May 10, 2012

About 25 years ago (1987) I was living in Boston and one day we took
some out of town friends for a tour of the MIT campus.

After walking around for a few minutes we were approached by an
elderly gentleman who asked us if we wanted to see something
interesting. We said why not and followed him into a building and into
a lab. At this point I looked around and turned to my wife and friends
and said in an astonished tone, “Do you know who this is? It’s Doc
Edgerton!”

He proceeded to give us a strobe demonstration and told us about work
he was doing exploring the floor of the Charles River. He spent a
couple of hours with us and the lasting memory I will always have is
that he was so excited about what he showed us – as though he had just
discovered it all yesterday!

What a great day that was! What a great man – never to be forgotten.

Thanks, Doc!

by Claire Calcagno

Have you been to the MIT Fencing Studio lately, at the DuPont Athletic Center?  Check out Doc Edgerton’s multi-flash image of fencers from the 1930s used as inspiration for the studio’s renovation last winter.  The studio, which hosts the Cambridge Fencing Center, has been transformed with an entire wall featuring a phenomenal 59-foot mural designed by Wing Ngan (Ink Design, Inc., 2011). The mural derives from an image that Doc Edgerton took in May 1939 ,when he photographed two fencers in action at his studio: Joseph Lewis, a student at MIT in the 1920s and Silver Medal winner at the 1932 Olympics, and MIT fencing team captain Hrant Isbenjian.  In fact Lewis had started coaching the MIT fencing team two years earlier, in 1937.

Over seventy years later, their lunges and thrusts provide a vivid backdrop to today’s fencers at the Cambridge Fencing Center studio.

There are a good many Edgerton images around the MIT campus; this project is the latest addition.  Can you locate all the other sites?

Doc Edgerton with colleagues at EG&G in 1959.

Doug Leaffer

February 1, 2010

I worked as a Senior Scientist with several of Doc’s colleagues at EG&G Global Environmental & Oceanographic Systems (GEOS) in Waltham from 1992 until that division closed in late 1994. Great people, innovative spirit, and cutting edge technology – dedicated to solving environmental problems, hands-on. The team there included Bruce Magnell, Tony Schanzle, Jay Borkland, Rory Smyth, and myself – Doug Leaffer – amongst many others. Long live EG&G!

Doc Edgerton with underwater camera equipment, in 1967.

Brewster Kahle (MIT 1982)

January 3, 2010

Doc was an elder statesman of MIT by the time I was there — he helped me by always being willing to speak at events I was organizing.

As I recall, it was out of the blue that he said, “You should read Ben Franklin’s autobiography; I did when I was your age, and it was important,” or something like that. It took me a year or so to find it in a used book store (this was before the Internet) and I read it and it has absolutely changed the course of my life. What a gift.

Xenon flash lamp, 1960.

Joe Parchesky (MIT, EE 1964)

January 7, 2011

I was an undergraduate student at MIT from 1960 to 1964 and graduated
with a BSEE. I had the pleasure of taking a couple of the courses that
Doc Edgerton taught. I have fond memories of the time spent in the
Strobe Lab taking high speed pictures of rifle bullets in flight and
other assorted things. Doc was also a guest lecturer in some of my
other classes. I loved the wax ‘foot’ candle he used to carry around
whenever he was lecturing on something related to light. My favorite
Edgerton-ism that I have remembered for 50 years was when he was
describing the current decay waveform for a flash tube: “It decays out
to infinity which might be as long as 10 microseconds.” Doc was also
my senior thesis advisor. I did a study of the triggering on a small
xenon flash lamp using an EG&G TW oscilloscope, which was the fastest
available at the time.

My association with Doc Edgerton extended beyond the academic one at
MIT. I also worked four summers and part-time during my sophomore and
senior years at EG&G in Boston (and later in Bedford). Not only did I
earn a significant portion of my educational expenses, but I gained a
wealth of practical knowledge and experience that served me well in my
early career. Three interesting experiences from that job are (1)
working on underwater power supplies with an aeronautical engineer; (2)
spending 6 weeks in 1962 on Christmas Island during the final days of
the atmospheric nuclear testing program conducted by the US; and (3)
helping to develop a xenon flash tube system for the Gemini-Agena
space program that was used as a manual docking aid for early space
craft.

Students during night-time photography experiments at MIT in 1964.

Barry Rosof (MIT, mid-1960s)

September 8, 2011

I was one of those who hung around Doc’s lab. The time frame was about 1963 – 65 [possibly earlier]. We included Marty Klein ’62, Bob Schildkraut, Carl Morey ’60 and if I remember correctly John Treadwell (sp?).

One of the thrills was to help Doc teach his one week summer course. A picture of me shooting a blank from a pistol, taken by Carl Morey ’60, was included in one of Doc’s books. It is wrongly attributed to me, not Carl, with my name spelled wrong. Well, I did shoot the pistol and the shock wave did set off the strobe, so I guess I took the picture, but Carl did all the work of setting it up.

After finishing the course one year, Doc took 20 of us for lunch at Durgen Park. He introduced us to all who would listen — not a
characterisic of Durgen Park employees — that we were all his children. In a way we were.

Of course we did other things. I took pictures of bullets piercing all sorts of things and was a subject for Dr. Rowe Wells (of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital) in his studies of blood flow in the capillaries of the eye.

As for me, as I am a metallurgist who was not particularly interested in making a career of high speed instrumentation, the experience was personal. It was having fun, interacting with Doc and being part of a laboratory that Doc created. People, as much as or even more than technology, was the name of the game.

The founders of EG&G: Herb Grier, Ken Germeshausen and Harold Edgerton.

Glenn Campbell

March 6, 2012

I worked at “EG&G” for 13 years back in the 1970-80′s, of which the E
is the Doc Edgerton force.

What I remember most about Doc Edgerton was not so much his amazing
work in science, that came so naturally to him, but of his grace,
compassion, his elegance, and the way he presented himself to ALL
people that worked directly or indirectly for him at EG&G.

Every year they (Doc E., Doc Grier, and Doc Germeshausen) would throw
their annual year end party and expected all to attend and there would
be no no shows. All three gentlemen would visit each table
individually and tend to recognize you not as a subordinate but as an
equal. They would make you feel like you were the most important
person that night.

He was most impressive and inspiring to all that were lucky enough to
have known him, especially myself.

I will always remember the man.

Don Griffin holds a bat, during high-speed photography experiments at Doc's studio in 1937 (?).

G. E. Folk

November 2, 2010

I was a biology student at Harvard University from 1933 until I got
my Ph.D. A delightful experience occurred in my senior undergraduate
year that involved Doc Edgerton and a rattlesnake. I wanted to learn
about poisonous snakes, so I had purchased a rattlesnake to keep in a
glass case.

I was introduced to Doc at MIT, probably by my sponsor,
John Welch. I knew that Doc had developed the electronic strobe light
and the ultra high-speed camera. When I mentioned the rattlesnake’s
strike to him, Doc said he would like to stop that action with his
strobe and camera. He knew that as a rattlesnake strikes, it opens its
mouth, pulls back a membrane, and protrudes the fangs, ready to inject
poison. So I took my rattlesnake in a glass case along with several
mice to Doc’s laboratory. He told me that when he pressed the
trigger on the camera, perhaps a hundred feet of film would fire
rapidly and he wouldn’t be able to stop it, so I was given the
difficult job of saying when the snake was going to strike.

The snake was very interested in the lunch we’d provided it, and
stared at the mouse, obviously deciding how and when to strike. Three
times I thought the strike would occur, but the snake did not
cooperate. Twice when I gave the alert, the film ran through the
camera but the snake didn’t strike, so the film was wasted. The
third time I said “Now!” the snake struck and drew back again so
quickly that the film had not even started running. Doc was very good
natured about all this and took out another camera to photograph the
rattlesnake as it ate its lunch, which had died instantly upon being
bitten.

Several years later, when I was a graduate student, my friend and
colleague, Hermann Rahn, sent Doc another rattlesnake, this time from
Wyoming, so that they could use the stroboscope to measure the
frequency of the rattlesnake’s tail as the snake gave its signature
warning. I know they were successful, though I’m not sure what the
frequency of the rattle was.

At around the same time, another good friend of mine, the brilliant
scientist Donald Griffin, worked with Doc to “stop the flitting
shadow which is a bat and show, in clear photographs, exactly how it
uses its wings” (Griffin 1946, p. 117, see below). In the article,
Don described the experience of working with Doc to photograph the
bats, as well as Doc’s ingenuity in devising a system to capture the
shots. The findings—bats flap their wings 15 times per second and
fly about 10 m/h—and three of Doc’s photographs were published in
Don’s fascinating article, “Mystery Mammals of the Twilight,”
National Geographic, July 1946, pp 117-134.

The MIT campus, illuminated at night-time by a strobe light beamed from the Prudential Tower across the Charles River in Boston, in 1970.

John Krout (MIT, 1970s)

December 16, 2009

I took Doc’s Strobe Lab class in the fall of 1973. Even then, Doc was looking for new uses for his strobe light and his other innovations.

At that time, the FAA had not yet approved strobe lights as an alternative aircraft warning light for buildings and broadcast towers. As a pilot test, one strobe was installed atop the Prudential Tower in Boston.

That strobe was powerful. I recall flying into town on a foggy night and, when literally no building (and no red warning light) was visible; I watched the flash illuminate the interior of a cubic mile of cotton.

Strobes sometimes fail. That one did while I was taking the course. The lab manager was sent to fix the thing. I volunteered to tag along. Onto the very roof of the Pru. The roof in those days was a pebble surface and had no guardrail. Fortunately the strobe was in the middle of the roof.

Every strobe is a tube containing a noble gas. This tube was six feet long, nestled in a V-shaped reflector. We found a gallon sized capacitor that had failed, and replaced it. The strobe power supply used several of those capacitors.

On the roof at the same time was a broadcast engineering team, possibly from WCVB. The restored strobe immediately made their work almost intolerable, even in daylight, even though the reflector aimed most of the periodic lightning skyward.

Doc definitely conveyed to all his students of that era the idea that engineering could be fun as well as challenging. That unique field trip was an example.

Doc Edgerton holds a sonar 'fish' during field-testing on the Charles River in 1972; Cambridge, MA.

Feb. 10, 2012
by Claire Calcagno, Archivist

Doc Edgerton’s exploits field-testing his sonar instruments in the Charles River were recently reported by Abigail McBride ’12 in the winter issue of SCOPE, the student online publication of the Graduate Student Program in Science Writing at MIT.  Abby tells the story of Doc’s indefatigable efforts to make his sonar tools work, even in the “muddy and maddening” Charles.  You can read her article here: “The Best of Labs, the Worst of Labs: Doc Edgerton’s Sonar Tests in the Charles River“.