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5

The following day, January 28th, I participated in presenting my first AIEE paper along with Fred Brehob. It was quite a thrill for me and I hoped it might be the first of many. In fact, it was the first of three or four and then I was out of engineering. All went very well. We'd anticipated some loaded questions from Storer and Wright of Westinghouse and Hermann Lemp, then of Ingersoll-Rand, as to the need for using a battery at all--just put in a bigger engine--and had Bill Hamilton and Orcutt answer these, thus relieving Fred and me of an awkward situation wherein we'd have been obliged to say because there weren't any engines that big that were suitable. But the thing which I got the biggest thrill out of was listening to Dr. A.W. Hull's (GE Research Laboratory) discussion of Atherton's paper on rectifiers. Dr. Hull, a slender, fine-looking man, stood up there in front of the group, erect, head high, hands behind back, heels together, speaking in his fine voice and using perfect language--a perfect gentleman--and calmly denied the main point of Atherton's paper--that rectifier efficiency inherently decreases when the size of the unit increases beyond a certain point. Dr. Hull merely said very calmly and quietly, "I know of no such limitation." He didn't say there was no such limitation, merely saying that [[underline]] he [[/underline]] knew of none, and coming from the lips of probably the greatest rectifier authority in the world, it was perfect. I thought, "There is a model to pattern yourself after." And that evening, I saw another model for gentlemanliness, Paul Lucas, who was in the movie "This One Man" at the Paramount, starring Carole Lombard. Lucas was perfect too--a good model for anyone aspiring to act the gentleman.

I spent the next day on GE work and late in the afternoon, caught the New York Central's "Commodore Vanderbilt" out of Harmon for Rome where I arrived at 9:35 p.m. to spend the weekend with Fred Thalman. It was Friday. I was met and greeted warmly by "The Kid" and we spent the evening reminiscing, I absorbing a few beers but Fred restricted to ginger ale because he had a bet he wouldn't drink anything alcoholic until February 1st. And on a matter of this kind, he'd always been as stubborn as a mule. We hit the sack at the Thalman mansion on North George at midnight. As it had long been by this time, it was a thrill to get with the Kid again. We had a fine rapport then and we still do, a rather strange thing because we have little in common except memories largely of younger days.

Fred having a job at the City Hall in the Engineering Dept., I met him at 11:45 a.m. the following day down there, we had lunch at the Elks Club, played some pool, took a ride with Ben and Hank Huntington, and went home for supper. Hank and Fred finally agreed to call off their "No-alcohol" bet and this opened the way for a party in Utica that evening. Fred made a date with Mabel "Migs" Moran and Hank with Lois Goodall, both rather attractive. Fred and I took Mabel after having had two rounds of highballs at Lois' house. We went to