[AT] OT NCSU/Hilliard

Thu Aug 30 12:08:54 PDT 2007

Web search turned this up.

http://www.topsail-island.info/wordpress/index.php/the-many-faces-of-garland-hilliard/

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Larry D Goss" <rlgoss at evansville.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2007 1:47 PM
Subject: Re: [AT] OT NCSU

> FWIW, Houck and Hammond are no longer with us, but Garland Hilliard is
> living in the mountains of North Carolina and spends his time carving
> absolutely magnificent objects out of wood.  He does not use the kits of
> carving objects that are available from some supply houses and craft 
> shops,
> but rather wanders through the mountains and picks up suitable "drift 
> wood"
> that has unusual form that may suggest a bird, animal, or other living
> thing.  He then turns these into very realistic artistic still-life's 
> which
> bring several hundred dollars each.  Some people collect decorative
> porcelains from Europe.  I would love to be able to afford to collect some
> of Garland's carvings.
>
> And then, there are those of us who collect tractors.  :-)
>
> Larry
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "David Bruce" <davidbruce at yadtel.net>
> To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" 
> <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
> Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2007 10:23 AM
> Subject: Re: [AT] OT NCSU
>
>
>> I'm a bit younger than Charlie but my roommate was in engineering when
>> we were at NCSU  (see we were past the cow college days - then called
>> Moo U) and I remember him mentioning Houck and Hammond (probably
>> Hilliard also but I'm not sure).  I was in Textile Chemistry so math was
>> a constant thing.  By the time I was there calculators (mid to late
>> 1970's) were everywhere (instead of engineering students walking around
>> with slide rules clipped to their belts they had calculators). I was the
>> same however I found a slide rule for sale at the student store for $5
>> so I bought it and carried it as a backup - Post as I recall..
>> David
>> NW NC
>> who should be out on the MF 35 mowing the jungle (crabgrass grows here
>> even with no water).
>>
>>
>> Larry D Goss wrote:
>>> [WAY off topic.  Delete if not interested in a bunch of trivia.]
>>>
>>> Marshall plays things pretty low-key.  You have to modify the URL to
>>> bring
>>> up the homepage and then go searching.  Way down in the middle, you will
>>> find him listed along with the fact that he started the website.  But 
>>> you
>>> have to know to look for his name or you won't find it.
>>>
>>> Small world, Charlie.  I knew Houck, Hammond, Hilliard, and all those
>>> other
>>> guys in Raleigh.  Back in the 60's, the "route to teaching" in the
>>> eastern
>>> schools was for a retiring military officer (particularly graduates of
>>> West
>>> Point and Annapolis) to apply for a position in the Graphics department.
>>> Over the years, all the faculty in that department have been my
>>> professional
>>> colleagues and personal friends.  They still are.  It's been less than 
>>> 24
>>> hours since I communicated with some of them by email.
>>>
>>> I still have my original sliderule too (a Pickett)  but I sold most of 
>>> my
>>> collection to Bear on his way to the Portland show with H. L. about six
>>> years ago.  I have a six-foot Post Versalog hanging on the wall above 
>>> the
>>> computers in my office.  I used that to teach students how to use a
>>> sliderule for the first fifteen years I was in a classroom, but by the
>>> late
>>> 70's that technology was pretty much left in the dust.  None of those 
>>> big
>>> engineering tool companies you and I have mentioned are still in
>>> business.
>>>
>>> What's really strange about what was taught in introductory engineering
>>> courses is that Gasparde Monge (the father of Descriptive Geometry) had
>>> enough influence over Napoleon Bonaparte that he got that discipline
>>> incorporated into the curriculum at the military school for French
>>> officers
>>> at Meziere (sp) over the objections of all the other staff military
>>> officers
>>> Napoleon had in 1803.  All the other military officers wanted to use
>>> calculus-based instead of algebra-based science in the curriculum, but
>>> Monge
>>> insisted on the latter, particularly using geometry to calculate the
>>> ballistic trajectories of cannon balls so that "test volleys"
>>> didn't have to be used.  The bottom line is that the Western
>>> world continued to use algebra and geometry for more than 150 years
>>> beyond
>>> the time that it should have been used.  MIT was the first US university
>>> to
>>> make the complete conversion to calculus back in 1955, and other
>>> engineering
>>> schools have slowly followed suite.  The split that developed between
>>> engineering and engineering technology is fundamentally based on the
>>> difference in how sciences are taught.
>>>
>>> Descriptive geometry was a military secret during and after the
>>> Napoleonic
>>> wars.  We were so desperate to have it taught in this country that an
>>> envoy
>>> traveled to France and hired Claude Crozet (student of Monge) to teach 
>>> it
>>> at
>>> West Point, sight
>>> unseen.  When he arrived, he discovered to his dismay that West Point 
>>> was
>>> "in the sticks" and none of the
>>> cadets spoke or understood French well enough to understand what they
>>> were
>>> being taught.  He ended up writing the first text for the material in
>>> English (1821).  His wife was so upset at living conditions at West 
>>> Point
>>> that Crozet quit a few years later and he moved his family to Virginia
>>> where
>>> he
>>> supported himself by surveying and investing in schemes to build a water
>>> passage from the east coast to the Ohio river (up the Potomac across to
>>> the
>>> Gauley, down to New River, the Kanawha, and into the Ohio at
>>> Gallipolis-Point
>>> Pleasant.)  There are still a few of those first edition books on
>>> Descriptive geometry floating around.  I have seen one in Texas and one
>>> in
>>> Tuscaloosa, Alabama.  It's a large book with fold out pages, bound in
>>> leather, gold-leaf printing on the cover, etc. -- pretty nice looking 
>>> for
>>> a
>>> government publication by today's standards.
>>>
>>> In among the equipment that I sold to Bear were a couple of special
>>> sliderules from the Korean war era that were used for aiming Howitzers.
>>> As
>>> late as that time, our military was still making regular use of the
>>> technology "forced" on us by Gasparde Monge.
>>>
>>> Enough already.  Let's talk tractors.
>>>
>>> Larry
>>>
>>>
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