Evy Reis

This is Evelyn Irene "Evy" Reis, who died just over a year ago on June 7, 2012, age 93. Evy was a great encouragement to me.

She was born and lived all of her life in Chenoa, Illinois. She was an active writer and very history minded, and it was her I was put in touch with when I was tracking down information about George Ferree, the WWI veteran who built a makeshift radio found at Fort Monmouth.

Ferree it turns out was one of her high school teachers. Evy found clippings for me at the Chenoa Historical Society, and put me in touch with Eddie Ferree, George's son, who had his father's journal.

She stayed in touch after that, sending words of encouragement, some of her own writing, and a Christmas card every year. She was a delight and, even though I never met her in person, I miss her a great deal. Thank you, Evy.

From her obituary:

Evelyn was born September 17, 1918 in Chenoa the daughter of Harry James and Mary Henrietta (Oldenburg) Miller. She married Hugo Robert Reis on November 17, 1940 in St. Louis, MO. He passed away on May 20, 1996.

Mrs. Reis was a 1936 graduate of Chenoa High School and attended ISNU, Normal. She was an executive secretary for State Farm Insurance Companies and Chenoa Community Schools from 1951-1974. She spent the next ten years working at Meadows Mennonite Retirement Community, as Volunteer Director and Round Robin Editor. She retired in 1984 and enjoyed winters with her husband in Sarasota, FL.

She served on numerous boards in her community and was an active member of the Chenoa Women’s Club, Arts and Travel Club, and Historical Society.

Evy loved to write and many of her poems and articles are published in national magazines. She wrote and directed pageants over the years for the Chenoa’s Alumni Association, Women’s Club and United Methodist Church. She wrote and directed the pageant “Through the Years II” for Chenoa’s Sesquicentennial celebration in 2004. She authored several articles published for the Chenoa Historical Society to include “Til I Come Marching Home”, “Memories of Chenoa”, “History of Chenoa Schools”, “Chenoa School Memories” and “Thoughts, Memories and Poetry”. In July of 2005 she was named “Chenoan of the Year”

Lee deForest - the "missing" archive

This is Lee deForest, a radio pioneer who invented, among other things, the audion vacuum tube, used in early radio amplification. He also found himself constantly involved in lawsuits and hostile takeovers of his businesses, partly because of his own lack of any real business sense, partly because he sometimes surrounded himself with shady characters, and partly because he patented a few things that in the proper light might seem to have been "borrowed" from other inventors.

In 1906 he was doing well making radio receivers for the military that used a certain detector that bore some similarity to one patented by another radio pioneer, Reginald Fessenden, who sued deForest. Fessended won, and deForest had to scramble to find another detector. He had invented but not perfected the audion. Fortunately for him retired Army general Henry Harrison Chase Dunwoody, who was a vice president of deForest's company, had just invented the carborundum radio detector, arguably the first patented practical semiconductor device. It didn't work very well, but they hired a consultant, G. W. Pickard, who redesigned it and made it a very successful detector. It saved the company, but deForest was kicked out anyway. the only thing he was able to take with him was the patent for his audion tube, which the directors deemed worthless. Eventually it would make a fortune for deForest.

Very little is known about the relationship between deForest and Dunwoody, or the details of how the carborundum detector was discovered. If Dunwoody kept notes they are lost, and deForest barely mentions Dunwoody in his writings (not surprising; deForest was a shameless self promoter). He did write one letter in his later years regretting that Dunwoody, long deceased, never got the credit he deserved.

I have been searching for years for any links between deForest and Dunwoody to flesh out the story. Members of Dunwoody's family have searched in vain (so much appreciation to them!), deForest's works at the Library of Congress have been scoured, but nothing. I had just about given up when I found, by accident, that the History San José archives houses a large collection of deForest materials, including his research notes from the period. I hadn't noticed them before because they had been stored until 1991 in one archive  then moved, effectively without a home, until they were added fairly recently to the History San Jose collection. The archivist was kind enough to offer to dig through the collection to see what he could find. Stay tuned...

Radios, airplanes and WWI

This is from a folder of notes by G. A. Wieczorek, a Signal Corps officer during WWI and an instructor at the Second Corps Signal School at Chatillon-sur-Seine. These are notes regarding using radio with observation from aircraft, one of the first military uses for both radio and airplanes.

Radios evolved dramatically during the first World War, partly because they needed to be small and light enough to be crammed into aircraft. Still they were fiddly things, and flying a wood and canvas plane while constantly adjusting spark gap radio equipment AND trying to avoid being shot down was no small task.


This definition of radio from the 1918 Ellington Field yearbook sums up the situation well.

Radio is the science whereby a pilot, in the leisure seized in the quiet moments of combat with eighteen enemy planes, while under a rattling archie fire, communicates to his commander the complexion, civil occupation and beer preference of a Hun 15,000 feet below.

"Archie" was British (and later American) slang for anti-aircraft guns.

Weather Forecast

From a 1944 Beachhead News, an Army one sheet newspaper printed on the Anzio beachhead in 1944.

This is your armor

As promised, the rest of "The Foxhole".

How to dig a foxhole

I came across this little pamphlet, “The Foxhole: this is your armor”, some time ago but I hadn't identified its origin until recently. There is no date inside and no publishing information, but it does have the look of a WWII document. A few days ago I took a closer look at the tiny logo on the back.

It’s really tiny – not quite half an inch wide – but once magnified I could see plainly that it says “1^st. A/B EAUTC – Reproduction Section”. 1^st A/B indicates that it is a unit of the 1^st Air Force, one of the first four numbered US Air Forces. They have a long history, operating from just before the U.S. entered WWII through today, so just going by that I couldn’t narrow the date down. After a little more digging I found that EAUTC stands for Engineer Aviation Unit Training Center. EAUTCs were relatively short lived due to various reorganizations. The 1^st Airborne EAUTC was at Westover Field, Mass., and (briefly) Richmond, Va. For just one year, from April 1, 1943 to April 10, 1944. This pamphlet was likely printed before the move, when more units were assigned there, so it likely dates to 1943.

Can you tell I love research? I was going to make some pun about digging, but I resisted. Sort of.

More information about the EAUTCs is here.

I'll post more pages from this pamphlet soon.

Technology

Call me old fashioned, but this is what I record interviews on. Sure, I could invest in some new fancy schmancy digital recorder, like this one, but I already had the (free!) Radio Shack Cassette recorder, and it worked for telephone interviews too! 

And I like the tapes. Sure, I converted them all to digital for backup, which wouldn't have been necessary with a digital recorder, but there is something nice and substantial about old cassette tapes. The interview has become an object with weight and not just a digital file. They are shiny and click together in their box and when someone asks me what I've been up to I can point to a big pile of tapes and say "see? I have been interviewing! There is substance! I am working!"

Still, looking back at that digital recorder, I can't help but think how much easier this all could have been. Sigh.