Recently I had my 40 year reunion and brought with me some of the textbooks and other items we used for study. They brought back such strong memories for me I thought I would share them .:.
Item 1 – First Year Chemistry Book
I remember first year chemistry lectures with Norman Olver. Poor Norman had extremely bad eyesight, and (naturally) everyone took advantage of this. I was reminded that he actually allocated particular seats to us all in the Redmond Barry lecture theatre. Naturally (again), no one used their correct seat, andNormanhad to reprimand the wrong student when things caught his eye.
I also recall one student in our chemistry lab group who wasn’t all that sharp. One experiment was called “The effect of pH on the viscosity of proteins”, during part of which we had to experiment with dyeing wool under various conditions. We had snipped small pieces of wool and had them in test tubes with various dyes. This particular student happened into our area and saw the wool pieces, asked about our experiment and concluded that the wool in the test tubes was a protein molecule we had grown! He was amazed that a single molecule was large enough to see with the naked eye. Obviously, we kept this image up by hiding the wool and scissors, and constantly agitating the test tubes whenever he returned to marvel at what we were doing. He sent others down to check it out, but no one else took long to realize what they were witnessing. I wonder where he is now? Probably head of a multinational company.
Item 2 – ‘MUDPAC’ Operator’s Manual
‘MUDPAC’ was a vacuum tube based analog computer located somewhere in the Old Engineering building. It appears I ‘borrowed’ the book, probably because I ran an open day lab on the machine during my course years. I set the machine up to draw pretty SpiroGraph style curves with an XY pen plotter. People queued waiting for their own personalized plot. They were like flower petals etc, and we wore the plotter out after a few hours! It appears I never did return the book.
Item 3 – Hollerith Cards
Hollerith cards were punched cards that reminded many of the agonising and precise preparation these required to make your program work. Normally they were made on a card punch machine, but we poor students weren’t allowed anywhere near such equipment, so the cards we had were special ones with pre cut holes. We poked out the appropriate ones with an opened paper clip.
Other Memories – The term “blocko”
The blocko folk were those who were allowed a ‘block exemption’ because they had a diploma from a place like RMIT (long before it was a university). I do recall one lecturer telling us the difference between a University and aTechnicalCollege.
The story went something like this:-
“In a University, the first lecture is at 10, the first student walks in a few minutes after 10, the lecturer at about 10 past and they begin.”
“Whilst in aTechnicalCollege, the first lecture is at 8:30. The students are all seated by 8:25, the lecturer walk in at 8:29 and says ‘Good morning class’, and they all write it down.”
That’s how the blockos were regarded.
Other Memories – Engineering ‘Pie Nights’
The Engineering ‘pie nights’ were held in one of the old drawing offices. A large box of very hot pies (and I suspect a larger quantity of beer), would arrive and be placed on one of the tables. Because there was such a large crowd, and lots of drawing tables in the way, not many could get close to the box of pies. Therefore calls would come from the outer saying “chuck us a pie Charlie”, whence a steaming pie would trace an arc across the room, only to rupture when it found a target. Sometimes that target was even the outstretched hand of the caller, but not always! The hot contents would then proceed to burn the target. It didn’t pay to be in the firing line!
Other Memories – What OHS issue?
I have another story about a lecturer (I think it might have been McCutcheon – but not sure). In one lecture held in the Old Eng building, he was demonstrating several types of outdoor lighting tubes, and the idea was to let us see how each different tube rendered colour.
I remember that it was a bright sunny day with the sun casting black shadows on the window sills where the blinds were lowered. You might wonder why I remember the weather, but there is a good reason. I suspect he started off by lighting up some sort of incandescent lamp – probably a quartz halogen – and you will recall that I mentioned these were outdoor lighting tubes, so they produced quite a lot of light! He then held up a colour chart near the lamp so we could see how well it rendered colour. A bit glary, but OK. He then progressed (I don’t recall how many steps) to a mercury vapour lamp. These are like the MCG lights, and take several minutes to fully light up, but when they do, they are bright! Again the colour chart was placed near the blinding light for us to see that it wasn’t as good as the incandescent lamps in rendering colour. Most of us were shielding our eyes by this stage, but the lecturer seemed able to stand centimeters from this mini sun with no problems at all.
However, the best was yet to come when he produced a sodium vapour lamp. These are the yellow street lights, and are by far the brightest of the group. Again these take several minutes to reach full brightness, and again the colour chart was held up close to the lamp, now glowing so brightly that the light from the lamp now overpowered the strong sunlight and sent shadows OUT of the windows! There were loud howls of protest from those in the room to shut it off, with everyone cowering behind books, hands or anything to prevent their eyeballs from catching fire. But still the lecturer protested that we should look at the colour chart – he was apparently unfazed by the inferno on his bench. Now you see why I remember it being a sunny day.
Filed under: 1970s, EE, Staff Stories Tagged: 1960s Culture, 1970s Culture, blocko, Engineering, Hollreith Cards, Melbourne School of Engineering, Melbourne Uni, Melbourne University, MUDPAC, MUESC, Norman Olver, Old Engineering, pie nights, Society for Confining of Immoral Impulses Amongst Engineering Students
