This is the kind of week I’ve had. I’m knocking off early.

One of the things that I always have an eye out for is evidence of the continuing passion for aviation that runs through the early decades at the Institute. While I was looking for something in some Threshers from the late 1920s the other day, this ad jumped out at me. Looking at it today it seems so reckless, but what the heck–I certainly would have gone up if I had the chance. It ran in late February:

By early March, the Rice Flying Club had organized with Jimmy Waters as its faculty sponsor:

I can’t help but wonder whether any of these guys got a ride in the Fast Parker Pen Monoplane.

Bonus: Tommy Lavergne taking more fabulous pictures.

The photos are for the next issue of Rice Magazine, which will feature a piece about a couple of the old student scrapbooks that we have in the Woodson. They’re really neat and I’ve posted images from both of them in the past. Keep an eye on your mailbox!

This has been comically difficult. Really, I’ve been laughing as I’ve gone along. Part of what makes it all so interesting is that the engineering quad has been photographed so much over the years that there are hundred of images of it in the file. It’s full of things that seem to fascinate photographers–the old Mech Lab, the big marble slabs of the sculpture, there are even dozens of pictures of the Mechanical Engineering Building going up. The Tau Beta Pi bent, however, is not one of those things. It’s always hidden behind something or tantalizingly just off the edge of the image. Combine this with one of humanity’s great weaknesses–the refusal to date pictures–and you have a convoluted situation.

Nonetheless, I persevere. Looking in the most obvious place first, I found this Thresher article from September 1968 (which happily matches the date on the bent):

Clearly, the bent was not then placed where it is now. Here’s an undated picture of it in its original home. This time instead of Paul Pfeiffer entering Abercrombie, in a nifty bookend we see Bill Wilson exiting:

At this point I can only make educated guesses about dates based on some random scraps that have turned up. Here’s a pretty image from a February 1979 Thresher:

This next one is more surprising to me. Zoom in as close as you can and you’ll see the old Sigma Tau pyramid still there in the back corner. It was obviously taken just after 45° 90° 180° was installed in 1984, which is later than I would have expected it to be there.

But I don’t think it stayed there much longer. Here, mirabile dictu, is a photo dated August 1987 that shows the bent in its current location, with the pool filled in and plants added:

I don’t know about you guys, but I think that’s close enough.

I hate to let anyone see me break out in a sweat, but I’m forced to admit that at this point I am working very, very hard to figure out the Tau Beta Pi bent story. Could there possibly be a more obscure corner of this campus?? In any event, I had a couple of minor breakthroughs this afternoon but I don’t have time to digest them right now. Instead for your entertainment I will trot out some photographs of one attempt at international understanding, through the great game of golf, no less. It seems like a cruel thing to do to these fellows, all of whom look more than a little dubious.

The pictures are labeled “Russian Technology Exchange” and, naturally, they aren’t dated.

I happen to know, however, that the nice man who’s trying without notable success to get them to grip the club properly is John Plumbley, class of ’48, who was Rice’s golf coach from the 1970s until his death at age 61 in 1983. (Just for kicks, here’s Plumbley in the May 11, 1970 issue of Sports Illustrated: John Plumbley, Rice golf coach, on his team’s erratic driving: “When the squirrels and birds see us on the tee they start scattering. We’ve set back the mating season in Texas 90 days.”)

I can only wonder at the chain of events that led to this moment. Truly, we live in a wonderful world.

Bonus: I looked reasonably hard for some information on the Russian scientists but came up pretty much empty. I did manage to dig out one short piece written by a student named Steve Redding in the Winter 1969 issue of the Rice Engineer, but it was about an earlier group of Russians. Then I had to run off to attend a class (more about this later) in Anderson Hall. The room numbers are a bit confusing so I was happy to find it quickly and even happier to see who it was named for:

I shouldn’t have been surprised to find another plaque inside the room, noting the donor, my old friend Ray Watkin Hoagland Strange, William Ward Watkin’s daughter:

But I was really startled when I looked at the card that the instructor, whose name I didn’t catch at first but who turned out to be a Rice alum from the class of 1970, handed me afterwards:

The harder I tried to figure out what happened with that Tau Beta Pi bent in front of Abercrombie the more confused I got, so I went all the way back to the beginning and took things one step at a time. Today, we have Step One.

In the beginning, the earth was without form, and void. No, just kidding, I won’t go back quite that far. But I will go back to when there was nothing was in that corner. This picture was taken in late 1955:

Someone in the comments sent me off in  a very fruitful direction with the suggestion that the original monument was put up by an engineering society that was NOT Tau Beta Pi–this suggestion was correct. I found an article in the November 1956 issue of the Rice Engineer that explains it was a project of Sigma Tau, an engineering honor society that began at the University of Nebraska in 1904. I’m not completely sure why Rice would have had chapters of both societies, but we did. The chapter of Tau Beta Pi was formed at the Institute in 1940 and Sigma Tau began in 1953. (They merged nationally in 1974, by the way.) The article also helpfully shows us exactly how the guys built the original pool:

Ok, so far, so good. But things now start to get a little fuzzy. Looking for a photo of the completed monument, I (completely by luck) came across this very nice shot. If you zoom in you can even see that it says “1956″,which is frankly a bit of a relief:

Unfortunately, it’s not dated. The only information I have is that it was sent over in a batch of files from Public Affairs in February 1994, so it can’t have been taken after then. Just a quick glance suggests late ’70s or ’80s to me, but I really can’t tell. The kid on the bench just looks like an engineer–that is to say, nearly timeless.

More later.

Bonus:

We received a chastity belt.
 

It came with a nice note, letting us know that the author’s father found it in the Administration Building (Lovett) in the 1930s.

One can only hope it was a theatrical prop of some sort.

It’s always so much harder to get it down than it was to put it up.

Bonus:

On Monday, we’ll go back to Abercrombie. I’ve made some progress.