History Of Mechanical Engineering
Chapter 3

  A.J. Wood
  H.A. Everett

  1921 - 1946

From L. E. Reber's departure in 1907 until Fessenden's departure in 1921, the faculty had seen two deans and four department heads. Buildings had been constructed, enrollments had risen, and research and scholarship had become an integral part of faculty life, but the department lacked sustained stable leadership. A. J. Wood, a faculty member since 1904, had experienced the changes and understood the temperament and talents of the faculty. During the next ten years, he provided the leadership the department needed to prosper. Taking Wood's place as the supervisor of the Engineering Experiment Station was Frederick G. Hechler, associate professor of mechanical engineering. F. G. Hechler was a 1908 graduate in mechanical engineering of the University of Missouri. He taught at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for eight years before joining the naval experiment station at Annapolis in 1916.

While continuing Wood's research in heat transfer, Hechler wanted to expand the station's research efforts. In 1923, he invited Paul H. Schweitzer to become a full-time member of the station staff (see photo, below). Schweitzer, a recent immigrant to the United States from Hungary, requested the opportunity to conduct research on diesel engines. Hechler carried this request to Dean Sackett, who realized that no other college or university in the United States was doing research in this area and gave his emphatic approval. Following P. H. Schweitzer's arrival, a long and productive relationship between students and faculty of the department and the staff of the Engineering Experiment Station began. The continuous publication of research findings established Penn State as a center for diesel technology. Students and faculty collaborated so often and so closely that it was impossible (if not futile) to distinguish between diesel research done in the station and in the department. The relationship continued uninterrupted throughout Schweitzer's tenure at Penn State and ended only with the reorganization of the station and Schweitzer's retirement in the 1950s.

S.S. Lestz, P. Schweitzer and R.G. Cunningham with a visiting engineer from Japan in mid-1950s.

Relief from the shortage of space for faculty offices and laboratories came in 1927. The Board of Trustees approved the construction of a new engineering building. In August 1928, ground was broken on the site of the old Main Engineering Building for the new structure, which was architecturally similar to several of the new buildings on campus (for example, Recreation Hall). Its overall dimensions of 60 feet by 230 feet, three floors, and a basement provided space for a hydraulic laboratory, classrooms, offices, and drawing rooms.

Traditional mechanical engineering education was concerned with the design and performance of machines, and central to its focus were laboratory experiments with these machines. Unfortunately, the authorization to construct the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory in 1921 provided little money for equipment. The task of locating and purchasing equipment was postponed. The challenge fell primarily on the shoulders of F. C. Stewart, professor in charge of the laboratory. F. C. Stewart proved to be a very clever and resourceful person. Over a period of several years, he assembled an assortment of equipment that became one of the best in the nation. Stewart secured the equipment at reduced cost or as gifts to the department. After acquiring the machines, he designed equipment to measure temperatures, pressures, velocities, accelerations, rotational speeds, forces, etc., for experiments to illustrate scientific principles on which the machines operated. He also designed experiments to determine the machine's performance characteristics and wrote instructional materials for these experiments. Stewart was regarded highly by his colleagues. After his death in 1943, E. E. Ambrosius took charge of the laboratory.

The year was 1929, and morale was high. The new Main Engineering Building provided the space required to accommodate additional engineering students as enrollments increased. Graduating seniors were receiving two or three job offers each before commencement. In research, studies on heat transfer in building materials were the best in the nation. The diesel engine research conducted by Schweitzer and his colleague Kalman J. DeJuhasz had attracted an international reputation. A pressure chamber to measure fuel spray velocities and distribution was the only facility of its kind in the world and helped to make the diesel laboratory the most advanced in the United States. In 1929, A. J. Wood was elected president of the American Society of Refrigerating Engineers (predecessor of ASHRAE) in recognition of his achievements. It was the first time in the society's history that an engineering faculty member had been named president. By all accounts, mechanical engineering at Penn State was on the move. The lack of facilities and stagnant student enrollments were a thing of the past, and the department was poised for the 1930s. The effects of the stock market crash of October 1929 were slow to be felt at Penn State, but within a few years the shrinking job market for civil, architectural, and electrical engineers led to a decline in enrollment in these areas. Mechanical engineering, however, prospered.

Mechanical Engineering faculty in April 1931.

In 1931, A. J. Wood died as a result of injuries received when he was run down by a motorcycle while crossing the street in front of his house on Allen Street — an ironic death for a man who loved machines. Wood had been hired by L. E. Reber in 1904. For several years, they were the only members of the mechanical engineering faculty. Wood had seen Mechanical Engineering grow from a fledgling effort to a nationally renowned academic department. An effective and well-liked administrator, he served as department head for ten years, longer than any of the predecessors with the exception of Reber. He was an author, sought-after consultant to industry, prolific researcher, effective teacher, and a nationally recognized leader in the engineering profession. During his tenure as department head, the number of faculty doubled, the number of graduate students tripled, and research became an integral part of education. A. J. Wood epitomized the mixture of educator, researcher, and consultant that has become the paradigm for today's faculty members. His successor, Harold A. Everett, was a 1902 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had been a member of the Penn State engineering faculty since 1922. Everett was the author of two textbooks in thermodynamics (1931, 1937). Before coming to Penn State, he had taught at M.I.T. and the U.S. Naval Academy and supervised engineering with a ship-building firm. This valued association with the navy, which was to have a profound effect on the department, was evident in the teak floors and brass fittings of his home on Hamilton Avenue.

In 1931, the department had twenty faculty members, thirty-two graduating seniors, and forty-seven juniors. In 1932, Clarence H. Kent joined the faculty after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He became the first faculty member to have a doctoral degree. The only victims of the depression were the railway and milling curricula, which lost their appeal to students. Curiously, the depression was a period of growth for mechanical engineering and the college in general. Student enrollment rose by 11 percent from the 1929-30 academic year to 1933-34. Since employment opportunities were scarce, the federal government provided financial aid to students attending college. To foster employment, the government supported public works that employed mechanical engineers. Within the Commonwealth, the state government financed the construction of numerous buildings at Penn State. Financial support of the college and of mechanical engineering was meager, but it was steady and allowed administrators to see their plans materialize. Schweitzer and DeJuhasz conducted experiments concerning diesel ignition and injection phenomena under sponsorship of Texaco and various diesel engine manufacturers. Research also continued in the areas of engine lubricants and heat transfer in building materials.

During the depression, recruiting engineering graduates from an isolated place like Penn State was not the polished enterprise it is today. To assist students in finding jobs, the Zeta chapter of the mechanical engineering honorary society Pi Tau Sigma began publishing booklets containing photographs of the seniors and listing their activities, interests, and industrial experience. The booklets, which were mailed to the industrial firms in Pennsylvania and nearby states, were very effective in helping students find jobs. This practice continued until World War II.

The early 1930s also saw the growth of graduate education in mechanical engineering. In the past, graduate students usually had a few years of professional experience before they arrived. Now, more and more students were entering the graduate program straight out of college. The most popular areas of graduate study were thermal and diesel engineering. In 1936, the School of Engineering awarded its first doctoral degree — to Theodore Hetzel (a Rhodes scholar, no relation to the college President). Paul H. Schweitzer was his adviser.

During the 1930s C. C. Dillio, P. B. Lovett, and J. J. DeCarolis were graduated as mechanical engineers. They accepted posts on the faculty and retired in the 1970s. C. C. Dillio's career was typical of many faculty. An outstanding student, active in the mechanical engineering honorary society Pi Tau Sigma, he was graduated in 1934. In his senior year, he participated in a research project, run by the department and sponsored by the Penn Grade Crude Oil Association, concerning lubricating oil for automotive engines. With five other seniors, he conducted performance tests on 1932 Dodge engines, including one fiendishly destructive test at runaway speeds. The engine failed with a great roar by throwing a rod that punched out a section of the crankcase — in the words of Dillio, "Engineering in the raw!" Immediately after graduating, Dillio entered the master's degree program in the department and was supported by a scholarship from the Engineering Experiment Station consisting of a $400 stipend plus tuition. His duties required ten hours of work per week, conducting experiments under F. G. Hechler in the Engineering Experiment Station. He obtained enough data in one year to enable him to write his master's thesis, "Coefficients of a Boiling Refrigerant" and to earn the M.S. degree in mechanical engineering. In 1937, Dillio went to R.P.I. at the recommendations of Everett and Sackett and taught for four years under E. P. Fessenden.

Mechanical Engineering students computing results of experiments, circa 1935.

William Diefendenfer received his baccalaureate degree from Penn State in 1938. He remained at Penn State to begin graduate study in mechanical engineering and joined the faculty as an instructor. In 1940, Diefenderfer joined the Hamilton Standard Division of United Aircraft. He rose to become its chief executive officer.

In 1937, Robert L. Sackett retired after twenty-two years of service. To acknowledge his contributions to the college and his leadership of the school through such traumatic events as the fire of 1918 and the depression of the 1930s, the Board of Trustees named Sackett dean emeritus of engineering.

Harry Parker Hammond replaced Sackett as dean of the School of Engineering. A civil engineer, H. P. Hammond received his B.S. and C.E. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in 1909 and 1911. Before coming to Penn State, he had been a member of the faculty of Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. In 1937, shortly after arriving, Hammond pressed the college's President, Ralph Hetzel, for funds to expand the school's facilities. In particular, the new dean wanted to expand the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory. Hammond also wanted to standardize the curriculum requirements among all engineering disciplines.

An annex to the thermal laboratories was constructed in 1939 to support materials research and development on behalf of the Bureau of Ships. In 1939, N. R. Sparks' book Mechanical Refrigeration was published by McGraw Hill. The following year a wind tunnel was completed for use by mechanical engineering students for the study of aeronautical engineering. A request by H. P. Hammond for a separate baccalaureate curriculum in aeronautical engineering was denied by the trustees, thus leaving this discipline an option in mechanical engineering.

Penn State's School of Engineering was ranked seventh in size in the nation in 1940 with an undergraduate enrollment of just over one thousand, 397 of whom were mechanical engineering students. The school was ninth in size in graduate education, with an enrollment of 27. In early 1941, the department implemented a new sixteen-week course in diesel engineering. This course had been requested by the Department of the Navy and was the first of its kind to be implemented under the navy's new preparedness program. The country was slowly preparing for war.

When World War II broke out, the academic year was accelerated to make it possible for baccalaureate students to complete their four year degree programs in less than three years. Another response to the war was to offer a variety of technical training programs, in diesel engineering, industrial management, electronics, and communications for the armed services. In 1930, the navy arranged to have a select group of experienced officers in the submarine service undertake graduate studies in diesel engineering at Penn State. A master of science degree program featuring laboratory and classroom studies was administered by the Engineering Experiment Station. The program grew during the 1930s and became the model of the program offered during World War II.

Research in the mechanical engineering department rounded out the college's contribution to the war effort. The diesel laboratory and engineering technical programs trained navy personnel and provided the navy with a pool of consultants drawn from the department's faculty and research staff. The thermal laboratories conducted research on insulation for ships and various types of buildings for use in all climates. A climatometer (controlled weather room) was constructed. Through this facility, the mechanical engineering research staff studied such problems as the structural failure in the hulls of Liberty Ships, lubricant modification for use at high altitudes, low-temperature, low-oxygen environments for jet engines, and moisture-controlled drying procedures to be used when, after victory, it would be necessary to store the thousands of World War II ships. The full-time staff of the station had grown from seven in 1940 to more than thirty-five in 1946, at which time the budget of $390,000 was derived from contracts and grants from industry and federal and state government.

Faculty turnover was high because of the draft and enlistments, as well as retirements, and the opportunities to obtain qualified replacements were almost nonexistent. However, the department managed to continue classes by shifting instructors and teaching assignments. In 1943, the School of Engineering awarded its first master's degree to a woman-in mechanical engineering. A Frenchwoman, she studied under P. H. Schweitzer.

The draft and enlistments reduced the male population at Penn State, and by fall 1943, regular enrollment consisted of 1,764 women and 1,150 men. In addition to the accelerated baccalaureate program, the college ran several training programs for the War Department: the V-12 program for the navy and marines, a flight crew training program for the Army Air Corps, and the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP). In addition, the college had contracts with the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, Hamilton-Standard Propeller Division of the United Aircraft Corporation, Consolidated-Vultee Corporation, and the Glenn L. Martin Company to train women in fundamental engineering skills. All these special programs offered basic education in English, mathematics, and specialized courses required by the War Department. The duration of the programs varied. At their peak in 1943, the programs had an enrollment of 2,600 students, which, together with the regular student population, brought total enrollment to 5,700 students.

Above: U.S. Naval Reserve ensigns overhauling diesel engines in the north corner of the ME building.
Right: ensigns in their "home room" in one of the Engineering Units.

In the fall of 1941, C. C. Dillio returned to Penn State and was put in charge of the diesel engineering program for the training of the "ninety-day wonders" — naval officers. One of his students, Edmund S. Muskie, later became well known in U.S. politics as senator from Maine, secretary of state, and vice presidential candidate with Hubert H. Humphrey in 1972. In the ASTP program, one of Dillio's students was R. E. Untrauer, who became head of civil engineering at Penn State in the 1970s. Another student in the navy's undergraduate program, Lee Everett (no relation to H. A. Everett), later became an instructor in the department. After receiving his M.S. degree, Everett left Penn State for the Philadelphia Electric Company and rose to become chairman and CEO. He received Penn State's Outstanding Alumni Award in 1971. In the postwar years, W. B. McCormick, who became head of aeronautical engineering during the 1970s, was one of Dillio's students in a course on internal combustion engines. In 1960, C. C. Dillio received Penn State's prestigious Lindback award for outstanding teaching.

In 1944, the two-year aeronautical engineering option offered to mechanical engineering students since 1942 was discontinued and aeronautical engineering was established as a separate department. David J. Perry, who directed the option, became the first department head. By the fall of 1944, the wartime activity was winding down. Within a year, the war was over.

A classmate of Lee Everett, Gordon J. Van Wylen, was an instructor in the department and received a master's degree. Van Wylen subsequently received a doctoral degree from the University of Michigan, joined its faculty, and became head of the department. He is the author of several books, including a highly respected text in thermodynamics that has been the one most widely used in the United States for the past twenty-five years. Van Wylen is currently president of Hope College in Holland, Michigan.