| Thoughts On The Power Lab When I was asked to put together something about the demise of the Department power lab I immediately thought to myself " oh no, something else to do"; but then as I thought more about it I decided it was an opportunity to have some fun thinking about one of the 'institutions' of the Department and of EE itself. The major professional society in our field back then was the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the backbone of which was people working in the power industry including many of the UNH EE graduates. In the beginning there was Demerit Hall where EE lived for about four decades with the Physics Department. Many of you alumni remember it well. In those days DC was as important as AC and the room full of batteries in the back provided an impressive source of power for such experiments. (I remember visiting one of those Demerit labs as a junior high school student in 1948 when my brother, Stan Clark, '49, was a junior in the EE program.) In 1949 a new building on the hill, Kingsbury Hall, was finished to house the engineering departments and the engineering experiment station. However, the bids had come in much higher than the available funds, so there was no furniture (not even seats in the classrooms, so I was told); no lab tables; the building height was reduced, which reduced the ventilation space, etc. In fact, in the fall of 1949 the EE Department was still operating out of Demerit. Professor William B. Nulsen was very much the Department Power Guru at the time and was upset by the fact that conduits that were supposed to be installed in the machine room were missing. As was his inclination, Prof. Nulsen (fondly and otherwise known as 'The Bull') went out and rented a gasoline powered jack hammer and with the help of a young instructor named John Hraba, just back from Yale, proceeded to produce a hole in the new cement floor. The dean at the time, Dean Seeley, did not take too kindly to a Professor in EE jack-hammering his new pet building apart. After some negotiating, it was decided that if no reinforcing rods were severed it would be OK. Now if you are cutting a hole for a very large conduit what is the probability that you won't encounter any reinforcing rods? It seemed that a few years later Prof. Nulsen found on his desk one morning some beautiful silver plated pieces of reinforcing rod mounted on a base; no one would admit to being the donor. But I suspect when Dean Seeley visited Prof. Nulsen in his office he probably wondered about the origin of the odd item. I am quite sure that during January of this year when the workmen were removing the big machines that made up the power busses in the back room and the large power panel in the lab, there were the ghosts of people and memories floating around that relate to many of us who spent time there as students and teachers. Some of the memories were pleasant ones of working with your lab group in the spirit of comradeship who was going to throw the breaker in, who was going to face Prof. Nulsen and ask for the wrong meter, who was going to man the slide wire that controlled the field and the speed of the machines. Then some of us remember turning white when something blew up in our faces. However, we all had a bit of character cleansing when we realized that something we had created (connected up) could injure us or lead to our demise. That is an experience which has forever gone (sadly) from our curriculum. What fun is it to short a 10 volt supply that senses our mistake and automatically limits the current to a safe value - no smoke, no pop, nothing burned? How can that compare to standing near a motor - generator set with the speed control in your hand, feeling the vibration of the cement floor under you, the power in your hand of speeding it to destruction, or the possibility of catching your clothing in the shaft and having it thump you to death? A strict Nulsen rule was no neckties in the lab. The Bull had strict rules and was, how shall I say, a bit abrupt with some students; but I know first hand that he anguished about giving a low grade to a student. By the fall of 1951, the Department and its power lab were in full operation in Kingsbury in time for the likes of students such as Donald Melvin, 1950 and yours truly, in 1952. Professor Leon Hitchcock was just finishing his long career as chairman and the Dean appointed Prof. Alden L. Winn as the new chairman. Both Professor Winn and Hraba had done their undergraduate work at UNH and Prof. Murdoch came in 1952 as an instructor and graduate student. Professor Blanchard had arrived as an instructor in 1950. I have always poked fun at Joe Murdoch saying that I had to put up with him as my instructor in five of my undergraduate courses since both Winn and Hraba were away at the Univ. of Illinois during parts of my undergraduate career. I asked for comments from other faculty and received notes from Prof.'s Murdoch , Pokoski, and Melvin. They follow here.
From Joe Murdoch: The slide wire resistors, that were used for field control, were stored on a shelf below the counter in the instrument cage. They were stashed perpendicular to the shelf so that one end stuck out a bit. This end had a wire sticking straightup from the slide terminal. Across from the shelf were the instrument shelves. As I bent down to get an ammeter, I caught my pants on the wire and got about a 6-inch rip in the back, with a bad scratch to boot. I uttered several choice words and just then Hitch walked in. I told him, angrily, what had happened and he started to undo his belt as a prelude to loaning me his pants. He broke me up and thus I calmed down and resumed teaching the lab… (For those who know Professor Hitchcock, this was an example of his genuine kind nature and wonderful sense of humor.) From John Pokoski: Ron, here are a couple of my memories of the power lab which you may find useful for Signals and Noise… 1. My first assignment (from Chairman Murdoch) when I arrived here in September 1967 was to teach the service course for Mechanical Engineers. I noticed there was a lab involved, and I asked where it was. I was directed to the "Power Lab" and went down to look it over. I saw the power distribution panel, the big motors and generators, the heavy cables, etc., and immediately left Kingsbury Hall, walked downtown, found John Sakowski and bought a liability insurance policy. I had a pretty strong undergraduate power background, so I wasn't particularly worried about being able to run the stuff, but I was concerned about keeping twelve (at a time) MEs from killing themselves. My fears weren't groundless. I would regularly give them scary talks about the potential danger of the equipment they were using. I taught them all the safety rules. (No ties, one hand behind back, connect to "hot" terminals last, etc.) Moreover, I had a rule that no group should power up its circuit until I checked it. One fine day, as I worked with a group at one end of the lab, a loud explosion occurred, coupled with a blinding flash of light, and shortly followed by a strong smell of ozone. A few seconds later, when I could focus my eyes again, I noticed the rear lab group consisted of two students in a stupified daze, and the third looked like he had just seen a demon. It turned out that the first two were the smart/wiseguys of the group who never touched a circuit. They simply told the third guy what to do, and he followed orders. Well, he took two leads off the "Blue Bus" with about 120 volts and several thousand amps behind it, and attempted to connect them across the circuit breaker. (They had gotten tired of waiting for me to come check their circuit.) However, he attempted to simultaneously plug both of them into the same brass connector - somehow thinking that the two holes in the same block of brass were isolated from each other. Luckily, no one was injured. Naturally, I had no further trouble with students being too impatient to wait for me to check their circuits. For many years, when I wandered into the power lab, I would notice the brass connector with the quarter-inch gouge in it, and my hair would still stand on end as I remembered. 2. In the late '60s, Bill Dalton was an instructor who often taught the power courses. It was obvious to me that he had a lot of respect for the late "Bull" Nulson, because Bill always wore a white shirt (sleeves rolled up) to lab, and puffed and chewed on a big black stogie, á la Bull. (Can you imagine the uproar this would cause today? A Cigar In Lab!) Anyway, one day as I was passing through the power lab, Bill signaled for me to see him. He whispered, "Watch the group in front of us. They are trying to start a motor using a starter box that will draw about 40 amps, but they have the circuit breaker set for 15." I recognized the group - good students, a little cocky, and quite competitive with each other. Of course, every time the student sufficiently raised the starter switch, the breaker would trip. The others would give him a dirty look and he would reset the breaker and try again. Only this time he would pull the starter faster. Breaker tripped. Next time he would pull slower. Breaker still tripped. More dirty looks and comments. Then the starter student would say that the circuit hooker-upper had connected the circuit wrong. The circuit hooker-upper would find no flaws. Then he would accuse the circuit designer of designing it wrong. More rechecking to no avail. This went on, in circular fashion, for at least an hour, with Bill and I somewhat unsuccessfully trying to hide our guffaws. The atmosphere got pretty heated. Finally one of them figured it out and switched breakers. Bill wasn't being nasty. He was teaching them the way Bull taught him. Give the student a chance to bail himself out of a problem in a pressure situation. I often wonder how much our students miss by not having to take power lab. Not that the theory and hands-on experience of working with machinery is critical in this day and age. I just think that you learn a lot about individual responsibility by designing your own tests, selecting your own meters, and verifying your own results, especially when your life is on the line. But times change. For better and for worse. From Don Melvin: My interactions with the power lab occurred in three ways. I was a member of the faculty and thus ran lab sessions down there. I was also a student and had many experiments to perform in those spaces, mostly under the supervision of Bill Nulsen and John Hraba. In addition, when I entered UNH as a freshman in 1950 Kingsbury had just opened and there turned out to be much left to be done in the Power Lab over the next few years. I worked for Bill as a student worker during several of my years as an undergraduate. No matter what role I was playing in the Lab one thing was always very clear; Bill Nulsen was in charge and he set the standards. I recall a time when I had been sent to the old forge shop in Hewitt Hall to pick up some brackets that they had made for mounting a piece of test equipment on the wall of the Power Lab. One of the two brackets was slightly different from the other. Bill told me to take them back and get the job done over "the way it should have done in the first place". I made the mistake of suggesting that the differences were not that great. I quickly took the brackets back and made no more suggestions of that nature. I also remember when another student worker asked if he could use anything but black paint. Bill said, "Use any color you want, as long as it's black". As a faculty member I always felt that one had to be careful downstairs. Bill was always aware of how the other faculty were behaving in his domain, especially those most recently hired. It is my opinion that a number of those who joined the Department did not stay, in part, because they did not measure up when it came to the Power Lab. Bill could be tough if he didn't feel you were doing things his way which, of course, was almost always the right way. Safety was always a serious matter. One had to be constantly alert, for example, when there would be two different lab sections working at the same time thus resulting in perhaps twenty students working on six different experiments. I was there one time when a student dropped the load on a series motor. This of course caused the motor to speed up, but with all of the noise in the lab it was not immediately noticeable. As the motor began to "take off" the sound of the motor made clear what had happened. I started to run for the appropriate circuit breakers but Bill, by going over a motor generator like a track star, got there first. It was the fastest I ever saw him move. The second fastest thing that moved that day was the student leaving, at Bill's request. Sometimes errors were made in spite of all the warnings the students were given. I was with my class one time when a student pulled one of the brass connectors out of its mate on the main distribution board and accidentally put it in contact with the other side of the generator output, thus creating a short. A substantial part of the brass plugs, male and female evaporated and brass nodules flew everywhere. Fortunately, none of them landed on exposed student flesh although one student received a burnt hole in his shirt. Bill was right to constantly worry about safety. Clearly, the time of the blue, red, yellow and green buses are gone. The instrument cage, which used to be off limits to students, is inhabited by a graduate student…and the digital experiment has replaced that of the three phase 220 volt system. I am sure Bill understands, but I bet that there are times, in the middle of the night, when you can smell a cigar down there. Maybe he is still checking up on his lab. 'Nuff said. Ron Clark NOTICE: Those of you who have nostalgic memories of your days in the power lab can obtain your own personal, original brass power panel connector (supplies limited) by sending a nominal donation of $25 to the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department. These gifts will be deposited in the student projects account, which helps provide support for undergraduate student projects. Checks should be made payable to UNH - Dept. ECE with an accompanying note specifying that the donation should go to the ECE Power Lab Fund. |
