NASA referred to its KC-125 aircraft as the “weightless wonder” because it carried college students and their experiments into micro-gravity by flying in parabolic patterns to create an environment of near weightlessness. But most members of S&T’s Miners in Space program in the early 2000s knew it as the “vomit comet” for its motion sickness-inducing…
It was “over a few root beer floats” one night that James Bogan and Frank Fillo decided to make a documentary of Thomas Hart Benton’s “A Social History of the State of Missouri,” the mural housed in the Missouri State Capitol. Bogan, a Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor emeritus of art at Missouri S&T, and Fillo,…
As the auto industry begins to fully embrace the notion of electric vehicles, it has EV pioneers like Jon Bereisa to thank. Bereisa, who earned a bachelor’s degree in 1967 and master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1970, helped General Motors bridge the gap from the EV1 electric vehicle to the Chevrolet Volt’s successful launch.…
As the clock ticked down to the year 2000, computer scientists around the world were fretting about the so-called “Y2K bug,” which many feared would wreak havoc on our heavily computerized society. In the late 1990s, a computer program created by Rex Widmer, a computer science graduate in 1972, put many minds at ease. Widmer’s…
Three S&T faculty helped strike down claims that “juiced” baseballs were the cause of a spike in Major League home run hits in 1987. Dr. Lee Bain and Dr. V.A. Samaranayake in mathematics and statistics, along with Dr. Terry Lenhoff in mechanical engineering, were hired as independent testers. Bain and Lenhoff brought to the project…
James E. “Jim” Bertelsmeyer, a 1966 chemical engineering graduate and the retired founder, chair and chief executive officer of Heritage Propane Partners in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a past president of the Miner Alumni Association, a member and past chair of the Missouri S&T Academy of Chemical Engineers, a member of S&T’s Order of the Golden…
A registered professional engineer, John Toomey, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering in 1949 and 1951, founded both VSE Corp. and Starr Management Corp. He is a member of the Naval Institute and holds five patents for photographs, safety and missile equipment as well as a copyright on design and technical-drawing computer…
Frito-Lay’s Topeka, Kansas, plant operates 24 hours a day, so while most of us are sleeping, Catherine Swift, a 2010 graduate in mechanical engineering, is monitoring production lines that produce bagged snack foods, ready for supermarket shelves. Swift helps monitor the plant’s production process for moisture and oil levels, and each shift compares its batches…
Roy Wilkens, EE’66, and Mario A. Padilla, MetE’60, worked for years to challenge and change the status of the telecommunications industry in the early to mid 1990s. Wilkens, founder, president and CEO of telecommunications company WilTel, worked to challenge and outpace the “big three” at the time of AT&T, MCI and Sprint. His 3,500 employees…
The first game in Miner football history was played on Nov. 20, 1893, and the first Miner touchdown wasn’t scored until the next season by G.W. Smith, but the real story of the Miner football team wouldn’t take place until two decades later. In 1914, the MSM team beat Mizzou 9-0, spawning wild celebrations in…