Frederick Judson Ransom, class of 1934, conducted by Marilyn Summers on September the 19th, 1996, at Mr. Ransom's home in Dunwoody, Georgia. The subject of this interview is student life at Georgia Tech and Mr. Ransom's life. Mr. 

Ransom, thank you so much for allowing us to join you here today at your home, and we're looking forward to hearing your story. The best way to begin is at the beginning, so tell us all about you. 

Well, in 1910, in June, I was born in Mount Vernon, Ohio. In Ohio? 

In Ohio. 

Let's see, it was 14 months later, my brother was born, and I remember the two, a wheel of sulky, they called it at that time, where my brother and I sat side by side with this little two-wheel thing and that's the way they we started moving around with our mother I remember the snow we had a little sled my father would pull my brother and I on there were other children before we finally moved from Ohio. 

When I was four, well first my mother had a white carriage that she could put two children in and it had runners on that you could push through the snow. I remember the house we lived in, I think I could find it again, but never been back since. You never have. 

I got within as close as Columbus, Ohio, 35 miles away one time, but my wife and I were trying to outrun a storm, which was due in a snowstorm. We left my family in Pittsburgh. That was my daughter's family. We've been visiting there at Christmas time. Anyway, my mother, two other children were born, two girls. When I was four, they told me we moved to Fort Myers. We moved 20 miles up the river from Fort Myers on an orange grove. 

My uncle and his family moved down at the same time thinking they were going to make a killing off orange crops, which they had some very fine orange trees. About half of the little 18 acres that we have was in orange grove. Very soon, my uncle, after clearing land for gardens, we started raising sweet potatoes right away. 

But a lot went on clearing land, which was mostly palmetto scrub, they called it. 

So we had a number of colored men clearing all that and setting fires and burning off the Palmetto stuff. 

And I remember that because when I walked out in that area, I stepped into the red-hot ashes in one of those piles, things that happened. You learned the hard way, huh? 

The hard way to stay out of there. 

So they were real pioneers then, at that time. They really were. That was 1914 or 1915? 

Yes. I really don't know the date. 

Well, if you were four years old. I was four, so it had to be 1914. I don't remember the war at that particular time, which was going on in Europe. I remember some things in Ohio. I remember my father was a mechanical engineer. 

He took us to the park to see the waterworks, the great big engines that scared me to death as a child. I remember that. 

I shouldn't have been scared because that's the route I took all my life, mechanical engineering, just because of my interest in machinery, anything that would move and run by itself was very thrilling to me. 

So basically you grew up in Fort Myers. Yes, yes, that's right. My mother moved, I remember we took a train and went down. 

My mother was four children, and they always tell the story that she had reserved two berths, a lower and an upper, and somehow a man got into the upper berth. They mixed up the reservations, and he was very drunk. Oh, no. 

Anyway, my mother hustled around and got another berth close enough right there and get out of the way of this man up above. 

So she handled it then? 

But she must have been something to take off and go to the wilderness. With four little children. Yes, with four little children. And so were you raised in an orange grove? 

No, well, only stayed there. as I mentioned, my uncle got the, immediately decided this is not going to work. This is not going to feed two families. He had two daughters and a son. And both of these men built houses for their families. We came down after the houses were built. They were built out of rough lumber and they had a roof made out of palmetto fans, thatched roofs. Of course, very few years after that, they took those palmetto fans off when they could. 

But my uncle left after a couple of years. His children were older than we. His youngest boy was four. No, wait a minute, he would have been about eight, I guess, and then two girls above him. 

Well, they took a boat, went down the river to school every day. 

And also, when I became of age, there was no way to get to school, which was five miles away, up the river. 

So they kept me out until I was seven. 

So my brother and I went to school. 

The first year in school, they had arranged for the mail boat to stop at our dock and pick two little boys up, take them up to Alva. That's a little town up there where they have school. and we went every day, went up there, they let us off in the Alva and we arranged to stay with someone there, don't know, some lady I think that looked after us until the boat came. It went from Fort Myers to, let's see, to Boerhaven, Florida. Every day it went with a veil and came back that night. And we met, they stopped at our dock at Alva, and we got on, came on down. 

One thing I remember during that year, the pilot of the little boat, it was a little small boat with a top on it. It usually had two or three passengers going along. 

And anyway, this one day, the pilot went up to his stopping place and apparently got ahold of some corn whiskey up there. And coming back, the river had hairpin turns. And as he made the first, he didn't make the first turn, he ran straight into the bank. and one of the men passengers there went up and got the wheel and backed up and straightened it out until they got to the next turn and you ran into that one again too. You had an exciting boat ride. Anyway, I know my mother was having a fit waiting for us. We were way after dark getting home that day. That's just one of some of the things you do when you don't have it. Living on a river, huh? 

That's right. 

So then what happened next? 

How long did you live on that and go to that river? 

We lived there until probably 1918. My father, even the revenue from the oranges, they grew vegetables and stuff for us. I think it was about 1918, they had a freeze down there. 

Now, their vegetable garden was put together, and they raised different things there, and they had an irrigation system. 

It was about two acres, I guess, and a pump alongside of the system that grew water out of the river which was warm and they sprinkled all the cabbages and okra and all the other things and that year the temperature went way down below freezing. They lost all their oranges. They cut an orange in two and it had ice in it. They don't have ice in Florida. Maybe they do now. That was a crop, yeah. 

Well, in a year or so, my father became interested in a commissioner. 

He was interested in her, in him, because he had a, he had had two years of mechanical called Engineering. And that was Ohio University. I forget what town it's in, but he had had that. Commissioner got interested in him and taught him a lot about civil engineering. They were, the county was beginning to build some roads up and down the river. 

He was hired and for that job after studying with what he could get from the commissioner the commissioner had been doing some drafting work you know laying out where the road to go and so forth anyway my father did that and he stayed there until they had built roads up and down each side of the river from Al down down below our place on the river, on down to all across the river there and on to Fort Myers. 

He finally built it all the way down to link up with a road which they were working on with Fort Myers up the river. He got all that done and then they moved his office to Fort Myers. 

So you became a city boy then? 

We moved to the city. My brother and I spent three years in school in Alpha, the first three years. Then we entered Fort Myers and graduated from Fort Myers High, finally. 

Now, while you were living in Fort Myers, you had some interesting experiences. Tell us about that. Yeah, well, I was living, of course, I was there from about probably 1918. I remember the war years. Some of the neighbors had two boys. Both of them entered the service. When they came home with their uniforms, I... You can remember seeing them? 

I remember seeing them, you know. 

They had those funny leggings that you put around here, And you wrapped them round and round until you got, that was your leggins. Rats. Yeah, that's what you call them, maybe. 

Anyway, we were, entered Port Byers, and although, let's see, in the third grade, my brother and I entered in the third grade, and we both graduated from Port Byers High. 

But while you were there? 

And you managed to get yourself some jobs, didn't you? 

Yeah, yes. 

My father was a good one for teaching us that someday we might want to go to college, and we better save our money. Oh, so he studied you in an early 70s program. Yeah. 

So both my brother and I worked for the different—we had two papers in town, one morning paper. The Fort Myers Herald, I think it was, and we had Fort Myers Press for the evening paper. I liked the morning paper because that'd give me the afternoon off. And when I was a junior in high school, I went out for football. 

So you needed your afternoon. That was a disaster. It was. We had just two teams. One team played the other team, and I think I was the 22nd man on the whole squad, probably. I was terrible. You knew you weren't getting football styles. I'm as skinny as I am right now and clumsier. Anyway, we both had paper routes to make us some money. 

Well, at that time, the paper cost you 15 cents a week, and we had to collect each week, each Saturday or whenever. 

And you'd be surprised the number of people that couldn't get up 15 cents and tell you, would you come back? 

Maybe I'll have it Monday or something. Anyway, I think I made about $4.50 a week if I collected everything. We had to pay for our papers and so forth. 

But when I had the morning paper route, it was in an area where Thomas Edison lived, and he was on my route. I didn't have to collect from him. He probably had a complimentary subscription, but I didn't have to collect. They told you not to bother, huh? 

Well, I had my books, other people, there were some other people. 

So next door to Edison's place was, could I forget that? 

Henry Ford? 

Henry Ford lived next to him. Henry, they were good buddies. They were so close, Henry Ford. Did you deliver the paper to him too? 

Yes, he was on my paper route. Also Harvey Firestone, the tire man, lived next to him. They had homes that they just kind of came and went, spent their vacations down there. 

But Edison stayed quite a while. He was, as the war ended, the United States realized that they didn't have rubber. They couldn't get rubber in the United States. He had big rubber trees in his yard. but he had started way before. He was trying to do research. And he was examining and collecting plants of every kind. 

He had all kinds of things growing out there in his little garden, different kinds of plants that would, all plants usually have a juice, you know, inside. He'd take that and analyze from each plant, trying to get a substitute for rubber. 

So if we were in a war again, we wouldn't have to depend on South America for rubber. 

Did you ever have an occasion to see him yourself? 

Every class, every mostly junior and senior class in high school went to his place, and he tried to talk to us a little bit. We were science classes, visited his place. He was not one to do anything publicly. He never entered anything in town much, except on special days, if they had a parade. they'd always have Thomas Edison in his old Ford that Henry Ford gave him. It looked like it must have been about a 1918 or somewhere in that area anyway. He'd given it to him. It was one that had a top and had the straps from the top going down to the front. 

I don't remember whether that his car Of course, his car was kept up, was immaculate, I'm sure he can crank it himself or had somebody to do it. Probably so. 

I think maybe one of my stories is about the self -starter, which my father, being a civil engineer and needing a car, the county finally gave him a car that he could drive around. They get stuck in the mud most every day during the rainy season. And my father traveled with the commissioner. His name was Staley, S-T-A-L-E -Y, I believe, Commissioner. One of the old type, fiery tempered politicians. And my father was always his engineer. He moved into Fort Myers. My father was moved into Fort Myers. 

But while we lived on the Orange Grove, he came home one day with a new Ford. They had bought him a new Ford and it had a self-starter on it. 

So he called all of us out to the barn where the car was and I want to show you something. Look, it'll start by itself. All I have to do is push that thing. It was a funny looking thing. 

The thing stuck out about six inches from the floorboard and you had to push it way in and you'd find the makeup and start the car. Of course that's the first starter we ever saw. Pretty exciting. Yeah, very exciting that. He had to show us that. Anyway, I got lost somewhere. You were telling us Mr. Edison had, he didn't have a self-starter, he had a crank. 

It looked like his car was that old, But if he didn't have, if he had a crank, somebody started it for him. He was already a pretty old man by then. Yes, he was, and he was very deaf, so deaf that his wife usually spoke for him to the class. And he just kind of, oh, he just kind of stood there and didn't say much. but the idea we visited his lab, you know, and I don't remember him telling us anything, really. Really? 

It was mostly her talking for him. He didn't communicate very much. 

Were you all aware, though, your teachers had told you what a great scientist and everything he was? 

We knew all about Edison by that time and some of the history books and things. 

What about Henry Ford? 

Did he come into his own then? 

What do you mean? 

I mean, you all knew who he was, too. 

Oh, yes, we knew that because, see, the Ford had, I don't remember the year, but the Ford dated back to about, let me see, I went to the museum a couple of years ago. 

Early 1900s, even 1896, maybe the first one, but so you knew they were celebrities in your community and they were treated like didn't pay too much attention they didn't Edison never came out into the public he didn't want anything to do well since he couldn't hear at all he just his wife would have to shout in his ear when we went to visit him he didn't say much and how about Mr. 

Ford did you ever have an occasion to see him Well, I had an opportunity to talk to him early one morning. He also didn't want anybody to know he was there. He didn't want any publicity. He was there a very short time. 

But I saw him walking one morning when I was delivering my papers. This was another route later. But, you know, our kids are too timid. I wouldn't go speak to him, you know, and yet I should have. Because you knew who he was. I knew who he was, and I have another story about my old Ford that I rebuilt. Oh, you learned to rebuild a Ford, huh? 

Yeah, I dug in one from a vacant lot somewhere. 

I had always wanted some kind of piece of machinery or something to run, So I saw this thing and inquired around the neighborhood. It was a chassis there. It didn't have any seat on it or anything, just a rough chap out in the woods. The motor had been taken apart, and part of it was laying over there. Water was in the engine just standing, and the kids had put some sand in there. Anyway, nobody seemed to claim it I could find, so I drug it home and started working. I was going to make that thing run somehow. About a year later, my father looked at that thing and said, that thing will never run. 

But I guess the most big, greatest excitement of my life is when I got that thing together. I didn't put the exhaust pipes on yet, but it was ready. I visited the junkyard, tore half of it apart, and put it back together. I cracked it one day, and away it went. It did run. Oh, how exciting. Without the exhaust pipes, blue flames came out of each one of those holes where it was. 

But it was running. It ran. 

I put the rest of it together finally, but my father came home that day, and I couldn't wait to get him out there. and I cranked it, and it went again, making an awful loud noise. Wasn't he surprised? 

Oh. 

Well, the thrill that I had when I saw that thing run was something I'll never forget. You knew you had done it against the odds. Pretty exciting, pretty exciting. 

Anyway, I didn't have the money to put tires on it anyway, so I just ran it without any, with flat tires, and I didn't rat it around in a circle in the backyard. There are two or three little stories there, but I don't want to bore y'all. Oh, it's not boring. It's exciting. 

So you got it to run, even though you never really traveled with it anywhere, huh? 

Well, I did, eventually. Eventually you got tires? 

I went to town. It's a good thing the police didn't see me. 

But in kind of testing it out, a half a circle big enough in the backyard to run it through the sand with flat tires. 

So my brother and I, now my third boy in the family was a little fella, about six, and we all drove around the circle and finally got to Ralph, he was about six. We put him up there, we got it started and went. he went around the circle all right but he turned it too far and mechanics will probably know what happened is it started going the other way ran right into the house knocked us we had a house kind of clapboard I guess that was running up and down where it slaps and knocked one of those off and my brother and I put it back together. We never did tell our mother that Ralph drove us around there and ran into the house. He didn't get hurt, I hope. No, he didn't. Didn't bother. All it had for a seat was a round gas tank. Oh, so you had to sit up on this gas tank when you were going around. Sit up on top of there. We had an orange crate. I think later we put on there to sit on. 

Another thing that happened with Ralph, we were the neighbor boys and kids, ran up and down with that old thing on the street, followed it around. 

One day we couldn't get it started, so we put Ralph, the six-year-old, up on there, and we'll all push and get it started. 

Well, he got started, and then we couldn't catch him. there he was. He was going right to a main street about a half a block away. What an exciting time you had for a job. I don't know how we did it but we got it stopped before it got to that intersection. Did you learn a lot from from putting that together? 

Oh yeah. You learned a lot about machinery. I knew all about the Ford. 

Now I don't know anything. I can't get my My own story is so different. Mr. Ransom, tell us about your high school graduation. That's kind of interesting. 

Well, the way it was really very strange how this thing got, we got Thomas Edison out to pass out our diplomas when we graduated. His wife actually gave the speech, the graduation speech when we graduated, and Mr. Edison passed out our diplomas, and he very rarely ever got into anything public. 

And he said this time, well, leading up to that, our principal, a very tall, real skinny, ideal picture of a very straight-laced teacher all her life, She, we selected her as our sponsor for the year, the year that, our last year, our senior year. And she was a good friend of Ms. Edison. 

So that set it up. She got Thomas Edison to sit on the stage with us there. and pass out our diplomas. Such a great, great thing. Oh, what an honor, yes, to him. 

It's even very unusual that his wife would give the speech, isn't it? 

Not many women did that kind of thing. 

Well, she was active, I imagine, in the ladies' associations around town and all the things. She was very involved. 

So she was involved where he couldn't be. Yes, he didn't want to. He didn't want people. he didn't like people. He liked them, he just didn't want to take up time with them. 

Once high school graduation came, did you know you were going to go to college? 

Had you saved up enough or what happened? 

Yes, I think after, I think I lost $150 I'd saved up when the bank failed there in Fort Myers. Anyway, but it was time to go to school. I think I had about $450, which was a fortune. You were a wealthy 18-year-old. What made you decide to go to Georgia Tech? 

Well, Georgia Tech had the co-op program. I think that was the main reason. 

However, I had decided when I was very young that I was going to be an engineer. 

I was going to have to be a mechanical, because my love of machinery and just fooling with that old Ford and things like that, I had to go to, had to take mechanical engineering. Hopefully I could get a job, you know, working with a machine. 

How did you hear about Georgia Tech? 

I set off for circulars, as all students do from various colleges, and studied those and what they offered in. 

But the co -op plan was the idea. Maybe I could make enough money to pay for my college. I didn't, but anyway. That was the plan. I went, and entering Tech was an experience for me. When I got there, I rode up from Fort Myers to Atlanta with a young fellow that I knew. He was also going to a little old school in Powder Springs, Georgia, which is out here not very long. Anyway, I rode up with him, spent the weekend. In a car or on a train? 

In a car. He had a car. He was old enough to drive. Very few students then had cars. I guess not. They didn't drive to school and park their car. You didn't have to furnish parking. There wasn't enough of them that had a car. We walked all over. Do you remember the first time you came to Atlanta? 

Yeah, yes I do. 

I spent the weekend with this friend's family and Monday morning I got my suitcase and they directed me to put me on a streetcar and had to go through town and transfer. 

Well, that house was out near Grant Park, I think, where I visited. Anyway, my suitcase got off the streetcar there at Hemp Hill and North Avenue. It's right up the corner from Georgia Tech. I walked down there, and there it was. The administration building, which is the main part of, still the main part of Georgia Tech. with the towel. Anyway, I went in and I signed up and paid my fee for military uniform, which was required. You had $25. Wow. And I wore those military pants all the way through sick. Whether you were ROTC or not, huh? 

Yeah, I... Do you remember anybody there that you met? 

What would it have been, who was there? 

Dr. Britton was the principal. Yes, he was. President, I think. And I talked to him only once. My father died in 1932 while I was still in school. 

And I went to see him because once you entered as an out -of-state student, you didn't get to change back. I wanted to, my father had died, I, you know, I had a stepmother by that time. Thank goodness, she was pretty enterprising, scrape around, get up enough money. 

When I went home after my father died, I said, well, I'm going to get a job and go to work, do what I can for the family. My brother and my sister were both in school for various support groups and so forth. My younger sister was still at home. Stepmother looked after her and raised my young brother, the young brother. He was born in 1920. Anyway, that's the only time I talked to Dr. Britton. Did you ask him if you could change it? 

Trying to get him to support a change so I could get it. In state fee. In state fee, which is... Did he help you? 

He was not able to. No. He said, no, when you enter, that's the rule. 

And even though my father had died and I felt like I was on my own, of course, my stepmother lent her support. She said, you are going to school. We're going to get you through there some way. That was 1932, and I had two years to go. Co-ops go five years then. Do you remember Dean Skiles? 

Was he there? 

Yes, and also Dean Fields. Oh, Dean Fields. 

But I had really no contact with either one of them. The co-ops are sort of... 

Well, who were the co-ops accountable to? 

Who did you... To... MacDonald was the director of the co-op course, MacDonald. I became friendly with his secretary through a roommate who had several dates with her. And I think that's maybe that kind of helped me get a job. It didn't hurt. It didn't hurt. 

Do you remember your first job? 

Oh, yeah, the first, well, I had written in my letter to them and registering all the details. I had spent two summers at a sawmill, hard work, in that hot weather down in Florida. 

So that put me in line, I think, for a railroad job. 

I was, I worked all the way through until last year with LNN Railroad and their shops in South Louisville, Kentucky. Oh, so you turned into a commuter then. You had to go between co -op and Georgia Tech? 

Yeah. Oh, yeah. 

Well, see, we were lucky. Being a railroad, they set us passes. 

When they told me I had a job, that was 1929, most of my classmates either went home or they had a big bunch of them that went over into Alabama. 

Alabama, they were building the gas, the natural gas pipes through, going through Alabama, of course, going to Atlanta and on up east at that time, and they hired a lot of the co-op students. 

They went over there, they complained that they wound up in a little small town, nothing, not even a picture show or anything. 

So you got a better deal going to Louisville then, huh? 

I did, yes. They sent us a pass, and we'd get on the train. There were about six of us that worked for the railroad. What were your classes like? 

Were they hard for you? 

Yes, they were. I went all the way through, and I think I flunked one English class because I didn't have time. 

I wasn't interested anyway in English, and I had to take German, the co-ops, they only took a very few of us into the ROTC, that is the, you know, we were in ROCT the first three years, really, last two years, you could, all the regular students, anybody that wanted to get in the military, could, but the co-ops, they only took the highest grade, and I didn't pay much attention to that course either, and so I didn't get, I had to take German, and I flunked that one. 

You didn't want German or English, huh? 

I only flunked one engineering course, the toughest one, thermodynamic. 

So you were challenged, you had to study. Yeah, I had to study hard while the others were out dating and carrying on. You never got to date? 

Yeah. A little bit. Some, you know. We'd walk to town, go to a picture show, a bunch of us, you know, stuff like that. Do you remember going to the Fox? 

And the churches. Do you remember going to the Fox Theater? 

Oh, yeah, the Fox was right up the street. We didn't have, really, my family fussed at me for even spending money on a movie. Oh, really? 

Because we were... They expected you to save all your money for school. Yeah. 

Well, try to live on what I made a terrible job, but I made enough there to take home. 

I was let's see I started out about 32 cents an hour and got a raise maybe two raises I wound up about 34 cents an hour anyway I could take back to school just about enough to pay a meal ticket for one month and I had to go three so I always had to yep money from home And they scraped around, kept me going. It's tight times, that's for sure. Yeah. 

Do you remember any of your classmates or any instructors that you liked particularly well? 

I wish I could think of his first name, Dr. Johns. He was the teacher of mechanics, which was flunked out. 

But there were all of those that didn't get in chemistry and physics. They got you there for sure. I got through it, but I wasn't any good at it. I didn't think I deserved it. Really? 

But I got through it. Thank goodness. 

So Dr. Johns was a good teacher? 

He was an excellent teacher. Dr. Stamey was a mathematic teacher. 

And we were impressed because the automobile people had asked him to analyze the relationship between an automobile cylinder, the size of the board relating to the length of the ******, which gives you what to call the displacement of... That's not the right word, but anyway, I can't think of it now. And he was a consultant? 

He was a consultant for that, and that was Dr. Stamey. 

So that was impressive. Also, Dr. Reynolds was so good with mathematics, particularly algebra, he really made us hop. How about D. M. Smith? 

He taught us a lot. Do you remember him, D. M. Smith? 

D. M. Smith, I was trying to think of. He was before Stamey. I don't think he was still there when I went. I'd heard about his reputation. He was quite a mathematician. Did you ever keep in touch with any of your classmates? 

Was there anybody? 

Not too much. Anybody you remember? 

After graduation. We had a little group of co-op, mechanical, we had a little group, about six of us, that we lived. 

We finally, after coming up and having, I didn't finish my entrance story about having to, went up and asked where is my room. they said well we don't have any co-op dormitory but all of these houses along North Avenue are boarding houses and you just get out there and find you a place to stay so that's what we did I went across the street and there was a vacancy right there in the first house and we ate some of our time we ate in in the dining hall, other times we ate in the boarding house. It was different. Oh, so people rented out the rooms to the students, and it was room and room. Oh yeah, all of those were, all of those houses were full of students. They packed them in every corner. 

Now they're all gone. And I think the rent was $8 a month. $8 a month? 

For a room. You didn't have a private room, you had a, just a bed. A bed. We'd have about two or three in one room, maybe, you know, one bath and the whole mess. Oh, boy. 

Then if you wanted to eat a meal, you paid for that separately, is that it? 

Oh, well, they also had where you could buy a meal ticket and eat as much as you wanted to. Oh, that was probably a good deal for a student. Yeah, it was, and I ate in the boarding house a whole lot, yes. 

Do you remember ever going to any of the dances that they had? 

Right up the street at the Episcopal, All Saints Episcopal Church. They had dances, I think, every Friday night. Friday or Saturday night, and we used to go to those and have a lot of fun. 

Just walk up and go, huh? just go everybody was welcome to the church all things and was the varsity a stop for you too oh yes the varsity when i first went to school it was just a little room not as big it not even as big as this house and it opened right on to the sidewalk and if you got curbs there you took your car and parked at the curb, and the attendants would come out and serve you your food. Right on the street? 

Right there on the street. Oh, for goodness sake. 

And then they finally got big enough to tear down the house next door and made some parking space, and now you know what the varsity is. 

So that's how it began, right on the street. Yeah, I saw them clear away house after house after house along the way and finally... To make more and more room. To make more and more room, yeah. Did you ever know the man who ran the varsity? 

Not personally. No, you just knew what? 

But I knew that he was so good to the students. 

If any of them came up there and they didn't have a nickel for a ****** or a hamburger, he'd see the take item. He was generous to the students. Very generous. He was not too long out of school himself at that time. He may have taken a tip, notes, or something. Anyway, they'd go and pay him. They'd pay him when they got their money from home. They'd pay him back whatever it was. Yeah. Do you remember it as a happy time, Mr. Ransom? 

Yes, happy, and I had to work so hard. It wasn't fun at all. I'm just not a scholar at all. It's a good thing I don't have to go now. 

So school was hard work and work was hard work. 

Well, I'd rather work than go to school. 

It was easier to work on the railroad? 

It was so nice to have that month, the first year or year and a half, it was every month, get on the train, go to work, then come back and enter in the middle of your course and carry on. Boy, no wonder it was so hard. Very much. You were behind with everything all the time. Finally, they changed to the quarter system, which was so great. 

So then you were either at work for a while or you were at school for a while. Three months in school and three months working. I much preferred the work. I bet you did. Do you remember ever going to any football games? 

We, of course, went. We had our football ticket, so we could go anytime we were in town. but we were not in town but half the time. If my three months were during football season, I wouldn't see any of them. Oh. You know, if I were working, you just had to do what you could. 

So really, we were, our contact with the school was not quite what it would have been. Somewhat limited. 

We worked a lot harder in our three months because our limited time, we did go four years, five years. Five years, yeah. Yeah. 

Well, do you remember your graduation? 

Yeah, so. It finally did come in 1934. Yeah, it finally did. My stepmother and I think my sister came up and were there. I was very happy. And there you go. And I was ready to go to work. Yeah, 1934. Let's make some money. Let's go as quick as food. 

Is that pretty much what everyone thought at the time? 

Everybody was looking forward to going to work? 

Maybe not. I'm not sure. 

But they're just kind of glad to get. We had students in our group. The little group, we had about six of us that stuck together mostly. One of them was a student. 

He'd go on a date every night, wind up in class, and just do fine well he he had the opportunity he went to a large high school a good high school and so he a lot of that you know they prepared a lot of things that when they helped us we it came from a little country school So they helped us a lot. 

So you found that the students helped each other out then? 

Oh, yeah. 

A lot of our very difficult classes, like mechanics and thermodynamics, they usually allowed us to work in groups. And so four or five people would get together at night and do the work that we had to do. And we, there too, we had one great student that got us all going. Who was it? 

Do you remember his name? 

I've thought about him a number of years. I can't recall his name right now. Maybe he'll come to you later. I wish I could. I'd like to call him. 

Well, then what did you do with your degree? 

What was your first job? 

Well, the secretary to the director, again, called me and said, Scripto wants to hire about three men. Would you like to go? 

Sure. 

Everybody else was going home to work on a laundry route or in the drugstore, or anything they could get in 1934. 

So, I was happy. I went. They hired me. I didn't like management very well. I didn't do well working. And what they did, they took three of us. They put one of us in the engineering. He told me to go to engineering. That was fine. That was the best. One went into the machine shop to see if he maybe wanted to be a machinist or wanted to. 

They mainly wanted us to work out as supervisors for the different, they had a whole bunch of different divisions. 

Where was Grypto located? 

On Houston Street, right where they just tore the building down this last month or so they tore the building. Oh, really? 

On Houston? 

Near what? 

It was near Boulevard. Oh, okay. Between Boulevard, and they wound up owning up almost half of that block. And then they were bought, they were bought, Controlling Entrance was bought by Toki in Japan. 

But not in the beginning. In the beginning it was scripto. It was, and our work was very interesting because... Tell me a little bit about what you did. 

What was your work? 

You, it's hard for me to tell you what we did, but we made, they would just begin to convert over from wood to aluminum, the, uh, Automatic pencils, right? 

Well, we had a lot of automatic machinery, but we also had colored workers that did all kinds of little, little things for a sampling, these small ones, there's so many little small. 

We took, at the time, we took a piece of aluminum, perfectly round, they had a machine called a swager, which they swaged that point down into a point onto, and of course they controlled the internal part while they were swaging it down. It created a... 

And your job was to design this kind of thing? 

We, most of the time, they had the idea and we put it on paper. I see. We did what we could a lot of times, you know. 

Now, do I remember correctly that at that time it was Mr. 

First? 

Was it Monee First that was running Scripto? 

Monee First did not run Scripto ever, nor did, did... 

What was their connection with it then? 

Well, Monee First had a company that was making pencil lead. 

And the inventor of the long-lead pencil, a canticle pencil, the inventor got with Mone first, and Mone backed him, backed him to get the thing established. He was one of the main, there were others in town that put their money into it too. 

So it was an Atlanta business? 

Oh yes. Definitely. 

Well, the inventor of the pencil itself, the design that started out like a wooden and pencil barrel and put things, little things that we made inside the pencil to make the lid go out and come back if you want to retract the lid. They were changing over from wood to aluminum when I went to work with them. 

They were pretty well underway, but they still had a lot of drafting to be, people on the street don't see how you could hire six or eight engineers to work on a little thing like a pencil. 

But it's a lot more complicated than we think, huh? 

Oh, yes. See, there was about 14 parts in that mechanical pencil. 

Each one had to be made by machinery or by little hand, they call them **** and fixtures and things that an operator could operate a thing to do something to the little parts that go into that. We worked on the parts, we worked on the machinery. 

So it was a busy job. It was a good job for me. Mr. 

Ransom, what did you do during the war years? 

We probably a year or maybe two years before we thought we were going to be in a war. 

We were approached by Birmingham Ordnance Division, which was in Birmingham at that time, to make a production study of the manufacture of a, let's see, a, I don't know the word, but anyway, a product that had about 13 or 14 parts in it. It started out, it was made out of brass. It was about two inches in diameter. it was a safety mechanism to go in the nose of a 75 -millimeter shell. This was even before the United States was thinking about entering the war. 

So it would have been in the mid-30s then, just after you came to work there. 

A few years after you got to work there then, probably what, 37 or 38 maybe? 

Probably 38, somewhere around here. 

So you started working on a project then? 

Yes. 

What we did, they gave us a contract to work on a side to make a study and a presentation with all drawings necessary to manufacture all the parts that went into this. It was called an M20 booster, and it was a mechanism to arm when the shell was fired out of the gun. 

The rotation of the shell would make a little device in there turn over by centrifugal force and line up detonators. 

So if you dropped a shell before it was armed, it wouldn't go off, wouldn't explode and kill somebody. 

This was a very complicated brass part with all these little parts that went in them, all of them designed by the ordinance department. and we were furnished drawings on what we were to do, how we were going to make all of these parts. And we wound up with a couple of volumes of drawings and everything. Spent about two years on it. Finally presented that, and the war was getting a little bit hot by that time. And I remember our, we had a German who was in better of the pencil, the long lead pencil. 

And they found a Birmingham ordnance that said, we want you to go ahead and set up a facility to manufacture this M20 booster. And he said, well, I don't know whether we want to do that or not. and they said yes you do you're gonna do it so we started right away we had to build a building but twice the size of the one we had to house the machinery big automatic screw machines to make this particular part and all the little parts that went in. We did contract for some of them. We got into die casting, we got into the automatic screw machine, which was great. 

So you were enjoying yourself with all of this? 

Yes ma'am, although it was tough. 

So did you work there through the whole war then? 

Yes. 

On that project? 

I was 1A a number of times, but they always got me out of it to stay there they needed the engineering talent during the manufacture I spent six months on the third shift which was about killed me my body never got used to eating dinner at midnight and eating breakfast you know not in the morning but eating breakfast when you woke up in the afternoon, it was terrible. 

Anyway, the director, the one who was the, you'd call him the manager, yes, he was kind of fell out with the company, the investors and he wanted to be grazing his salary during the war years for this thing and they just let him go so they wanted to get rid of it. We had everything set up and we we thought we were doing better without him. 

We had some good engineers there that had good ideas and he was bullheaded German and wanted to do it his way, and it would always seem to be worse than you had to. 

So you carried on without him? 

Yeah, we just took right off, just everything. We had a couple of good engineers there that had good ideas. And what other things happened to you during that time? 

Let's see, in 1936 I got married. You did get married to an Atlanta girl? 

She was working here in Atlanta. I met her at a dance. I remember I stepped on the hem of her dress, I think, and it ripped. What a beginning. Anyway, I got her a telephone number somewhere, rather. 

This is after We were dating a number of other girls around who just, when I met her, that was the end of dating. You knew you found your right one. Don't need to go any further. And we had a wonderful marriage. That's grand. And you had children? 

Yeah. How many children? 

We had children. I have two daughters. and the first one, let's see, was born in 1941. The war was still going on. She had asthma and was quite a problem. 

Now, that's her right up there. And beautiful girl, both of them are. Oh, they really are, yeah. 

And your second daughter was born, and her name is what? 

What's your first daughter's name? 

Her name is Claudette. 

Claudette, and your second daughter is? 

Is, I hesitate because we call her sister, but her name was Charlotte. Charlotte. My wife's name was Charlotte Melton. 

So, and do you have any grandchildren? 

I have three grandchildren, and I have two great-grandsons and one on the way. 

So your family has increased and multiplied. It has grown. How many years did you stay with Scribdo Corporation? 

Forty-three. Oh my goodness, such a long time. Have they been happy years? 

Were they happy years? 

They were up and down. You know, you have, you have, you develop enemies, you develop friends, the enemies made it tough. 

But the friends made it wonderful. Yeah. I was put out in the production area. He was interested in developing someone, you know, who would be a good manager. 

I was not and about let me see six months in one place and six months in another and that was enough for them they found out I wasn't any good that's not what you want to do so they sent me back to the engineering department where I wanted to be and I stayed there and so there you were a rambling wreck huh you You were really a rambling racket and a helmet engineer? 

Yeah, that's right, yeah. 

When you look back on it, was it a good career? 

Were you happy with it? 

It was bad at first, but through the war years, the excitement of all of that, we won a number of Army, Navy, E's for excellent in production. Oh, a lot of pride comes with that. That's wonderful. Beautiful. And then after the war, you continued to work with Scripto and you continued to? 

Yeah. 

We began to get into the lighter business, cigarette lighters, first in the plastic models with regular lighter fluid, which is just a regular lighter fluid. 

And we worked with that for a number of years and then got into the course I skipped the development of the ball pen. That was a terrible thing. No, it was a good thing. We all liked the ballpoint pens. Oh, everybody. 

Well, you'd be surprised what went into that. 

We had a machine that It probably had maybe 30 operations on it, just around in a big dial just to machine that little point. Just to make the point. It's a very high precision. Which is something we all take for granted. You take for granted, yes. And the development of ink went through stage after stage to get the proper ink. The whole thing has to be together. Even now, this is not as crypto, but this is not as, I don't think it's quite as good. 

But yet, in some respects, it is. This is a paper made. A big accomplishment, and you're one of the few people that knows how much went into it. Oh, my goodness. When you look back on it, was it a good decision to go to Georgia Tech? 

Oh, of course. It was a good decision. 

Except even though I didn't use all of the things that I studied and liked, my younger brother wound up with Pat and Whitney up in Connecticut in the manufacture of the jet engine. That's the job I would like to have had. 

But I had a good life and enjoyed so many of the things, particularly during the World War years. 

So it was a good decision to go to Georgia Tech, to come up there from Florida. And you stayed here in Atlanta all of your career then, didn't you? 

Yes, that's right. Had a steady, wonderful life here. See, my father died in 1932. I had two more years to go. And then I got this job in Scripito in 34, which is anyone would take any job that they got then. Many of my students that I knew didn't get jobs, didn't have. 

So you were glad to have one. Glad to have one, yes. 

Well, it's been an interesting life for you. You've done and told us a lot about things we would have taken for granted and not known about. And we thank you very much for taking time to tell us your story. 

You're going to be the only man I know in the whole world who got his diploma from Thomas Edison and knows everything about my ballpoint pens. How about that? 

Thank you for your time, Mr. Ransom. We've enjoyed hearing your story. Thank you.