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454
THE TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

An inventory of the accomplishments of the evening shows that twenty-two reports of officers and committee chairmen were read and either accepted or placed on file. During the past year the membership of the Alumni Association has increased by 628, bringing the total for the year to 14,614.

Two Deaths
THE deaths on June 5 of William Emery Nickerson, '76, and on June 14 of George E. Merryweather, '96, deprives the Institute of two of its most distinguished Alumni and helpful friends. Mr. Nickerson, who was Vice-President and a director of the Gillette Safety Razor Company, was associated with the Classes of 1874 and 1875, although his degree was taken with the Class of 1876. From 1872 to 1876 he was an assistant in the Institute's laboratory of general chemistry and quantitative analysis and a private assistant to Professor William R. Nichols who later became Acting President.

Mr. Nickerson early displayed an inventive genius which was to culminate in his making the Gillette razor a practical success by inventing the automatic machinery and processes for producing it. He took out the first patent for electrical appliances for stopping elevators at predetermined

[[image]]
[[caption]] ANNA B. GALLUP, 'OI, CURATOR-IN-CHIEF OF THE BROOKLYN CHILDREN'S MUSEUM. RECENTLY SHE WAS AWARDED THE GOLD MEDAL OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES [[/caption]]

floors, made the only commercially successful incandescent lamp without the hermetic seal, and invented automatic machinery for weighing materials in packages.

In 1928 he was nominated by the Alumni Association and elected by the Corporation a term member of that body, and in the spring of that same year he suggested and endowed a new professorship at the Institute known as the Chair of Humanics. One of his last acts before his death was his contribution to the Technology Loan Fund as recorded on page 739. In addition to his Institute benefactions, he provided Boston University with an athletic field. He delivered two Aldred lectures at the Institute to be long remembered.

Mr. Merryweather, from 1927 to 1929 a Vice-President of the Alumni association, was President of the Motch and Merryweather Machinery Company, Cleveland, Ohio. In addition he was director of the Central National Savings Bank and Trust Company, P. A. Geier Company, and the Davenport Machine Tool Company of Rochester, N. Y. At one time he was President of the Associated Machine Tool Dealers of the United States and Vice-President of the Association for Criminal Justice. During the War, he was a member of the War Industries Board.

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[[caption]] "LIGHT, HEAT, AND POWER" - THE INSTITUTE'S TRIPLE COMPOUND CORLISS, WHICH WAS OPERATED ON ALUMNI DAY OF THE REUNION 

From a photograph by John J. Rowlands [[/caption]]