DISTANCE LEARNING

To the Editor: I agree with Ronald Corradin (Letters, June) that distance learning is not accepted in all applications. However, it is alive and well in the field of physical asset management. Monash University has offered its postgraduate programs, including Master of Maintenance and Reliability Engineering, for over 20 years. Graduates report good outcomes.

Distance learning is the only practical way for engineers working around the world, often at remote sites, and must surely become more available and usual in other engineering fields. (The average age of our students in 2007 was 38, so “lifelong learning” certainly holds here.)

Ray Beebe
Churchill, Australia

Editor’s note:  The author is a senior lecturer and coordinator, postgraduate programs in maintenance and reliability engineering, in the Gippsland School of Applied Sciences and Engineering at Monash University.

TAKING FAVORS

To the Editor: In answer to Catherine Burch, president of the Tulsa-Northwestern Oklahoma chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (Letters, July): When it comes to asking or not asking for preferential treatment—oh, but you do.

My son recently asked for time off to look after his newborn daughter, because his wife is the big earner in his family and, while not exactly a “stay-at-home” dad, let’s say he carries his load. The answer he got was exactly the same as Ms. Burch reports. The problem is not a “women in the workplace” issue, it is a “how do I cover the temporary loss of a skilled worker while a kid is being brought up” issue.

Yes, he asked for preferential treatment. No, he did not get it. Reason? It could be anything from there being no one to take his place to his boss’s being a nitwit, but it had nothing to do with gender.

Calls for preferential treatment do not bother me, because I believe there are many legitimate reasons why certain segments of the population need a leg up from time to time when they have been left behind in the rat race or have never had the opportunity to join the race in the first place. I think inner-city black kids, as well as Appalachian white kids, both deserve preferential treatment to allow them to catch up with the sons and daughters of college alumni who already get preferential treatment in college placement by accident of birth.

Let’s be honest: There are times when people need special favors. When the favor is justified, accept it with grace.

Douglas L. Marriott
South Lebanon, Ohio

To the Editor: Please let me reassure Catherine Burch of Oklahoma that being treated as “one of the guys” (Letters, July) would not necessarily keep her safe from idiot bosses like the one who told her that “it was not too late to fix that problem” when she told him of her pregnancy.

In 1962, while attempting to interview at a major boiler maker in the Midwest, I was showing drawings of conveyor systems that I had designed at my previous job. I was abruptly informed that I had no future in drafting or design, as my “lettering skills left a lot to be desired.”

I am now nearing retirement as a self-employed plastics engineer and product designer, with over 20 years in Silicon Valley and a lengthy career throughout the Midwest and West Coast in product, tooling, and production design and engineering. My CAD software does a marvelous job of conveying my communications in perfect typeface.

Too many relatives of the big boss and general incompetents have always taken refuge in management, as any Dilbert cartoon can note. Your decision to get “out from under” is the only practical answer to such stupidity.

Robert Cape
Prescott, Ariz.

ENERGY IS NEVER FREE

To the Editor: Your collection of letters in the June issue was interesting, to say the least—almost a Book of Revelations. I was quite taken by the one about journalists and reporters communicating technical information which they have no education in and only hearsay knowledge of.

Perhaps the answer is for schools of journalism to require a certain number of hours of technical subjects, as we engineers are required to take many courses in communication skills. Some suggested subjects might be strength of materials, engineering economics, engineering ethics, and since the words “energy,” “fossil fuels,” or “emissions” seem to appear on every page of the printed media these days, a good basic thermodynamics course, where they would be thoroughly apprised of those nasty “laws” laid on us by Mother Nature.

This is suggested based on that letter from the wind turbine devotee who declared it “. . . generates no entropy or carbon dioxide.” This indicates he maybe had a class in thermo, but was absent on the day the second and third laws were discussed.

Having driven through the downwind valley areas of two of California’s largest “farms” at that time (Tehachapi and San Gorgonio), they had some of the worst stagnant air pollution I’ve seen. It is going to be interesting as to the climate changes that may occur downwind of the near-gigawatt wind farms now under construction. Think of the massive amount of energy being removed from the air masses.

Like so many “green” energy sources, wind farms are not “free” energy.

Ken Johnson, P.E.
Sandia Park, N.M.

FLIGHT PIONEER

To the Editor: I write to you concerning an article published in August 2008, “Landmark in the Air,” which is focused on the accomplishments of aviation pioneer John J. Montgomery (1858-1911). Professor Montgomery was the uncle of my grandmother and I appreciate your and Professor Frank Wicks’s efforts to acknowledge John’s accomplishments and contributions in his quest for human controlled flight. I thought I might take the liberty to provide a few additional details on topics touched on in Professor Wicks’s fine article:

• At the pivotal Conference on Aerial Navigation at Chicago in 1893, Montgomery was given an opportunity to give a speech to the attendees in which he described his early gliders and the flight technology employed in them. In 1910, John read the transcript of the speech to the Aeronautic Society of New York and it was subsequently published in several serials of the period. A reading of the speech reveals that he considered his control technology to have been increasingly successful with each successive craft but, with incremental design changes to the airfoil, each new craft made progressively shorter and shorter glides. That is, Montgomery considered his earliest gliders to be successful in some respects and unsuccessful in others. He was a formally educated scientist, engaged in a broad scientific inquiry and never attempted to claim or emphasize any precedents or records concerning these or any subsequent flights.

• In the period 1894-1895, John revisited the topic of airfoils and refined his theory through a series of investigations with a crude air tunnel and water-current tank. Finally, in 1903, he compiled all that he had previously worked out in terms of technology (1883-1886) and airfoil theory (1894-1895) and incorporated this into a tandem wing design tested initially in model scale. It differed substantially from Langley’s Aerodrome, save for the placement of two wings in the same horizontal plane.

• In 1904, John constructed the first man-size version of his Tandem Wing craft and made successful (manned and unmanned) flight experiments. It wasn’t until after exhaustive experimentation that he finally decided to conduct the public exhibitions of 1905-1906. Rather than being a new Montgomery effort, the famous “Santa Clara” tandem wing craft was the endpoint of years of research and development.

These and many other details will be addressed in a book outlining the life and career of John J. Montgomery, which I and my co-author are in the final stages of preparing and hope to publish next year.

Craig S. Harwood
Santa Cruz County, Calif.