotape of him and Donald Michie that commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the work they both did at Bletchley Park. Among the rest of the material is some correspondence and a group of papers described as “PBIs,” which I now know to be “partly baked ideas,” some his own, many sent to him by others, but for which he appears to have had a fondness.

In the end, however, and as his 2009 obituaries suggest, it will be his code-breaking and other intelligence work, particularly from the days at Bletchley Park that I. J. Good will be most remembered. Even though he and all the participants were prevented from talking about that work for years, one guesses that Jack Good wanted to leave others with a sense of it, particularly once in Virginia, as he drove away, with his customized license plate:

Photograph of Jack Good's Virginia license plate (from Collegiate Times, 10 Feb. 1989)
Photograph of Jack Good’s Virginia license plate (from Collegiate Times, 10 Feb. 1989)
vtspecblogger Architecture, New Acquisitions, University History

A New Collection and a New Look at Virginia Tech’s Architectural Style

Glass plate negative of a drawing of a proposed dormitory building in the Upper Quad. The design of the current Upper Quad construction is based on these original designs.
Glass plate negative of a drawing of a proposed dormitory building in the Upper Quad. The design of the current Upper Quad construction is based on these original designs.
The same drawing with the colors inverted to make it a positive image.
The same drawing with the colors inverted to make it a positive image.

An important bit of Virginia Tech history came through our doors recently in a unique form- a collection of 8 x 10 glass plate negatives of architectural drawings and artist renderings that were made by the architectural firm Carneal and Johnston. These designs were made for several campus buildings in the 1910s, including the original McBryde Hall and the original library building. In addition to the campus buildings that were built, some of the glass plates depict drawings for proposed buildings, including an alumni hall and new dormitories for the Upper Quad- projects that wouldnt be taken up until nearly 100 years later, and, in the case of the Upper Quad, are actually being built as we speak.

A drawing of a proposed alumni hall designed by Carneal and Johnston in 1916
A drawing of a proposed alumni hall designed by Carneal and Johnston in 1916
Floor plan of the proposed alumni hall
Floor plan of the proposed alumni hall

The glass plate negatives were made using the silver gelatin dry plate process- a direct forerunner of roll film- in which the glass plates were treated with emulsion and allowed to fully dry long in advance of actually exposing them in a camera. This technique, developed in the 1870s, was a huge improvement in convenience over the wet plate process, in which the emulsion on the plate had to be wet when it was exposed, meaning the photographer had to apply the emulsion right before taking the photograph, (and you can imagine how much of a hassle that might be if you were photographing out on location somewhere).

These particular dry plates were made as copy photographs of the original architectural drawings made by Carneal and Johnston as well as artist renderings made by Hughton Hawley for the architectural firm and probably served the purpose of what digital scans do today- to make high-quality renderings of the original image in another format that can be preserved as well as easily copied and shared. As relatively large and thin plates of glass, they are extremely fragile, yet amazingly, other than a few chips, most of the 23 glass plates have survived intact over the past 100 years.

A prospective drawing of a proposed dormitory building in the Upper Quad.
A prospective drawing of a proposed dormitory building in the Upper Quad.
What the same negative looks like with the colors inverted to make it a positive image.
What the same negative looks like with the colors inverted to make it a positive image.

William Leigh Carneal, Jr., and James Markam Ambler Johnston (a VPI alumnus) began their firm around 1908 after spending a year working independently out of the same office space. The firm went on to become one of the most prolific and long-established architectural practices in Virginia, surviving after the original architects retired in 1950 up until 1999, when the firm merged with Ballou Justice & Upton, Architects, and ceased to use the name Carneal and Johnston. These designs from the mid 1910s were made very early in the firms career and possibly represent the very first of what would be many design projects for Virginia Tech (then known as VPI)s campus.

President Joseph Dupuy Eggleston Jr., whose term lasted from 1913 to 1919, likely had a hand in commissioning these early designs from the firm. President Eggleston saw architecture as a way for the struggling young college to build its own unique identity, and the Carneal and Johnstons design of the original McBryde Hall would set the standard for all campus buildings that were built over the following half century- a dramatic collegiate gothic style clad entirely in our signature grey hokie stone. The gothic hokie stone buildings gave the VPI campus a radically different look and feel from the red brick neoclassical style present at most of Virginias college campuses, and remains a unique and integral part of our identity even today.

This collection of glass plates negatives is currently being processed and will be available both online and in physical form soon!