This is a living history interview with Dr. Philip and slow faculty staff at Georgia Tech 1975-2018. 

It is conducted by Maryland's summers on March the 8th of the year 2005, and we're at his home in Atlanta, Georgia, the subject of the interview today, his life in general, his experiences at Georgia Tech. Dr. infill, thank you so much for letting us come visit you today. I must apologize. 

I'm the tape for making appointments and canceling and then work here finally at last, and it's a beautiful sunny day in Atlanta. We're delighted to be here. 

I'm looking forward to hearing your story, so tell me please, where did it begin? 

Where were you born? 

I was born in March of 1933 and Richmond, Virginia. 

And Virginia, what were your parents doing in Virginia at that time? 

Well, my father was in the Army and so but Richmond was with her all my mother's home and my father's home. 

So my father was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina at that time. And my mother went back to Richmond to have baby. I was a second child. My sister's two years older than I am. 

And then we joined up with my father in 19 Fort Bragg and started following him around the No, That was 1933. 

So that was way before World War one was until World War I mean, we're what two excuse me, was underway. 

So he was a career military. He wasn't in because of the circumstances? 

No, no. He he went to graduate in 1923. I did. Oh, interesting. 

So he was ten years out of His into his career when the two youngsters, did you ever have any other brothers and sisters? 

So that's just the two of you. Okay. 

So you became what we call an army brat than in a way where you're transferring from base to base. Wonderful places. 

Did dad take you? 

Well, I first one I already remember would be Texas A&M and in College Station, Texas. My father was on the ROTC staff there. And that's where I went to. 

I tell people I graduate and Texas A&M in 1939, that it was kindergarten graduated from but but indeed you did yesterday, today. 

And from there we went to Fort Lewis, Washington, and then to Fort Ord, California where we were in Florida worried when December the 7th, when the war, when it officially started broke out and and from there went down to Camp Barkley, Abilene, Texas. Knew my father went overseas for World War II and we went back to Virginia for Oh, you did. 

So that's where I went to finished up my elementary school because you were in what, four different elementary schools? 

I was actually in ten different elementary schools in ten different cities. 

The first nine years I went to school. It must have been hard to feel like you had any routes anyway. Yeah. 

But you will learn to make friends, family. He learned to make friends fast, or you don't get any long-term friends. And sometimes you see the same people because they're also being transferred? 

Yeah. Do you did you mostly live on basis or in a provided housing so that it's the other army brat. 

So to know, actually, I'm just trying to think probably Fort Lewis, Washington and we lived on a base and then afford or we lived in Carmel itself and in Texas, we lived in the city. If it were schools that you were attending on the base, then you could see the same students. 

But if you were living in a town, you would go to work. That's right. Circumstances. 

The schools on the base I ever Fort Lewis, I went to one if the first second grade business, but after that, normally we're all somewhere. Once you got back to Richmond, of course, then you were near your grandparents. Grandmother. Life settled down a little bit for you for a couple of years along with your father overseas. 0 g Let's see. I'm going to say not quite two years he had shipped home with a bad case of malaria. 

So I'll say You must have been in the Pacific. He was in China and in India and then in China he had done on the Chinese Burma. And they're trying to use what we call the toggle them. North Vietnam. He was in there and he got malaria and had to come home. He didn't get discharged from the military. He didn't get it. No, no, no. It came home to recover and anyone would recover. 

And then he went to Washington DC for few years so you could still live in so now I moved up to Washington with him, left my sister and mother in Richmond. And how interesting we batch at it for awhile to go to school in Washington. 

Were you in high school by that time? 

I was in junior high or high? 

Dolly Madison Junior High School, which was just being Finished building it when we moved into it as students and it has gone it was torn down. I'm going to say probably not put the years right, maybe ten or 15 years after I graduated. Because of segregation. They decided just wearing them run that school. Brand new school. Isn't that interesting? 

A bigger he doesn't have hotel there now. Drove by. They're just the other day. When you went to school, did you like going to school? 

Yes, I did. Yeah. I kept you a good student. No doubt. I think I was a good student. I wouldn't have never worked hard. 

I be totally just said, Yeah, I never learned how to study until I got to graduate school at Stanford. We could get by Brian. How did high-school come along? 

Okay. My father was transferred down to stamp Military Academy on the ROTC staff. And so I was sent to SMA for the last three years of high school. 

Well, so you did get a nice little period. They're making friends and very much so. That's good. And we leave for you. 

Well, and then after high school, my father got transferred to Germany. And so I went with my mother and father. My sister stayed in the United States, went to college. By that time. I'd caught up with her. We graduated the same year in 1949. 

And so I was pretty young, so I went off to Germany for a year and worked in the Post Exchange headquarters in the Palace of Justice in Nurnberg. Was it a good experience for you? 

Oh, absolutely. Fantastic, wonderful experience. Very much touring. Great opportunities to see a good bit of see it, but also to learn a lot about life. 

Now some of the parts you'll never learn too easy. You have to experience it to know. And so that really was what was your intention always to go on to college somewhere. 

Oh, where did that plan get crystallized? 

Where you would go? 

And I had always been added, liked the idea of going to West Point. I was trying to get into West Point. 

Do you know the all the rules of getting an appointment and all that? 

And so after a year in Germany doing well, they say not going to school, but it was maturing. I was learning life. I was in the School of Life and then I went didn't get in. 

So I came back to United States and went to college at VMI. Pretty close to a year? 

Yes. And that that that was the time BMI being an all male school was very military. 1950, Lucy would have been BMI 195-050-5251. I'm in a class of 54 at VMI. 

You are waiting for an appointment to come through to West Point and the processes, what you apply to a congressman or someone you apply. And there are some competitive appointments where the call presidential appointments. What that is is that the sons of all regular army officers can compete appointment. 

So which Rob did you talk to her? 

I got that one. You get competitive. Okay. 

So you earn the right to go? 

That's right. 

Was your father pleased that you're describing? 

So had he encouraged you over the years that this was a good life military? 

Well, I can see that myself. I mean, I don't. 

But you never felt like he was pressuring know and he wouldn't have been disappointed had you stayed at me and he had tremendous influences on me in many ways of what I see today. I think the fact that I'm an engineer and a mathematician is very much from him. I tell the story. 

We would go to the carnivals and you walk around the games, you know, the wheel, spinning the wheel or whatever. And he would teach me how to figure out what the odds were to win or lose it. Good way to learn math, that is a great way and also to be comfortable with it. 

I keep trying to make this a real problem today with so many people that are just not comfortable with. The word is fearsome. I just start sphere and pupils. That's right. 

So he may do comfortable with math. That's right. 

Was he a mathematician himself? 

Yes, in a wave and artillery and artillery man dual, awful lot of mathematics in fire control. Figuring out how to pointing guns out a lady guns out. Fire them. 

How long was his military career? 

How many years he graduated from West Point in 1923 and he retired in 1954. 31 years. 31 years as an officer. 

So that was a nice record for you to look at. 

Now, you went into West Point in did they accept you as a sophomore then? 

No, no. You had to go back and start over. Everybody starts over again. Okay. 

So you really just had to eat that one year at VMI didn't hurt you. I'm sure know in fact it didn't. 

I have classmates who actually one of them was an upperclassmen at VMI, year ahead of me at VMI, and then he went to West Point, had to start all over again. 

So you could say two years at VMI in four years at West Point. That was a hard earned bachelor's degree. 

Well, I have another classmate at West Point who had four years of college and started all over again. 

George Patton of World War II, fingers patent spent one year at VMI and then went to West Point, took five years to go through West Point. He flunked out one year and had to go back and repeat it. 

So you are following some fast. I told either not doughnut, take the five-year root. 

Note, but I'm a four years, well, actually as five years ahead of our former football coach, Bobby Ross, who I don't know if you were here at Tech. 

Bobby went to the national championships and so when when I think about the class of 54 with BMI, had you stayed with it but you are the class of 55 with West Point or of the US Military Academy as you pointed out to me. Because you did have to repeat that ear and do it all over again. 

And when you when you graduate from the military academy, you have a Bachelor of Science and whatever military science and nowadays that was running today they have other degrees. 

So ninj, military science would've been because you were making a career of the military. 

It's expected that if you go through this, it's, it's what West Point defined as what they were going to teach you is actually the program was about 52% math science and engineering subjects and 48% social sciences, English, that liberal. Interesting almost a split. Exact very important. 

Now you graduated in 55-year. Father had just retired a year before that? 

Yes. He must have been quite pleased. He was big fuss made over that. Excuse me. That was a big fuss to him. I mean, did he come and lawyers as well? 

Yes. 

Well, the graduation and but does everybody throw their hat in the air? 

Oh, yeah. You really, really do. Not just in the movies. Oh, no, no, no. It's it's and then what does somebody come around later and collect all those ads? 

Kids do. And then the next day I got married. We got married. Where did you meet your wife? 

I met my wife in Fort Bragg in the summer of 1953. Were you there for maneuver? 

The cadets go on summer trips. Different well, different things for the summers, I shouldn't say. 

And in your junior year because that was the 53 years your junior suddenly my junior summer, we would traveling around a different army posts and forth and spend some time in Fort Bragg. And At that time my father was back again stationed at Fort Bragg. And my wife, Diane's father was stationed at Fort Bragg and we met there. 

So she's army background. And we got engaged in during the summer of 54 and were married in June 8th at 55. That's quite a common experience, is it not? 

I mean, I've heard of this many times before. You get married right on the campus. Yeah. There's a chapel where this can happen in your in your full regalia. Just tropical was to do a uniform? 

Yes. As we're getting ready to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary this June. That's wonderful. 

Did you already have your orders and know where you are going to be just saying that it wasn't planned for you? 

I will answer is the first place I went. 

Well, actually, the first things you do go to school and you go to school for whatever specialty you're in. I was in the signal corps, So I went to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey to learn how to do signal okay. For sort of thing. 

So she was able to go with you? 

Oh, yes. Then I went to Fort Benning to airborne school. 

And then I went to my first assignment was Fort Meade, Maryland, where I was in a regular operational signaling unit. 

So it was really almost repeating history. 

Doing the same things that your parents had done before you should moving about and making your life? 

When we moved, we move much more than our parents did. Did you really? 

Yes. 

So when did you get your dan going to school now and I'm going to actually be full-fledged person in the army. That didn't happen because you kept on gold as well. I'm going to say it's probably it was January of 56 when you finish schooling, took about six months. All those schools the military school. In military school. 

And then what do you what what happened to you Then? 

Did you get an assignment two as a function there? 

Yeah. 

Let's just say to Fort Mead, Maryland to signaling unit there and lots of lots of interesting jobs there. 

Then how did the opportunity come up for you to go to graduate school? 

Do you apply for those Africa? 

Many people. 

This is quite promoted to get graduate education for the officers and I had applied and I was really mostly interested in going into electrical engineering. 

But the Washington people said Down Arrow and he wasn't even in really in the personnel business. He was in the office of the chief of the signal corps. And he said, Well, I'm going to send you to school and computing. And so I went to Stanford and I was in the second group of army officers that went on computing. 

There was one group ahead of many witches year, a little over a year ahead of me and about she was trying to count them up the other day for five. And then what year was it? 1957. 

So very early in the computing period, I programmed my first computer in 1948 when I was in high-school, rarely had a classmate it stamp Military Academy at SMA. 

And his father was the tax collector or in the Tax Office of Montgomery County, Maryland who had one of the very early computers. 

So I always tell my students they could get extra credit if they could correctly identify which computer that was that I could program in 1948. Wow, I think of computers even into the fifties as being these big, huge things, as big as this room. 

Well, this one was actually for this moment because there's only really doing cards for tax bills. 

But as 57 years ago, just imagine, we think of it as such a new field and the editor has been around more than 50 years. And that of course, the punchcards for the way we will go in and those tastes. Punchcards, you say smaller than how small was it? 

Was portable? 

Oh no, no. It was fixed or maybe you say that it was about the size of these big horizontal freezers. Okay. Printer on it. 

I mean, she didn't like it around with the advent of that was absolutely the others and computers, the big computers didn't come along until the fifties, mid-fifties, and the military was pushing the computer here so I can understand why this gentleman would have sent you to learn something like that. 

And you were already You said even before he sent to you, you had a Ken for it, so he was probably pretty prescient and sending you there. You were with the second group to come out of that. And what did you come out of their widths. 

Is that Was that your master's master's degree in electrical engineering and engineer's degree in electrical engineering administration, but all of it towards computers and electrical engineering and administration. Army officer does an awful lot of administration. And so that was by their very nature of the game, just by the very nature of what you're doing. 

And learned a lot about computing two and but when I finished that graduate schooling, they can have what, you know, there's always a utilization to her. 

Were you supposed to go off and use all this knowledge? 

I went to Korea and worked as a regular signal officer. Not even using the computing at all. No, we didn't know computers around there. I just was and this would have been what year did you go to Korea? 

Let's see. I would've been 59 to 60. And I was in Zhao Bu, which is up north of soul. And my basically my job, I ran all of the long lines of communication north of Salt till the DMZ. Definitely nothing to do with the computers. Computers that interesting and only the military can deform like that. And then I came back to questions. 

I came back to Fort what, UCA, Arizona, where I joined the group that was really trying to put computers into the army in the field. Portal. 

Mobile, portable computers, mostly mobile, which was still way ahead of the game as the rest of the world was always, I mean, we were pushing the envelope literally on printed circuit cards instead of wire and things like that. 

I'm told that while you were a pioneer, but the early pioneers in this often had to invent their own parts of fake, realize there was a need for some flow. 

We were, we were pushing the industry to do these things for us and there was a goodly amount of that. I mean, they went way ahead in many of the products we were doing. 

I won't say that the sum of the products that we had and once we were actually developing ended up such great successes with a ********, they sure led to rate successes after that. 

Well, everything always crawls before it was oh, yeah. 

That's where you have all your trial and errors going on while you're down to know what to do to make it one of the, one of the problems we run into this. By the time you got the computer powerful enough to do what? 

Everybody now wants you to do. It got to be too big. And that's where we get the whole room. Yes. 

So then it had to well, we had we had a group pin try to find a way to miniaturize. That's right. That's exactly what did happen that yeah. Exactly. And then we had one computer system which was took a filled up a semi trailer really easy. I actually filled up more than one semi trailer. 

But that was a big computer being used for logistics where stock records was building these computers. 

Was the army actually constructing their own, buying them through vendors? 

Well, not any army was was contracting to the different vendors. 

So it was private industry that was kind of think of who built the big, big one was Sylvain. Yeah. It was called Moby ****. 

That was about the size of a whale, stood for mobile digital computer, but it's so funny, it had to pick up on me. Then. Rca was building some at Cherry Hill in Pennsylvania. We have trade hill. And IBM was building one. That was really all of the industry was trying its hand at it. 

But as you would think to me that as fast as they were making things ever becoming obsolete because somebody creating other ways to do it. And I wasn't going that fast and it really is because it is. 

But it's nothing like today where the lifetime of a technology, so to speak, you know, it just seems to be about 18 months or so for somebody who's got another way to do the same thing much better or faster? 

I won't say necessarily better, but but yeah. 

So things were moving just a little slower in those days. 

So you but you will cancel and finding new ways to use it and new needs to create. You're trying to figure out how you could solve some of the problems that the army had. Some of those were just a bookkeeping of supplies, logistics. 

Others were typing omissions like how do you the thing I'm talking about my father with his mathematics. 

After you put the what we call technical fire control onto a computer, technical fire control is the process of pointing a gun so that the shelves will hit the right spot. You could do that with a computer. We did that extremely well. Fright, frighteningly wealth AND truth. When people saw how it would go, it could be so accurate. 

So what the army was doing, investing in you going and people like you going and learning more things, coming back and applying it actually was working for you. 

So the army became, was probably what? 

Computerized or much before the rest of the world. Absolutely. And of course, they started way back during World War Two. 

When did only the army or was it all branches of the Air Force was, had the sage computers use the enormous monsters for air defense that IBM was building. 

And the sage computer would easily fill this whole ground floor where those were all vacuum tubes and my ****, I got there at least we had were doing it in transistors. 

So the barber, something else that had to be invented and adapted to that. 

But the barton, the offense, was really the leader across the board. 

Not have the sense to do that, the computer industry would have come along a lot slower, wouldn't it? 

Yes. 

So that definitely did accelerate. 

It, kicked it off and for a long time for the support it and the department offense was the strongest player in the field. When a department offense said, your computer must have a particular language on it. And one in particular was a language called cobol, which is still around. People had to put it on it. Today. 

For instance, the department offense has no real weight that it's gone past its prime and well, it's, it's not a big enough purchaser. They, that's the whole deal. Who buys these goodbye is the one who calls the shots. That's exactly right. They were the biggest consumer at that time, so they were calling it, we're calling the shots. And they were about the only big consumer. 

But they were at least utilizing what they were buying because their life shouldn't say they're famous. 

But we often say, well, the military does such and such and then doesn't utilize it. 

But in this case, it definitely wasn't being utilized and it was successful for keeping track of things like we just take since you've been successful for fire control. And it was for that too? 

Yeah. 

It was probably the second-generation computer, not the one we did, but the one that came after that was highly successful in what we call technical fire control. 

How do you appoint against Did you enjoy your time in school when you were getting your masters? 

Oh, yes. 

But I worked hard. 

Well, it was it's like learning another language and it's like absorbing everything all at one time. 

And you were really a pioneer if there's only been one class before you, which wouldn't want one year before you. That's right. And I went to Fort, which you goodness job. I was there for two years and then I went to the motor Academy as an instructor myself. 

So you had your hand on that for awhile and you like that? 

Oh, yes. I know you guys where I first started full-time. I mean, everybody in the army, officers and CEOs are teaching all the time domain. That's just part of, that's the whole idea of you being a professional career person. If you're not going to be up fighting a war than your training will be fighting the war. West Point was strictly academic type of instruction. You don't see any other college in many respects, so that was fun. 

Now helped me understand about this tint that you were in Korea. We were actively on the time-frame, so I'm fuzzy on time. We were actively at Warren career when you were there. We were not we're still at war but now the shots were not very old. 

So you spent you did your duty your time period over there, and then came back stateside again. 

Once you've finished your master's degree, you went to work where you told us an Arizona your family of course was following you around. Your family was able to live with you every time. 

The idea for getting a PhD, again, did you have to apply to ask them for that or did someone suggest it would be a good idea? 

Probably combination assessor at Stanford did. Encouraged to urge me actually launched amount of launch story when interesting story. I was traveling around and I had gone to Washington. 

This is we're still on I still station it for what you can and we were playing the computer development business big time. 

I'd gone to Washington and had some meetings there and so that would add all went off well, and so I finished his washington I was going to come home by way of one of the stops was Minneapolis with the Control Data Corporation. I was going to see them with a project we were working on. I literally shipped my uniforms home from Washington. 

And so while I was in Minneapolis, I got a frantic phone call from Washington says you've got to get back to Washington. There is a congressional investigation of our computer program. 

Well, actually in those days used to call it adp, automatic data processing program. And we're going to have a kickoff meeting here in Washington. And in your uniform. 

So I I told this person over some senior officer, I said, Sir, I don't have any uniforms with me. And he writes Our idea, Come on anyway. 

So you got to go and your civilians. 

So I went and civilian clothes and went to this meeting and going around the room getting introduced. And the one of the I'm sure you know, I always introduce Captain ends Lily. I think at that time gap and fine. And I was a main speaker than being person listened to. When I was at this meeting. Even though they were army officers, they are much senior to me. 

So then this team, I went on back too far away, Chewbacca and his team showed up before, which you can now, I mean uniform and they say, Oh, he's just a weekend. Oh, I don't know what they thought. Somebody thought I was because of the title. They said, you know, he brought my day, probably misunderstood that I was some Dr. so and so but it showed me the power of just the title of bias. And I can honestly say that when I went back and got my PhD, I really didn't learn very much. After all experience I'd head and the work I'd done. 

But I got the union card and it was putting the credential on what you've already gained? 

No. Yeah. 

Isn't that interesting that even happens in the military that way there is a bias, a bias for by titles with AI. There's some of that may be warranted. Over time. The decision to get a PhD was not entirely wrong. 

I mean, you don't get to make your own decisions in the army, Do you know But but you were receptive to oh, yes. I sound like a good idea. Okay. And where were you stationed at that time? 

I was still at Fort. 

What you hear on Zona still working in the automatic data processing program. And I was. I'd already been contacted though by the head of the department and electricity at West Point. Then he wanted me to go back and get a PhD. And so we're looking at that. 

When I finished it for Y2K, a personnel shift at West Point created an immediate need for another replacement computer instructor. Remember I mentioned there were two O's in the second wave. You could say a fever went to Stanford. 

A officer in the first wave had gone to the Signal Corps Laboratories, Fort Monmouth, and then he'd gone up to West Point as an instructor computing and then he had a job. 

Then at that point, West Point decide, well, we better have started thinking about a computer, not just in department electricity, but for the whole school. 

So he'd gone over to do that and now they needed me up. Another PhD is actually the other fellow didn't have his Yeti. There was just lay out a master's from Stanford, but get me another computer instructors. 

So Head of Department went to Washington to personnel people and said he needed a replacement for this instructor who is no longer in the department. And Washington and told them they could have in slow. And he said I don't want it in slow. You said I have other plants friends low and it's not coming here. Right. And so they told him that as low as the only person in the army they could fill this requirement. And I to this day, I don't understand why I didn't get to spot promotions right there. Enough. You're in combat, use every rabbit pose you get promoted for. 

Why was that indispensible? 

But be that as it may in 1962 then we moved from which you go up to West Point. And I started with the computing program in bioelectricity. That was the only place where they had a computer that the students were programming and cetera. 

Now you had some background in that from your previous work was done, lot of work was done. 

So you actually did it in pretty fast time when all that was going to West Point and we stay there 62-64. 

And then I was agreed that the head of department says, okay, now I've sent you back PhD and I've been working on it. And I knew what I wanted to do. 

The project and ideas when I even I before I left and Dan to my master's degree in engineering degree. 

So we went back and June of 64. And the army this time said, well, we won't replace him because he hasn't gone back in the army. He's just going back and doing this thing, but headed departments as well. You don't have to replace the amount of money. I don't have enough classrooms right now because of some remodeling going on. He didn't need me or that many instructors. 

So I went back and got it there with the sole idea that I was going to finish in 14 months. 

I had already passed my qualifying examinations back when I was a engineering students, engineers sitting on my degree. 

So I was one that really that difficult, exciting the dissertation except that I'm trying to remember the date. 

But when these horrible revelations, I woke up in the middle night and I realized that I had a major error back on page three. 

Negate it or just certainly a lot of work had to be redone after correcting the error, but I got that. 

So that was a PhD. I finished it and 14 months, you're telling me. That's pretty fast. And the interesting thing there, Let's talk about it in Georgia Tech personnel. My principal advisor was Don grace was at Georgia Tech. 

He later much later came to Georgia Tech, but he came to Georgia Tech at the request or by Joe Pettit had brought in. 

But you knew him out and Stanford, I'm Dr. 

Pettit was a great friend of mine and helping me do my research because I was doing research on some aspects of radar and such. Dr. Pettit and his boss was Dr. term in the well, I guess it'd be the provost and the president of Stanford. 

And he had these five cabinets with all of their classified work that they had done during World War II. And that's where some of my answers were hidden in there. 

So I got to know Dr. Pettit and he knew as this guy over there going through his file cabinets, it's okay with them. 

So when I came in to be interviewed in 1975, it was a pleasure to renew acquaintance. There was ten years later then because she was 65 when you've finished. 

So you said goodbye to Dr. 

Pettit when you got your doctoral degree than your PhD to go where what happened to you that I went back to West Point C. To finish up. I did they have a classroom by them? 

Oh, yes. Yes, they had a classroom. 

But they I've tried to think of what I was teaching, but I wasn't teaching computing. We had another company in the third wave of instructors, had produced another one. And so he'd come in. And so I was teaching really a mathematic study, more information theory, interesting. In uniform again, we only have status and delightful teaching environment. It really was and I was there, feel good about that as a chosen profession. That's where you're getting the biggest. And it was a nice place to live, a wonderful place to live. One old waste our family and and let's see. That was a would get moving on. 

Now we're up to 66 summer 66. I was selected to go and be the army attache. Israel. You're going overseas. 

So the requirement before that was 48 weeks of Hebrew school. 48 week, 48 weeks. It's almost a whole year. 

Well, it basically a year in Washington DC. That didn't start until January. 

So I had negative six months left at West Point teaching. And I was called the ape WAP, API WOOP. Assistant or associate professor with portfolio. I was just, I was the healing time. 

I was the chosen designated protagonist to when we when something was going on and we didn't like I was the one I had to go and argue. 

Anyways, I had to go argue with the department head that this is we didn't like that, like this or we don't like that. We're disposable. They knew you were leaving anyway, it's right and you would to Hebrew school. 

But I'm going to say probably three weeks before Hebrew school, this class has started and those classes are held in downtown Washington, up above Walgreens language schools. They were not run. They were contracted by the State Department. 

And what happened in January of 1967, war in Israel, everything changed and so the army told the attache that was there. Your family, he's going home tomorrow by the way, and you're staying an extra year. 

So enslavers had nowhere to go. And in 1967, if you didn't have anywhere to go, the army had somewhere to me, I was Vietnam. 

They did try went to Vietnam its head as to what what were they sending you there to do? 

Not teach computers? 

Well, you go to Vietnam as a person. There are many that go for a specific job, but not that many. I was on my way over there. And that people are looking at now a major and people are looking at the list of people coming in. And the one of the people is I will easily snag me for a job. 

And was General Terry the head of the commanding general of the signal brigade? 

He had been the executive officer in the department electricity when I was a cadet, not when I was back teaching, but way back the cadet days. And so I went and spent a few weeks working directly for him. And then I went back to went to the group that ran the long lines all over South Vietnam. That's where I really got into telecommunications in a big, big way. Because your head too. And so I was operational, be in charge of making this system work for I was there about six months. Okay. Just to clarify, for me, that's long lines. 

What does this mean? 

Well, that's a long distance between cities, not the local telephone exchange, but literally long-long, which had to be brought in. And remember, we didn't own all the land between us. A lot of long radio shots and even had undersea cable going up the coast. Huge task of logistics and everything else. And yet critical was critical to everything that was going on. 

So you were right there and then. 

I've been on a trip of an interesting trip was trying to end the time and working with my same problem was communications between Vietnam and Thailand. 

And I got back and I got a phone call from the commanding general and he said, Phil, you are jumped qualified, aren't you? 

And you'd never answer a question like that. 

But I mean, you know, there's somebody's doing it knows I'm so anything he said, I hope you are because you're now the signal off. 

So one 73rd Airborne Brigade. And so I went off and spent six months that fantastic job. Great job. What's a great job? 

Oh yeah. Once you have rather been learning Hebrew, now, I am just glad I've done. I learned things really in the action there though. And we we had a big Brigade and we moved the headquarters, moved a headquarters 22 times in 22 weeks. It was going very mobile Brigade. 

Now will you jumping to know nobody jumped at that point we were the advantage or the characteristic of an airborne unit that was important there was, was lightweight and it was used to moving quickly. Was it by airplane or by Helicon? 

Oh, by airplane and helicopter. 

So you were in anatomy, we're just constantly going. Required an awful lot of hours of flying. You were not piloting? 

No. No. You were riding riding, getting shot at while you're writing something. They made it special for you. 

Shooting it to oh my, oh my, Well, after all your years in the classroom and in school and everything, they were really testing, you might say, well that's, that's the, that's the part of the army. Like it was lot of fun. 

You do those things like that because it was the time for you to do at how much time did you actually spend in Vietnam? 

Well, let's see. They'd every close network where we there 13 months or 12 months. Or 12 months is better than a year will say that one day more than a year and it was fun, you say. 

But you were just as glad to leave. Very glad. I mean, it's a very dangerous, dangerous but very trying and very stressful. That sort of thing. 

Came back from Vietnam and went to Washington DC, worked in an army agency where our job was to buy all of the computers. Army. 

So because of the complexity in those days now, a computer now we're dead when you meet with a big old thing, $710 million for one computer. And that was a cheap one, usually as standard run-of-the-mill. 

And so there was a group that was dedicated to them out like BMI and deciding which one was best for a particular job. 

So all of your experience was there and very, very interesting, very challenging thing. And I was there. I've got to go look that up myself. 

And I then I moved into the Pentagon, into the office of the assistant secretary defense for systems analysis. 

If it goes way back, these were the the that office had been started by Alan and Hogan who was one of the ways kids at Ford Motor Company and Using Operations Research and other techniques to try to address the business of how do you run the Department of Defense? 

And what should you do, What should you buy and things like that. 

So it wasn't an analysis of how the whole thing was going to run the Department of Defense. 

So I was in an attempt to make it more efficient or inefficient and incorporating computers into that. 

Well, oh yeah, but incorporating a lot of management tools and such and grew by others, they ended up as the director for command and control, communications and intelligence budget part. 

And we controlled really managed essay and oversaw $6 billion a year to make sure that it was efficiently. That's exactly right. And if it wasn't, then tell the service that you're not going to get it. We're going to take it away from you. The anatomy, you know, that's a constant analysis. And she battled too. I mean, I can remember one. There was a computer project that actually was being run. One of the key people running it was this fellow, it replaced West Point as the instructor. 

You guys cross tests and do that and Hey, they're having trouble management problems before anything else. And so we just said, Well, we'll just take that $19 billion away from it. 

You don't need it, you don't know what you're going to deal with it come back later if you can figure out that idea. 

But it's not going to have this with me. I did. It was just sort of a job. And that's a really tough job. 

What's it like to work in the Pentagon? 

It's a world unto itself and yes it is, but it's also a horrible place to work if for parking. 

But nothing else. 

I mean, you know, people complain about the Georgia Tech campus in parking, but a parking pass and the Pentagon was just a hunting permit. Anything out there to kill was no guarantee. You could get it and it's good luck with it. 

What came with it? 

So that was the hardest part of it was I stayed, I lose track of time or they're looking up. 

But let's see, around 1917 I worked backwards setting when I was about 1969, I moved over to the Executive Office of the President and joined a brand new organization called the Office of Telecommunications Policy for the President of the United States. That I've had a comment before. 

When we say Obviously the President Washington, That's what we mean when we just want to clear. 

My responsibility was national policy for computer communications, data communications, which was brand new thing. 

That was very So would you have to do write your own manual? 

I know it was it was not a technical problem. 

I wouldn't have known all the technical problems we would leave up to Bell Labs and those were worried about our national policies. 

What are you gonna do about regulation? 

What are you gonna do about fostering the growth? 

And some of the things they've tried since then about should we have monopolies or should they be free competition? 

All those issues, those are the things we're worried about. 

So you met you went as it was to an office and you just a function all day, 8 h a day. And our office trying to make all these wonderful decision. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm anticipating what the next problem was going. 

Well, you did but you do that a lot by meeting with people and finding, finding out where their thinking is going. 

Where do they think things are gonna go? 

Some real amazing, real good friends with some of the senior Vice presence of AT&T who are worried about the same stuff. Everybody. 

They were they worried about it from not necessarily setting national policy, but setting corporate goals where they go, put their money and we're worried about that for sure. Yeah. Better parking there. Actually, yes. 

Well, there is that to save for it? 

Well, that was a trick to that. I was on the adjunct faculty at George Washington University. 

So I used to park in the faculty parking lot, walk over and walk over. Didn't have yeah. A little bit on the shading. 

Well, I wasn't in the white eyes. I don't want the Executive Officer. And the Executive Officer. 

Did you ever have an occasion to report to the president? 

Know, I've closest I've gotten is riding in the elevator with the vice-president. How about which Vice President wasn't 0. Estimate. It's the one who had to resign from Maryland that had Agnew. Agnew. Oh, well, okay. 

But that was as close as you got to I got to that. I had gone into the White House itself though, roaming around to go to the doctor's office. 

So with a specialist or actually that time it was still Nixon was there. 

So the Nixon's Dr. I. Would sent over to see him and that was an experience. 

You're not walking in there, you're not in a group or anything just by yourself, but you are never out of sight of at least two Secret Service agents. There's somebody was watching you all the time. Yeah. And you're very aware of that oil. I'm sure he shouldn't be the best on your back. 

We're going to figure out, make sure you go where you're supposed to be a good experience for you though. What a great story to tell you? 

No. Did you set national policy? 

One in particular, they're proud of it. I want to know what it is. Okay. 

Have you give a little background? 

A big regulated telephone company such as bell side of the road and AT&T in those days, wanted to do anything like build a new microwave line or something like that. 

They had to go to the FCC, get permission to get permission is called a 214 permits section to 14 of their rules. Because they would spend money on building something new like that additional. Then that would go into what's called the rate base. And then when it came time to figure out how much we can charge the customers, the tariff. 

One of the aspects of that is that the They are allowed a certain return on the investment for how much has been invested, their prompt. 

So if you want to run up your profits or something, you just built a whole lot of stuff, right? 

Okay. 

Then there was another group of people coming along that we're looking at building, I'll say data networks. And they were not going to build any towers. They were not going to string any wire. 

They were going to go and buy those facilities by that service from the telephone company and then add value to it by making it a digital network. And so I coined the term of value-added network van. 

And good story on that, because I was also a chairman of the first international conference on computer communications. And that was held in October of 72. And Washington. 

And I got my boss, the director of the Office of Telecommunications Policy, which is getting right up there. He's on the emotional level with the president's science advisor and everything else. And so I got him to give the opening talk. 

But of course I'm going to have to write the speech. And as i've, I've said this to some people here at Tech. I said, really wonder how policy gets made. Because I wrote this page, I write, and I wrote all of this in there about my ideas. And then went ahead and fed him. 

And he read this speech in a memo going from our office to the Mayflower Hotel is First-time he read it to get the rhythm and trusted you implicit. 

Well, he said, What am I talking about here? 

Well, they know actually what he said. 

Well, they know what I'm talking about. And I said, Oh, sure. Bill Alec house and I talked about that last week and Bill talked about a dang Williamsburg. Bill Ebbinghaus was the Senior Vice President of AT&T. And so he made his utterance. And after that, it's policy. And then we Wow, we take six attorneys and say, you know, go ahead and find the details. You don't fill in the details, but here's the here's the policy. And they do that and they did that and that's where it works. And it happens more than just that. I mean, that's a very personal story of it and you know what happens over and over all the time. You very much so. And value-added networks. The van. Oh, yeah, you get the fuel now. 

It's dropped out a lot now, but everything is changing so well, but the Internet is not operative, but there were many others coming on. 

You can, you know more than anyone else, probably what's going on now? 

Getting federal level about what's going to happen with all of them? 

No. It's it's changed because starting in an even say, the mid-80s and such, we've looked at competition. 

I mean, we knew the I predicted that the AT&T, the Bell system is going to break up long before it did because it wasn't just enough pressure, it is going to do it. I also think it was a horrible mistake, but it is going to happen. Because I've known as philip the pessimistic prognosticators. 

But my lifetime averages that my, you know, my worst predictions are much too rosy. I mean, we started, turns out you're right on the money. And so I selected gilded the lilies and they came forward. 

Sorry, I said that when they split up and they started letting competition hitting these different areas like long distance telephone we have today. And even at the local phone bill was going to go up by a factor of two to five times. And it did. It has definitely. And of course now that has to go because people won't tolerate that. 

So new protocols will come up male, but they know if the prices have gone up and they have a good explanation of what's happened there because of where the money is not there. Before that time. 

The telephone system was I used to have the numbers much quicker, but much more than half were very, very heavily supported by business long distance calls. 

Why do I say it? 

Put it that way? 

Because these were long distance calls made during the business day. And the volume and the profit margins were there. 

But it was the, what's called the value of service. 

The businesses were willing to pay that because they needed because they need it and it was valuable to them. 

And that's those monies came back into the infrastructure and supported local telephone service and went away. Then that goes away. Competition starts permeating the whole body and you're just not going to work. 

So that's located it and it happened to them printed up and predicting next. Stop predicting that being Phillips for your phone? 

I think that and then I stayed there until. Time to leave Washington, had been in Washington for about five years and they said no. 

So I started looking around for what you might do if you retire. 

Well, I two more years. This was 1970, 2.73. You had calculated you're going to die after 25 years. No. Iodide. Iodide really made up my mind and so I had an open-mind. An opening occurred in the US Army is a European research office in downtown London. And so I took that and went to their spent the last two years in London and research. 

But you're not doing research, you're really, it's a liaison function. Your job is to find out what interesting research is going on in Europe. Europe put back and report back and see how it is that you actually doing it. 

It's, you know, but I mean, you you had some quite a bit of money at the handout to make friends and out of research along. If it was something that the armor was really nice job, then it was. 

But the downside of that was Europe is defined as the top of Norway to the tip of South Africa and the edge of ireland, the western edge of Ireland to nova as a risk. 

There was the only job that, and we actually had sent money into anovas of risks to support some things that are Army was interested in. And the thing is, I was traveling all the time. 

I was about 40, 50 per cent of the weekday nights I was away from home and I just have all the things you've seen now. Oh, yeah, that's true. 

But I had I racked up miles and miles of going back and forth across the Atlantic and do that. 

So we're a body down. 

Where's the fatty? 

And then I looked at the future, a lot of ice I'm serious, talks with my boss and three-star General Ed Gein want to talk to me and I decided in 1975 I would retire. 

If I can find something that I really wanted to do. And that's when you got back in touch with Vladimir. 

You establish that you were definitely going to retire from the military with a definite but it was a very strong but you could find something that appealed to me that I wanted to do. 

How did you hear? 

Because of course, I know you've found Georgia Tech, but how did you find Georgia Tech? 

Well, I had met Vladimir NP Jensen back in 1973. Excuse me. 

My office in Washington was one floor down below some temporary offices at the National Science Foundation. People hadn't side running. Vladimir when he was there. 

Had you known him before I met him? 

I should have probably had some committee or something like that. I did medium. 

And so when I started looking around, I came back to United States from London and was interviewing and going around places. 

And when it came to Georgia Tech and went to some other companies, I'll say here, particularly part of the military industrial complex. 

I wasn't going around to universities and slides, just universities and colleges are open to other type of things. And I came here, the Italian thing. Vladimir had said, well, yes, come and visit us and such. And I came and we had a talk in the morning and I made president normal interviewing trip. 

And then I had gotten with a real estate agent to go ahead and look at housing around the area is good way to get a judgment. And so I went back and Vladimir I don't know if it was before I went out to the housing or not. 

But vladimir had made me an offer of money. And I really don't even remember what it was at this date. Had you met Dr. paradigm campus chefs know? 

Yeah. I think I probably yes. I I think I had just to say hello as we went on the normal interview circuit. And did he remembers, Oh yes. 

But that was a nice warm foreign exchange, but it's already been there like three or four years by Danielle, Casey was well-established. 

So you were made an offer and I told Vladimir that that wasn't enough. I said, I have a simple formula for how I calculate which I should make. And it is enough to afford to live in a type of housing that I think I should live in it. It's part of my life and that's not enough. Hello, how much? 

I said about a third more than what he had offered. And he was back within 2 h of any ad that approved. 

Now that was impressive to me. 

I mean, knowing enough of management, what does happen in university life, that he had support above him to his dean and even all the way up to the Vice President and iodide time to do that. And that was a big telling factor. 

So excited and I don't know if I did it then, but later it was then made the transition from military. In September the first 1975, I showed up for work. 

You were comfortable being in a classroom and being in an academic environment because you've had all that experience with it. 

But he'd been awhile? 

Yes, I had still even when I was in Washington, I was teaching in the evenings. 

That was my bad at Georgia Senate, the escape Utah by making policy in there, but it's very ephemeral, just like swamp gas. 

So touch hands-on stuff. 

I said I was another adjunct faculty at George Washington University and the American University and it was a very comfortable, I'm sorry, I was on Sundays. 

There was enough a month and I can only thing I see I accomplished was I held for nighttime classes during that month. The office I got nothing done. 

But that's the nature of the work I was doing. 

So you would be working with Mr. Dr. Jensen? 

Oh, Mr. Jones, Mr. Johnson? 

Yeah. I thought he was Mr. Jensen. I never met him. I just heard about what is Professor Jensen to well, I okay. 

So I joined Mecca. Who else was September of 75? 

I see. Was it in April of 76 or 77 that slow Mecca cleaned house? 

He non reappointed five faculty members. Vladimir put that in his discussion, but it was a shed water event. 

I think it was probably 76 because he said he wasn't going to build a top-notch computer science department with those people. And they're gone. 

Leaving whom? 

Who would the bones that were left that Lauder, myself, Qia video, Zynga, and I run out of membrane, but that's pretty good, that's pretty, pretty stripped down. 

There's this more than that, but there's a bob Cooper, Robert Cooper, but he was totally a mathematician. He really wasn't a computer person at all. 

And there must have been some others that were there that but that was that was the move to open up spaces. 

So we'd go out and hire some new people. And that's how Vladimir did a fantastic job of building it up. 

We were we went off to the computer science education conferences and interviewed and tried to stop looking for the right mind. Yeah. I would imagine that this came all the way from Dr. Pettit because he was always looking for those bright minds, wasn't me. 

It wasn't that much of a hands-on in detail, but as the backing, the support, you're not going to Vladimir was I got to go ahead and note no school director was gonna go ahead and non reappoint that? 

We were people like that without having discussed it all away, of course, yes. 

But that was the point about Pettit. He wasn't the hands-on man, but he was the, the quality. 

While you're doing it well, actually that was the motivation of why and what he was building it for the whole faculty, not just for the whole for the good of the whole school. 

Gtr I was changing and all of the, all the departments were changed to all the colleges were upgrading and bringing in people who were doing notable research in history. He'll be looked at as the precedent who brought strike them. The research at Georgia? 

Absolutely. I they just started he's already suspected that way. Yeah. 

So did you have opportunities to interact with them at all? 

Only? 

Loosely, whenever any real problems. 

So you didn't have to go report to the faculty meetings and things like that. 

You saw him and maintain a cordial relationship? 

He was an interesting man because exterior as far as the public was, because he seemed a little bit Ostia a little bit smaller, a little bit. 

But I'm told that when you knew him personally, he was warm and witty and played the piano and was really quite fun and I'd gotten to know him that way at Stanford. And you saw that it was quite fine. There were some really interesting people on the campus in those days. 

Of course, Dean Griffin was still around, although you might not have come across them all that much of Jim Dahl had come in as dean of Students at that, by that time of the time you were there in the seventies, but ding ding Griffin was still around. Bobby, dad was still around. I think cross one head left by the time you came, So you probably did that? 

No. Mrs. Cross, Let's see. Who is the Vice President? 

Vernon running Crawford was shortly after that. I don t know if fighting burning burning crop. That was Vice President when I was hired. Yeah. 

Because eventually he took time to become acting president after pet at past well, it was because there was a problem in the letter of offer as far as prior credit for service or something. And so it really got down to what memory did dr. Crawford and Vernon have of, you know, what the facts were? 

And he ruled very nicely in my favor. And so I was promoted to full professor. What 78 I get us. There was a lovely, warm man. I had the privilege of getting to know him, not to tell you that my Vernon story. 

This was I think he was either the chancellor, he had retired anyway, but it was January the first football games. And we're watching football and such. And as a one game is over and get ready for the next game. 

But they're on other channels. There are other games going to and the phone rings. My first thought was, must be watching the same game we're watching because here's a break. And I pick up the phone and he said, Phil, this is burn-in. Dead silence at my end. And he didn't, he didn't take us very long. He said Vernon Crawford. I said, I know who. 

What I want to know is why. 

And he said I need a favor and I said, Well, I guess we don't want to guess that what he was calling him some chits and he oh, what was his name? 

Ray had been the vice chancellor here in Georgia and then he'd gone over to Mississippi, is the head of the same thing, but you didn't call them regions or anything like that and he needs some help and I thought maybe you could help him. 

So I went off as a New Year's Day. I wouldn't know. I didn't go into Year's Day, was actually several trips. I was a hired gun. I went into Mississippi. I really try not to be quite a thing that a lot of there's an interesting trippy he was asking. 

He was having a lot of trouble with people trying to start programs in what are called Computational, this computation of science, computational engineering, computation or whatever. And he said, he had three major schools. University of Mississippi, Mississippi State, Southern Mississippi, or miss Obi southern end. And he said, Which one should I pick? 

My job was to telling which one does. And that's not too hard. No one too hard. 

But I said you then I said you have to take them all to take them off your head to the way it was. And he he came over to the office here. 

Your j came to Atlanta because he was always coming over to see friends and we sat down and he said That's what I thought we might have. 

But I needed some some authority behind it. Yeah. Verna was so well-liked by students in the classroom when he was actually teaching in the classroom. We heard, I'm sure I heard he had a great sense of humor. He was a very warm at home, was born in Korea. 

Did you know that they're there was that you had that income having an experienced her her her country for a bit of awhile anyway. 

So but they were very, very well regarded as rho was born in China. Yes. Strange people start looking into things like that. 

But it's interesting when you try to document stories about Dr. 

Pettit because some people saw him is so cold and so reserved, and yet others were just charmed by him, completely turned around and he really got into the football. I mean, he he didn't stint on going and giving advice on what should have happened. I'm told that he got quite adamant about some of the things when he got involved in that. 

So it's interesting when you, as time goes by and you look back at these days and these people, what they were thinking of and what they were like and how they change things. 

Were there any other people that you want to mention just to as your experience has been the seventies at Georgia Tech, worse by the time you got there, we were totally integrated. We had women. 

Although both the minorities and women were on very limited numbers, even, even today, comparatively speaking. 

But the integration of minorities went much easier than the integration of women. There was more static over women coming in. I I don't know. What did they give me tell you a story, my dad because 93, 94 years. Academic year, school year 93, 94. I went up to backup to West Point as a visiting civilian professor. Just one of these intergovernmental loan things are from Georgia Tech. And I got involved with some of the missions work. 

And the interesting thing was that whenever they put up a chart of graphic of minorities, whatever you want to color them by sex, by race, anything, Michael, when they put it the minorities and how they were succeeding their major competitor with Georgia Tech doing them. 

So I said, you know, maybe we're doing something. Right. And that was oh, oh, oh man. Oh man. That's a minority. And that tall. Used to head that up. Tera or if you miss class, he knew about it, that Mr. morning class II, nobody that day. You're not talking about norm Johnson or yeah, norm paragon of virtue. Had to go round and round with that too. 

But I mean, it was it was mentioned that when you talk about them, we're going we're going now. We're back in the seventies here. 

So, you know, but at that time when you came in 75, things were pretty normal as far as they were peaceful. We everything was peaceful in the campus. There was really never a time, it was a peaceful, even when women came. 

The most rub, rebellion thing you read with the technique had a straw Portland's and we don't want women. 

But that's okay. 

So I I probably about 78 79 to latest. Took over the reappointment, promotion tenure for the computing and kept that from 19 years. 

So I got involved in a lot of, you know, then you're looking at the qualities and how you get the good people and such, and how you keep them or get rid of them if the case may be. I think things went along slowly, so forth. I was very disappointed in ICS boat for it. 

I'll say Outreach or its connection to other organizations, whether they were on campus, are very, very poor. 

And what do you think that was mine, that why did that? 

I think I think a lot of that was just the growing into a new group and on the campus. And so there wasn't an official policy of isolation. It just enough reaching out. It just happened that way. And of course, the interconnectedness, the reaching out is what makes more growth. And that, that continued on for a long time. And actually I'll say for 15 years and at that time, but that time, Joe pad, it was gone. 

His parents deaths came as a great shock to everybody, although he knew he was going to say it was very sad, very sad. Then we had peck resign. Yeah. Then we'll transition period. And then along because PECC resigned. 

And could you have found anybody more different than Joe credit? 

Well, but I think he did a lot of good. 

Well, we use a changemaker and change makers do clip. We were not popular but we were without a school director. Vladimir was gone and had been replaced by Ray Miller from IBM. And that would be an interesting interview for you. Track him down. 

He went up to Maryland somewhere, but when he was gone, then we look for school director and I haven't getting trouble with dates, but I would say there's probably be in 89 are probably very late 88. 

And I had an appointment with a degree sign to discuss school directors and watch your opinion? 

Well, I wanted his opinion. 

He wanted mind and we would have an appointment started at 05:30 and it was after 07:00 before I got out of there. 

But the bottom line was stopped looking for a school director. Let me told me then basically, no no confusion in my mind that that was the message. I didn't have to guess. 

I didn't ever stop stop looking for us co-director because well, he wasn't it didn't feel like he had to he didn't tell you why. 

But of course then he came up with his ideas of reorganizing. And we had this, I think he just probably pull that off as well as you can. Any academic group of academics. I mean, they don't, they don't necessarily take the leadership or anything. I got. 

So we were left though there was, there were all kinds of ideas that he had and he had a lot of ideas, Ivan Allen, ideas type of things, fine. 

But he didn't know what to do with computing. It was very clear. He had made that point clear to me. It didn't know what to do, where should it go, where she computing go. 

So we had a committee, what else you're going to have? 

And we had a committee that met every two weeks for lunch, you and the community and rich LeBlanc and I and silver, but Pat Thomas student was our recorder, their key back, but it was the idea to figure out where computing was going. That's right. Just as simple as that. 

And so each, not each week, but somebody would come in and would say, Well, gee, the mathematic, logical mathematics and computing, let's put it in with mathematics. And fine, That's an interesting suggestion, but we'll discuss it in two weeks. Those were the ground rules. You bring it up. It was it was a candidate for two weeks. We'll discuss it. I get again fairly safe and saying there's certainly the major part. Two weeks later, the proposal was shot down by the proposer. Having thought out how they, whoever it was going to defend was going to say cash. They can they they they said I didn't know work. 

I mean, we had ideas and I'm very good, you know, well, put them over where they're close to the physicist. Because all these physics computations, and this went on. 

I mean, I have my own suggestion which was too radical to carry it to even think about, was that we took and performed a college of science, of systems. Systems college. We would have is100 WD in computing in one college. The problem with that was that you would have just decimated the College of Engineering. And so that was certainly don't want that to happen. 

Well, is that going back to this meeting with pancreas and pat down, he said, hey, I'm a big fan of computing. And I'll back you whatever you wanna do, unless it's you versus engineering. And then I can tell you who's going to win at Georgia Tech has come to be interesting. 

Well, they'll say str was Dean of Engineering at that time, was he not? 

Yes. And he'd been there for all. 

But anyway, so this went on this committee in you and in one of our professional, a professional journal called the Association for Computing Machinery, a Peter denting had written an article bringing up the concept of computing as a discipline not computer science. 

And from that germination, that's when we then went back to Patents, said, let's make it a college all by itself. And that's what did that mean? 

We have a college with no schools in architecture. We already had a model. It wasn't totally on to have that I got was that it didn't cause all kinds of problems. You may not understand any problems it caused because of banners. When there was a display of the college banners, you had to find a new space for another one? 

Yeah. Oh, I'm sure I'm sure there's all this big heavy duty things like that. 

He didn't have a background in computing because he had been good friends with Ross Perot and Steve Job. 

He was his background, he was in with Apple, but I'm just saying he was he knew it was going to find a precedent more prone to something like no. And so then we stop looking for a school director and started looking for a dean. And that changed everything. That changed a lot of things, whether or not people would want to come. I'm told that we had the first college of computing and the contract. Is that not true belief? 

So that's what I was called kerning. Know there are others. I think Carnegie Mellon's is probably a little before ours. I have memory gets very early. Essentia is one of the first, one other person. 

When you go around on a tour, they'll tell you that we had the first and that Stanford had the second one. Yeah. 

Somebody said they did and was within a short period of time so that we know all kinds of things that you said in tours that no, Yeah, there's no But I've never researched it, so I don't know. 

But let me break a college deans. 

So how do you look for Dean for something that is so new? 

Well, you live for somebody who can build something new like that. And to be honest, we ended up with two candidates. You want to search committee. We end up with two candidates who both were in Washington. One of them was National Science Foundation for awhile and the other was at George Washington. And you must have known the bowl said, Why don't you both and I don't. And so Peter Freeman and doesn't matter, he's no, no. Foley, Jim Foley. 

Extra effort and way yeah, because he's taken out and so we would have meetings in Atlanta discussing the two candidates, and the two candidates would have meetings in Washington, Washington discussing us. We got the best of both worlds. We hired Peter and we got Jim later to come down and I think it's worked out extremely well. 

I had to Peter Freeman from back in probably around 1972 or 71 before I even got out of the Army and I knew, Peter, it's a small girl does live. It is a smile. We're going around like that, everybody coming back. Oh yeah. 

So that was the College of Computing. And the College of Computing was now recast. 

To make these things happen, make these outreaches, and make these connections much better, much better. And things that I truly believe you could not do at a school. 

I just said that you needed to the vision and the vista, if you would up the point of view to get up there and do it. And so that was it worked it worked at work to conceptionally, when it did. Kristen's length of stay was a bit shorter than he had in mind. And the next thing you knew Dr. classless there Let's go back though to Pat resign another for a leave that because one of the real failures of mine, it is associated with a failure at Georgia Tech. I get the dates now. I can probably remember this as C, six years 90. 

So it would have been January of 1990. Downtown. Economic development. Governor's Office of Economic Development Group said we need to get some high-tech thrust going. And so they were proposing a center for multimedia studies or something like that at Georgia Tech. And that came to us and the Andrew Harris. Harris. Good. 

Andrew, Andrew came along and I was just telling us what they were talking about it because it's all still talking about diamond. 

And the deal was but it was multimedia and probably maybe it was in the budget process and working on it's way through. 

And that's when I got the known work so much with Aubrey bush because Aubrey and I were just against that. 

Because it wasn't right level the focus, it wasn't going to work that way was we needed to get down lower level. Multimedia was just such an application area. 

We wanted to get down to where it could talk about something that would make academic relevance and such. And so we proposed what? 

G cat. Okay? 

And we brought along with us Peter Freeman. 

Let's see, who are the people that was Ron Shaffer, myself, Aubrey, Peter Freeman, and I guess Roger taken over probably Roger and taken over by then. And we're getting pretty close to where we ate his head to get the whole institute behind this. And we'd had a meeting with Pat resign. 

But it was ****, it was day of graduation. 

So it was held in the men's basketball locker room, Colosseum interests while we did that. And so they, they they bought it, but the legislature bought it. And of course she cat. It's just an amazing disaster. 

So nothing if gets accomplished. 

So many things though. No, You don't think so your idea and you didn't like my idea but I did. I tell you, it's failure. 

But let's get back to someone who quickly story we may we pick that up. 

And we're PECC resigned because then in the summer of, in August of 1990, what big thing happened in Atlanta? 

We got the Olympics. Yeah, that was a biggie. 

So, you know, I was writing, I just started saying, gee, they're going to spend $100 million on a big TV center for the Olympics. Why not state kick in? 

Ten or 20 more million and build something that lashed. That'll be here. There'll be the physical plant for the center of research and all of that. I just TV but everything. She kept stand for. The Georgia Center for advanced telecommunications technology. Technology. Yeah. Okay. 

Well, they did build and build a building, but I may end. 

But the LA we're jumping ahead. We had we can pick that up. We need to come back to that one. Okay. Dr. 

I was little when we think about the Olympics and the preparation for the own store back in 1990 here now where we got it over the next until it actually happened in 96, they were six very hectic years of building and bad roads and sewer problems and everything else under the sun, you are directly affected, of course, because of the fiber optics that were going on and all that. 

But overall, when you look back at that period of time, despite the transition of Presidents during the house, what do you think about the Olympics? 

And you're looking generally success for Georgia Tech in some ways. 

Well, we did get out of a car. Good. Say physical results. 

We have dorms that we'd never would have probably taken as many more years to have gotten those built. We do have the fiber on a campus, which was a great boon. It was pushed by the Olympics if we've got to do it. 

But here's a motivation, Here's a deadline, Here's this. 

Well, it's accelerated. It is accelerated and it also has much higher motivation of getting it done. 

There wasn't much Valley who about all the miles and miles of fiber optics and how all the houses are all connected in the eternities, is everybody? 

Yeah. That's good. 

But there I don't know if you've ever been in that, but realize that there's no other group in Atlanta. They gave up their Christmas vacation of 96 just so we could have the Olympics. I mean, Georgia Tech. That's how we made up the days. And i 0 there were a lot of sacrifices I got to introduce. 

So I was saying that my drive to work from here, it's about 12 min, is pretty close to during the Olympics. There was about an hour and 45 min to get to my office. Yes. I didn't have any problems at all. 

Well, I had to go first to catch a bus up on 14th Street, and then I went to wherever that Bank Street was with the next fences I had to change. Is there. Oh, you got the bad deal? 

I got a good deal. And then we went in and that was to get to my office. 

So I brother reasons too, to get into the area where the fiber optics are null and the whole campus stretching. 

So I'd gone down and I went to, I said, Well I'll get the credentials so I can at least get freedom of movement and go around. 

But so much of that was just temporarily structures. That's fine. 

But it did impact you personally? 

Yeah. With an aggravation for you and aggravation. He was aggravation for a lot of people will start any pleasure out of it for you at all. And he sends the satisfaction then know that that got done. 

You didn't take any pride in the fact that we were getting all this publicity, international publicity. Georgia Tech wasn't it? 

Atlanta was broadcasting from the campus. I know, but now as you look back, all of the publicity is pretty bad. I mean, you know the when when they look at today, no, no. 

And they talk about the bid going on with New York and this year, we're right in the midst of the bidding for the next four. That they are not. They are, but the point is, how many times have I heard them say, and it won't be like Atlanta. Okay. 

Now will the bombing and the parks certainly money is involved. We didn't give them enough. I've heard so many positive things about the village though that it was okay. It was the healthiest village, the most varied village. 

The first air condition. Did Bill Ray tell you his Olympic story about door keys? 

I don't know if he did or not. I can't remember. I've heard so many. Oh, you would have heard? 

Yeah. Okay. 

So this was an after the Olympics event. 

They were cocktail party and Bill was there and he was complaining that he was missing 1,000 room keys. I think it was Allison room case. He was talking to the guy was nominally the chief of security for acog. I never know that wasn't the guy. The security guys are all well aware of. 

Those may be totally wrong story, but I've this way is related to maybe build, don't worry about those. Those are keys are in Botswana. Will cookie stand, I mean, kids to come and take them home for souvenir. He said, Well, yes, that's where I think we are, but the lawyers say we have to change the locks. Changed those locks at Georgia Tech is about 100 dollar cost of labor. I mean, we do it ourselves, but it's about $100 a lock. And the CIO security said. I can't be concerned with your problems. He said, I'm missing 40 BMWs, cars, cars, bmw alone. Don't think any of them. Oh, and he said last week they picked up two of them on a drug bust in Texas or something. Oh, my word. That everywhere that I found them abandon in the parking lot at the Newark Airport. And he said, that's just part of it. He said, I'm missing 20 city buses. 

That's not funny at all, but you have to laugh because how do you keep drag and stuff like that? 

They drove the buses to New Orleans, put them on a ship and took him to South America. Probably something like that. They're probably doing their thing somewhere as we speak. 

Okay, well, i interesting aside, but no one ever thinks about what they say about be careful what you pray for. I think a lot of people that came back to haunt a lot of people. 

I know for myself working on the campus during that time, I felt anxiety, fear that something bad would happen. And it wasn't until it was over that you were relieved. And I enjoyed the Paralympics much more because it was thought that I'm done. I think he never positive things, but I mean, there's the other side of always this. 

So we got the editorial by the swimming pool. 

But a colleague never told Georgia Tech that you're going to have to fill it? 

Yeah. How much did it cost to fill that thing is a lot of water in it. 

There were a lot of those little hidden no one knew how to write those kind of contracts, right? 

None of us. 

But anyways, we survived at 94 brought Dr. Club fan and the Olympics came off and it was over. And then we got on about the business. 

So what are we going to do? 

A dark campus? 

So one of the interesting things that happened was the college was, all the colleges were completely re settled around. Everybody get down to the business to running their colleges. 

And Sam none came to the bank to the SAM none School of International Studies at the Ivan Allen College. And you have an opportunity to work with him and that's where you got involved more with. You always worn off within that working with information security. 

But how do you define that for us? 

What information security? 

Yeah, Well, actually the, the, the positive word these days is information assurance, But it's not just security via it was seemed to be too narrow scope. 

But the idea is that what are we telling me the definition, we're talking about? 

Everything that's needed to be sure that the data that you have is not damaged. It's not changed. It's not stolen, which is a big and it's not lost. I mean, here these are the things that can happen to your data. And yet it's out there. It's out there. You bend. That created a whole new discipline. How to pronounce? 

I'd say it's a sub-discipline more to speak of. 

But it's a big thing some of those issues are I'll call them administrative type issues. You put locks on the doors. I mean, these are sort of thing, so it's part of information security. There's other become very technical issues. Something happening inside the computer to protect the data there. 

It's a big issue today because we're reading everything in the paper about choice point, what's been going on with them and about identity theft. 

So what's going on and how all of this is out there? 

Don't give your social security when everybody by a shredder, I mean, there's all that kinda stuff going on. 

So it's really a very critical issue. 

So anyway, they saw Sam wanted to have a national forum, which we did hold fantastic success, if I do say so myself, we had and what year was that? 98. I guess it must have been 90 98 because it was before you retire? 

No. Yes. 

And you helped to draw that you were the chairman and Peter Freeman really was running it, doing all the details and such. And we brought people in from all over the world, well all over the country. The country with George Tenet, director of the CIA, came down. Lou Gerstner from Chairman of IBM was here. G. 

Who else? 

Remember the chairman of gulp of air? 

Gulf air, I guess, savannah, some really heavy hitters came into this and had a good forum to discuss, discuss these issues and bring it in, bring it when you do something like that, when you have a conference and all these learned people come just positive, come out of that. 

Do you share information? 

But what this conference was doing more than just really sharing information was raising level of that. This is a real problem and you better start working well, you better start painting. And I have a former student who's now one of the top people in this country, a gene Stafford, Purdue. And gene has a good way to live with Dido. 

He says, he thinks we were, we were doomed to not to greatest success this way because this is not going to get the attention of business until there is some major disaster. 

Now whether checkpoint is going to be major. 

But he's talking about a company that perhaps gets big size company that gets, goes out of business. 

Now there have been companies already did have been driven out of business because of a failure. 

That's when everyone pays attention that but that's when the board of directors will start paying attention to that, is that it's going to be 0 that could happen to us. 

And that's money that but I mean, if if the board of directors is not worried about and I mean, there's some way having covered physical security, David held responsible. 

It sounds from what you read in the paper that the toys point thing is more more of a scandal associated with administrative procedures, not really being having confident. I think there's, I think there's a lot of both musician myself. I think there's a lot of probably failures of the technology. And then just compounded, exacerbated tremendously by administrative goof ups. Yeah. People just not paying attention or thinking, they sent me away with something. 

And, you know, whatever is good in this world, there's a whole bunch of people that are going to try and call you out of it. 

So yeah, physician is always there. 

We are building a college of compute and out of college and other building computing building the class buildings are going up as we speak. 

And of course, Chris class benefited that building or contributed to the building and started an internet security systems early in the game, very early in the game. And he's now gone off to do other things. 

But it's interesting because it brings a lot of a spotlight on Georgia Tech as being in the forefront. Great, great person to, I mean, he really has nice guy, great. It gives us a lot of focus that we're on the forefront of this kind of thing. How did you make up your mind that you were ready to retire? 

That was kind of easy. 

I'd been looking at 25 years at Georgia Tech and 25 years in the military, started adding up minus a year. I realized that I'd been working and supporting myself for 51 years. Basically, some mostly supporting myself. And if I retired, I could have 51 years of retired pay. 

Now some of it is so miniscule that you wouldn't notice it. 

But added together, get added together. And I said, Yeah, and that's time to quit. You are ready to try some other things. And he had been having some health problems too. You said you had a hip replacement now and I just take that in your strategy. Yeah. I didn't really have much to do with you just for Betty to hang it up. I think that just long enough I was getting there and getting older and so I said yes. 

When to spend more time reading and doing what you wanted to do? 

I want to do now I work harder than ever. 

Because you didn't you retired from Georgia Tech but you took on your consulting hand? 

I didn't worry, I'd done some before, but I get involved with some heavy-duty consulting. Are you still having to travel a good bit with that? 

Not too much. No. I've most of that now. 

Can you draw the line and say, Hey kid, but I went to Dallas last weekend just for a couple of our meetings so he could get face-to-face. 

But from here on out, we'll use the technology would go over to do videoconferencing or something. Yeah. That makes it a lot easier for you. Yeah. Tell me about your family. 

Well, let's see. I have a wife and as I said, we're getting ready to celebrate 50 years, go to that grocery. This June. We're assembling the crowd and you're going to do it in high style. We have a bug. 80 people be their two daughters. Tell me about them. 

The oldest one is that this one is dark Dorothea daddy, who went to Agnes Scott and she married a Georgia Tech. We good taste. Good. Another Techie. Yeah. That's been going on for a long, long time. And daddy have any children? 

She has a son and actually the youngest of grandsons, Coulter. And right now they live in London. Oh, really, where we're Joe or husband is working, entail it. And so they've have him working and they're having their lunch. 

Didn't explain like you had yours that your children didn't have to grow up going from base to base two, base very much, did they because you are did they know? 

They they didn't because we were settled by the time I mean, at one point in my life, actually for a long time until I've been here, take a long time. 

I had spent more years living at West Point and for years as a cadet and then you think of Atlanta as home now? 

Oh, yes. Okay. And you're you're younger daughter. And the daughter, Dana lives up in Marietta, has two sons. And what are their names? 

Philip and Tucker. Default. Three grandson. Oh, yes. 

And they are older and so they write sports and getting into that, pushing right under the door of Phillips, getting ready, you know, high-school things going on, all that, so okay. No. 

But they're close enough that you have interaction? 

Oh, yeah. We see them getting to spend a little more time with them is a nice thing to say. And we get the London people home ever. And then he came home for Christmas. 

Daddy will be home in April for your 25th class reunion for Scott, and they'll all be home for our wedding anniversary, where that's right. 

Well, I hope that's the biggie everybody should come for that. That's for sure is know your retirement time is quite happy for you. 

You have a beautiful home and everywhere we look, there's I'm sure things that came from your travels. 

Well, my travels or my parents. A lot of it is just that there's interesting artifacts everywhere you look. 

So I presume it's something you've been on the road. Diane has been able to travel with you a lot of places. 

You've got places and most of most places except for war duties, right? 

You didn't take her to Vietnam or Korea. Thank goodness, but she went everywhere else with you. And when we travel, we tried to pick up some art or something like that. And most of that shows up in the mountains of big canoe. Or you have a home up and they can go to, oh, well that's lovely. That's where the most of the artists are. Our art that we purchased. That you acquired. This is things around here from our parents. 

Well, you didn't have a son to go to West Point, know, Will you push one of your grandchildren to go that way? 

I'm not sure. You're not sure the world has changed a great deal. I really believe that's simple way to put it, but it's very accurate. It's, in fact, it's almost shocking some of the things that change. 

Although you predicted that the telephone companies would go down the tubes, most of us would have thought, would like 25 years ago, you couldn't find anything more stable than investing in AT&T. And today, there is no more than that. It's gone another way. 

So who knows what it'll be 50 years from now or 20 years from now or even I think, well, I always ask a scientist to give me some, now some guesstimate of where you think this next big front is going to be in discovery. Oh, you're so into the computers and the networking. Go back to the other thing you said. I think that as far as you know, we talk about structural things in telecommunications has been this. We're seeing it happened that they're coming back together. And that's just a natural effect. 

I mean, the merging, buying one another, whatever technique you want to say, I make this, that's going to continue. 

You're putting trying to put humpty dumpty back together again, you may not do it very quickly, but I think they're going to get there. 

What do you think about the voice over internet protocol? 

Hey, everybody is talking about, is that gonna be communications for the future? 

I don't think so really because of the problems of the load and the quality of service you'll get once people are going to expect more than one. It's never gonna give you the quality that you get with wireline or with regular circuit switching. And compromise. Our sense of quality with cell phones because there That's right. That's right. Can you hear complaints and that may be what will make it good enough. And if that's the case, you'll see much, much more. There are certain parts of the system doesn't lend itself to going that way. 

But remember that the whole Internet is lots and lots of little pieces out there fighting to get through is another, they're not there, no open tracks ready to go. Everybody's out there contention trying to get through. And that causes delays. And that's the one thing you can't get rid of. And when the delays get too bad, I think you will. It didn't matter of quality, but it's when your big gaps in your talking or things of that nature. I think that it'll be self-limiting just by that factor. The same factor that is, had some other effects that we put up with the Internet. I put up with the Internet. 

Well, because it's so, It's a marvelous tool, but it's also so dastardly, stupid and times it slows down and I can do nothing to affect that and things of that nature when it's down and down. And then we all say technology is only good when it works. For sure will matter and sputter. What's gonna be the next technology we should look at? 

You don't know. I didn't give it much thought. 

If you haven't got a pessimistic fill? 

No, I don't think. I think it's going to come in nanotechnology that we're going to make a lot of advances there. 

It's just going to read it because there's just things that if you can accomplish something by moving something very light, very short distance, you can do it very easy to go back to F equals MA, if you've got to move something along distance given a lot of acceleration are a lot of mass at just takes much more force. 

So I think that's gonna be a big pusher as much as anything. That isn't. Gonna be the lightness and the low power consumption. 

If you talk to someone in nanotechnology, you can get pretty excited because it affects so many feet away and it's not just in and of itself. It's going to be at cross medical and technology. Everything on one line could be fun to watch and see what's going to happen or will be. 

Thank you so much for taking your time today to share with us, you've given us a lot of insight into what was going on at Georgia Tech when you came. Um, I hope it was a happy experience for you. Enjoyed it thoroughly, every bit of it. You probably couldn't have found any better students. 

Well, I don't know. 

You're probably very prone to favor the West Point people, but we've got some pretty bright kids coming towards the shore are and you've had a chance to put your fingers on them. 

So a lot of them, about 5,000 of them. Isn't that amazing? 

Well, you must feel good about that. 

So thank you. I thank you so much for your time today and also for your service to Georgia Tech. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.