Networks Lines And Fields Ryder Pdf

[Roy Dassow]

JohnRyder received his bachelor's and masters' degrees from Ohio State University. Upon completion of his master's degree in 1929, he began working for General Electric in Schenectady, New York. In 1941, he took a teaching position at Iowa State College that allowed him to continue his doctorate work. Upon completing his Ph.D. in 1944, he was appointed full professor at Iowa State. In 1947, he became assistant director of the engineering experiment station at Iowa where he worked with Warren Boast in developing a high frequency analyzer for the regional utility companies. In 1949, he left Iowa to head the electrical engineering department at the University of Illinois. He was named Dean of Michigan State University in 1954.

John Ryder has had a distinguished career not only as an engineer and an educator, but also in his capacity as advisor on numerous military advisory panels and committees as well as his service to IRE and IEEE. He served IRE as an education advocate in his position as director at large. He was also editor and chairman of IRE's editorial board and served as IRE president in 1955. After the merger of IRE and AIEE, he was the first editor of Spectrum. In addition, he was a member of the 1967 U.S.A.I.D. higher education mission to Brazil.

The interview begins with a discussion of Ryder's early education and his first job with General Electric which involved work on the early development of large, heavy-duty ferrotrons. He discusses his graduate work under W.L. Everett and his position with the Bailey Meter Company of Cleveland, a job that he held throughout the Depression. He soon decided to return to academia and pursue his doctorate. The interview continues with a discussion of the fundamental changes occurring in engineering education in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He discusses his textbook publications, his efforts directed toward curriculum reform, and his involvement at Iowa State in developing a working relationship between the academic research community and industry. He also comments extensively on the architectural design of the engineering building at Iowa State and his "Four Freedoms" philosophy in the design of university engineering facilities.

The interview continues with a wide-ranging discussion of Ryder's experiences while at Michigan State University, including architectural design, curriculum reorganization, and the development of the MSTIC computer. He offers comments on the relationship between science and engineering, the place of computer science departments within the academic environment, and the ways in which engineering has become an experimental science, representing more than a highly applied field of study. To this end, he comments upon necessary reforms in engineering curriculum, as well as the broader social relationship between engineering students and the larger student body in a university setting.

The interview also covers Dr. Ryder's extensive involvement with the IRE, and AIEE, his service on a variety of military advisory panels, two anecdotes concerning his experience as an expert witness in patent infringement suits, and his work with the 1967 U.S.A.I.D. higher education mission to Brazil.

The second half of the interview focuses primarily on Dr. Ryder's views of the IRE-AIEE merger. This discussion is framed within the context of his experience within IRE, and his commitment to progressive engineering education. He outlines the shifting interests of engineering students from power to electronics and the response of postwar industry to this change. He goes on to discuss the contrasting efforts of IRE and AIEE in encouraging student activities within the professional societies, and the impact these efforts had on subsequent student membership. He discusses his association with Morris Hooven, including their meeting in 1955 that led to the concept of joint membership in the two societies. Ryder offers extensive comments on the differences between AIEE and IRE, both in philosophy and organizational structure. The interview continues with a discussion of the merger process, including comments on the principle players involved, the role of engineering unionism, and the contrasting influence of academic versus industry representatives. The interview concludes with a discussion of the merged society's publication policy, the introduction of Spectrum, and Ryder's achievements as IEEE's first editor.

This manuscript is being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the IEEE History Center. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of IEEE History Center.

Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the IEEE History Center Oral History Program, IEEE History Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA or ieee-h...@ieee.org. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.

This interview is part of the oral history project conducted under the joint auspices of the history committee of the IEEE and the Center for the History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics. The interviewee today is John Douglas Ryder, the interviewer is George C. Sell, and this takes place in Atlanta, Georgia on August 22, 1979. We have agreed that once the material on this tape is transcribed and the transcription edited, there are no restrictions on access or use.

It was very satisfactory and I lived at home and made money and bought a used model A Ford at the end of the year. Between the junior and senior year, I worked for the Westinghouse Company in East Pittsburgh. Between the senior year and the graduate year I was broad minded and went to Schenectady and worked for the General Electric Company in that period. After graduation I decided that I preferred the Adirondacks to the hills of East Pittsburgh and went back to the General Electric Company.

Oh well, the two companies I have always felt equal. Their policies and operations were very similar but I simply did not prefer East Pittsburgh as a place to work. And that was in the day of course when at noon in the bright sun you saw the carbon particles settling down in the atmosphere.

Prior to your going on into industry for your first positions let us step back to graduate training. I would like to get some information on the MS thesis you obtained, in 1929. Who was the thesis supervisor?

It was written up by Byrne and Everitt. Both their earlier work and some of mine are in the IRE Proceedings of about 1929 or 1930. It has been resurrected within the last year or so by a man named Nagel in Ham Radio Magazine, who looked at the antenna again. But this introduced me to some of the more theoretical aspects of radiation and helped later on when I started to work on the doctorate.

They kept me on all through the Depression so I guess I showed them something. To the tune of 24 patents. And also the fact that my present wife was living in Cleveland didn't have any deleterious effects in the transfer, but this was a company....

Then right at that time, or just a little later, I had an opportunity to go into teaching at Iowa State University, Iowa State College then. I had been taking night work in physics and mathematics at Case School in Cleveland and this Iowa State job gave me a chance to go on with my doctorate. So, we accepted that and went to Iowa.

This you will find out later on where I went and I was disturbed by this difference, by the lack of willingness to put time or money on the fundamentals of problems and the readiness to solve or gloss them over to get a fix on something instead of attacking the fundamental point. So the chance to go into academia and work on the doctorate was very appealing.

I had a department head, who was a one-time president of the AIEE, too, and who knew how to handle people. So I got my doctorate degree at ceremonies in the morning and in the afternoon he gave me a letter from the president promoting me to full professor. I never was an associate professor. I jumped a rank. I introduce that as showing how to handle personnel.

Well, I was wondering about your three years holding down an assistant professorship as well as working on your Ph.D. Do you feel that this had any effect upon your relationship with your fellow colleagues within the department?

In this kind of rather unusual situation you were able to spend part of your time in classes and then the rest of the time trying out a lot of your ideas on younger students. Did you find it was also possible to say the rest of the new electronics developments were occurring as a result of the war?

Yes. It was 1946. I think we had one of the very first pulse technique courses in the country at the university and I know out of these courses in pulse techniques we supplied most of the pulse people for what is now the Control Data Corporation in Minneapolis. In other words, industry finds a school that will supply the kind of men they want.

At Iowa State in 1947 I was appointed assistant director of the Engineering Experiment Station and was teaching only graduate level work in electronics. The Engineering Experiment Station was an interesting although frustrating experience because during the war, the existing dean had decided that research was going to stop for the duration. He had closed down all operations of the Engineering Experiment Stations. And so in 1947 there was a new dean and I was given the job of resurrecting a dead program and it was about like resurrecting a dead horse.

This was the first money the dean had ever had which was absolutely free. He could do with it what he needed to do in the college. Considering that at that time he had an equipment budget of $15,000 a year, another $15,000 or so was very, very helpful.

No. The experiment station was integrated with teaching. There were one or two people who were totally on the experiment station budget, but they were used for teaching or handling graduate students and the equipment was all integrated.

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