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39

During this whole period since transferring into TED, I'd had many dealings with John Aydelott and Dick Lamborn in Motor Engineering. John was head of electrical design and Dick was "one of John's boys." John was to end up floundering a good deal, while Dick was eventually to take what was the equivalent of Mark Hanna's job and what was in my Equipment Section organized in 1957. John was a University of Illinois Phi Beta Kappa in electrical engineering, I believe, and was Phi Beta Kappa because they didn't have Tau Beta Pi there. As only the heads, like Hanna and Tritle, of the engineering sections had private offices, John sat out in a large bull pen with his group clustered about him. I'd sit at his desk in the bull pen and consult with him frequently. John was ultraserious, with a shovel-nosed face like Bob Hope or Richard Nixon, and a big, angular body. He'd lay out a piece of paper on his desk before me, pick up a yellow Eagle-brand pencil well—sharpened, and illustrate his answers to my questions with curves, diagrams and sketches, his big bony hand moving deliberately over the paper. He was a very smart guy but he lacked some things and one of them definitely was personality. Dick, on the other hand, was small, skinny, sharp—faced, and smart—as-hell also. He was a product of MIT along with Charlie Reed and they married two of the Brumbaugh sisters from Huntingdon, Pennsylvania--Barbara and Marian. However, Dick was from Philadelphia. Dick, also, was deliberate and would tell you the story in a slow drawl, but it seems to me, looking back, that he was more thorough, looked at things from all angles, pointed out the pitfalls and the alternatives. He also had a way of expressing himself that was sometimes very memorable. One such occasion found me at Dick's desk showing him a speed—distance curve I'd made and at the point where the power was shut off on the gas—car, I showed the curve continuing to ascend smoothly. Dick took one look at this particular spot and said to me, "What's this? There's no such thing as 'persistence of acceleration.'" It was so well put that I can still hear him say it. Today, of course, John is dead and his wife, Helen, lives in Sarah Reed Home, while Dick is very much alive and active and he and Marian are among our best friends.

[[image - blue paper glued to sheet with a line graph drawn in blue ball-point ink. Y-axis reads "MPH", X-axis reads "Distance" and there is a curved line showing the "Power off" position with a dotted line and an arrow pointing to "Should have been" with "Persistence of acceleration" and an arrow pointing to the end of the curved line]]