by Barry Rosof (MIT ’63)
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.
Tags: Edgerton, pistol, student life
