The early days, the real early days, in my perspective was the period from 1950 to 1959 particularly, but could be extended somewhat.  Why I chose 1950 will become evident to you shortly. I chose 1959 because the Aero Department that Dan Sayre and Court Perkins created drew a comment by Ray Bisplinghof during a review process in 1959 that simply said we're one of the best or not the best Aero Dept. in the nation.  What contributed to this department receiving this accolade since it was a very young entity?  My perspective is that it was not only the quality of the faculty and staff, but also the quality of the graduate students it attracted and some ancillary elements that in some ways made it unique.  However, in further retrospect, perhaps one of the most important elements was the ambiance created by Court Perkins  - it was simply an exciting and fun place - consequently there will be some
feeble attempts at humor as I look back.

        My very personal perspective starts as one who was a novice to the field of aeronautical engineering. I did know that airplanes had wings!  I received a doctorate in chemical engineering in 1950 and didn't have a job.  Fortunately, during my last academic term I sat in two courses in the new Aero Dept. at Hopkins taught by Les Kovaznay and Stan Corrsin and learned that I was 10 years behind in what I thought was my main discipline.  I asked Corrsin if he knew where I could get a job at some academic institution where I could learn more of the field and earn a living.  He suggested that I write a Frank Parker, the Director of Project SQUID, which was located at Princeton University and affiliated with its new Aero Dept.  This ONR organization supported research at many academic facilities and perhaps Parker knew one which would be looking for a staff member.

        The response to my letter to Parker came from a Prof. Charyk inviting me to Princeton for an interview.  My concept of Princeton at the time was that all the professors wore those starched winged collars and worked in beautiful ivy-covered buildings.  As I waited to be picked up at the dinky station in Princeton, a slick black Olds coupe drives up and the inhabitant introduces himself as Joe Charyk and he takes me to a bunch of Quonset huts and concrete buildings that protruded underneath the stands of the football stadium and then a whole new world opened up to me. I met Lester Lees, Abe Kahane and I believe Boggy and Nick
Nikolsky.  The dynamism of the group was quite evident.  Charyk explained to me that Harry Guggenheim had created the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Jet Propulsion Center and established an important Chair and graduate fellowships.  Bringing this Center to Princeton was the work of Dan Sayre, who heard that MIT and Cal Tech turned down Mr. Guggenheim's hope that one could send mail from the East Coast to the West Coast by rockets.  Sayre simply suggested to Mr. Guggenheim that Princeton would do the research that would make the concept feasible and won the endowment.  Cal Tech responded by saying they would do the same thing as Princeton.  I learned that the contributions of the Guggenheims to aero engineering were enormous.  This Center seemed so exciting, and Quonset huts or not, I wanted to come to Princeton.

        I then received an offer from Prof. Charyk that I couldn't refuse.  I couldn't refuse if because it was the only one I had.  Arriving early in Nov.1950 I met with Prof. Charyk who explained to me that he wanted me to undertake a study of the mixing of supersonic and subsonic axi-symmetric air streams because this configuration was the fundamental aspect of the ram rocket program that was underway.  He asked me to design two axi-symmetric supersonic nozzles, M=2.6 and 1.5, and to follow the approach of Foelsch in an article in the IAS Journal and to also read an article by Crocco and Lees on supersonic mixing.  He never told me that such nozzles had never been made before, so I never told him I never had a course on compressible flows. But I was assigned a desk in a small metal hut with three graduate students, Ronnie Probstein, Sin-I Cheng and Bud Cohen.  Probstein and Cheng soon realized that they had their first teaching assignment and we proceeded to design the nozzles.  They did such a good job of teaching that I thought I discovered an error in the Crocco-Lees theory.  At that time I really didn't know the reputation of Charyk, Lees and Crocco in the field of aeronautics, but I did know Crocco was the senior person, so I made an appointment with him to show him the error of his ways.  As he politely took me through my reasoning and lack of knowledge in the area, I began to become embarrassed and would have felt like a fool if it weren't for the fact that he thanked me profusely for coming to see him about his
work.  I knew I was going to like this place.

        Every so often I would hear the very loud noise of Kahane's intermittent ramjet experiment, but I would jump every time there was an explosion which I learned was due to rocket blowing up due to a delayed ignition. Occasionally a technician would come to talk to me about the possibility that the chemical propellants were at fault.  One Friday I was talking to a machinist that Boggy told me could make my supersonic nozzles.  Harry Ashworth was an Englishman who had to be handled with kid gloves I was warned.  This one Friday Charyk ask to see me and told me he would like me to take over the direction of the ram rocket program. Concerned, I muttered that I also didn't know much about rockets, but he said the technicians knew how to run the rockets.  He then gave me some very good advise and simply said, "You'll learn".  Every weekend I went to Baltimore to see my fiancée and this time told her that I think I've been promoted, I'm taking over the rocket project.  She said, " What do you know about rockets".  Of course I had the answer "I'll learn".  Upon return to Princeton on the following Monday I sought out the technician, John Thomas, I thought Charyk referred to.  As I approached him he immediately said I know you're taking over the direction of the program.  So I said confessionally I really don't know much about rockets, but I understand you do.  I will never forget his response and you'll have to excuse me, but it was "What the hell are you talking about, I've only been here three weeks" and we both had a good laugh. John who hadn't brought his family from western PA yet had a Butler tract apartment and our very long hour trying to fix rockets culminated in more spaghetti dinners there that I care to remember.

         My so-called promotion bought me. a desk in a larger office which, of course, contained three times as many people including graduate students working on various aspects of the rocket program.  I particularly remember Dick John and George Sutherland and later John Scott and Wally Warren.  Also there were a group of girls operating those old Monroe calculators.  We were allowed to call them girls in those days.  They determining something they called flame temperatures and rocket specific impulses. What we now do in a few seconds used to take them a week.

        The challenge we had was to have the rocket running as soon as possible which meant we had to resolve the delayed ignition problem.  You have to remember in the '50's the transistor was not invented, computer chips did not exist and fast response electronic devices didn't exist either.  The solenoid valve and a recording potentiometer were the fastest operating devices we had.  We developed a count down procedure, siren on, hit the ignition switch and blew up some rockets, which meant we flooded the cell with the cooling water, which John had to mop up.  We learned quickly to link the injector head to the rocket body by bolts that would fail.  Once we had the rocket running without the delayed ignition we were free for a good run.  One time we thought we were free and all of the sudden the rocket burned through its side wall.  In determining the cause we found somebody flushed the one toilet we had in our fancy complex.  In my hurry to get the rocket running I didn't realize that those who preceded me had simply connected our cooling water inlet to the rocket to the quarter inch water line that fed the complex.  John and I quickly designed a pressurized tank water system. While waiting for the delivery of the tank our count down procedure now had an item which read "Put sign on toilet door - Please do not flush toilet while the siren is running".

        After the water tank system was running we were having a great deal of success.  Except one time we didn't blow up the rocket, but it didn't fire up even though the liquid oxygen and fuel valves showed open and the ignition switch was on.  We found that a very little field mouse had crawled into the throat of the rocket and we froze the buggy to death.  Remember the hugh ragweed field on he other side of the road that led to the huts. The success and continued operation of the ram rocket brought complaints from the Dean's wife about all the noise we were making.  We had the whole ram rocket system with the clever ejector-air inflow system that my predecessors had designed operating in tact. I was then informed that Sayre had invited a Life photography to take a picture of our rocket firing.  I said it was impossible since the rocket was enclosed in a duct.  Find some way was the command.  John got the idea of putting as angled mirror in front of the air intake duct and he would shine a flashlight at the end of the afterburning duct so the photographer could focus.  This cell was a narrow old gun tunnel with a side door near the air intake.  When the siren went off for the beginning of the countdown I always did a mental count down and if I got to 31 seconds I knew we had trouble.  At 32 seconds I murmured " Oh 'expletive'" and heard the loudest explosion I could remember.  Everybody standing by the side door jumped, the injector head failed as it should for a delayed ignition and smashed the mirror as the flame came out of the wrong end of the rocket.  The photographer jumped and shouted do it again I didn't snap the picture.  Of course we met the paradigm that rockets blow up every time you have a visitor.

        At this time it was necessary to move off the campus due to the noise.  Sayre convinced the university to buy the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research property on Route 1 where they did their animal and plant pathology work.  And we were to move all our experiments to a new site.  Summerfield suggested that we hire Pres Layton who he knew from Aerojet to take charge of the propulsion effort move.  Summerfield who I have not mentioned as yet was brought to Princeton to become Editor of the new Princeton Series on High Speed Aerodynamics and Jet Propulsion whose purpose was to provide the book literature for these rapidly developing fields.  Summerfield , a protégé of von Karman as was Joe Charyk, worked for Project SQUID, essentially ONR.  He refused to kow-tow to Senator Joe McCarthy and unfortunately was told he could no longer work for ONR.  Princeton and the Aero Dept. showed their colors by giving him a professorship. Charyk took over as Editor of the Princeton Series.

        Summerfield became editor of the Journal of the American Rocket Society and I then joined him as Asst. Editor.  So now Princeton's Aero. Dept. had associated with it, Project SQUID, the Princeton Book Series and JARS. We gradually moved to the Rockefeller property which was renamed the Forrestal Center.  I now had my first private office.  Of course, it was at one end of a fancy cow barn, but an advantage in the new experimental area there was you didn't have to worry about mopping up spilled water.

        Jerry Grey joined us at Forrestal to assist Crocco to set up the combustion instability program in the rocket cells Layton designed.  Pres was also instrumental in forming the Princeton Section of the ARS.  We drew prominent speakers. Two I think of most were von Braun and A. C. Clarke.  I still recall Jerry, Pres and myself having dinner with von Braun in the Stag Room of the Nassau Inn when he explained to us that the next time he was going to be on the winning side.  The A. C. Clarke reception, it is 2001, was in the Master Suite of the Graduate College where John Scott resided. We started to ask Clarke about different rocket technologies and he said he was really more into astrophysics.  One of the other graduate students present brought down some astrophysics graduate students that led Clarke to say he was really a science fiction writer.

        The Forrestal location really crystallized the Aero. Dept. into a very cohesive group.  This was most evident in the Seminar Program.  Everyone showed up and particularly the graduate students because of the food and beverages served before the start of the seminar.  Funny, but the seminar had a hierarchy with respect to the audience seating.  All the senior professors sat in the first row, junior and staff behind them, and then the graduate students, except for Wally Hayes who would sit in the very back of the room and apparently go to sleep -so one thought until the end of the seminar when he would shatter most speakers with the most pertinent of questions and comments.  He and Summerfield developed our reputation of our asking piercing questions at technical meetings.

        The most significant lectures we had were two by von Karman where he introduced the term "aerothermochemistry" which I always call the sophisticated name for combustion.  This transparency is a picture of most of those who attended.  Indeed practically everyone in the picture became professors or leaders in the aero field.

        Lunches in our little cafeteria developed creative ideas, the Perkins' cocktail parties for the new graduate students were great, but the Department was driving the graduate students a little crazy by continually changing the General Exam and Ph.D. requirements.  Being close to the graduate students and understanding their problems I began to develop a strong desire to get on the faculty, but the chance of a chemical engineer getting such an appointment seemed remote to me.  Then Charyk announced that he was leaving Princeton for a senior industrial research position.  I wasn't sure what would happen to me, but Bev and I were so in love with the community and the congeniality of the Department that we were going to stay unless told otherwise.  One Saturday morning I saw I had a flat tire in the lot behind our apartment building and decided to fix it.  I just had the car jacked up when I heard Court Perkins call from his house across the street.  I said wait until I change the tire.  He said it was important and to come right over.  He said to me that the department had voted to appoint me an assistant professor, so informed the President of the University and hoped I wouldn't turn it down.  You think M-2.6 is fast, the next thing I knew I was in our third floor apartment telling Bev.  I'm not sure that the car isn't still jacked up.  I tell this little story because it was evident that Court was as pleased as I was.

        The ambiance and excitement of the early days were due to many things the faculty, staff, the Guggenheim endowment, the superior quality of the graduate students, Project Squid, the Princeton Series, the ARS Journal and the very active, young ARS Chapter.  The work on combustion instability by Crocco, Grey and their perennial graduate student George Matthews blossomed.  The ram rocket was firing monopropellants as John Scott developed his thesis.  Dick Dobbins in his thesis developed a seminal approach for light scattering measurement of spray droplets.  We didn't have lasers then, but his work has been the foundation of many current laser diagnostics approaches.  Summerfield built a solid propellant processing facility and he, Bob McAlevy and Dave Blair made significant contributions  to understanding solid propellant ignition.  Basic research in aerothermochemistry (combustion, that is) flourished as Dick John did some of the earliest original and seminal work on turbulent flames, Bob Jahn joined the faculty and established with the likes of Adam Bruckner one of the best electric propulsion facilities in the nation and then the IAS and ARS decided to mimic Princeton's Aero Dept. by merging. As I analyze this and look back we were in the initial stages of,  we were part of and we contributed to the greatest technological adventure of all times,  going into space and putting a man on the moon.  And we did it without transistor of laser technology, but with imagination, intuition and a sound grounding in the fundamentals. Thus I think you will understand one of my ending statements.-I'm very glad we started out before the transistor was invented-.  If anything synthesizes what the department was about it was that we sustained an aphorism by Princeton's most famous citizen that I found was part of a quote in the Saturday Evening Post in 1923.
 

         "Imagination is as important as knowledge.  For knowledge is limited,
whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress,
giving birth to evolution"

This comment not only tells you about the past, but also challenges the future to be discussed. Your attention to one man's sentimental rambling is most appreciated.