Rice Lauds Great Scientific Achievements of Thomson

Veteran G. E. Engineer Is Honored at Dinner at M. I. T. on 80th Birthday

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 29 (Special). — E. W. Rice jr., a past president of the General Electric Company and now honorary chairman of the board of directors, was the principal speaker at the testimonial dinner given tonight at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to Professor Elihu Thomson in honor of his 80th birthday. Professor Thomson, one of the premier scientists of the G. E. Company, has been a professional associate of Mr. Rice for more than 50 years, and before they entered business together Thomson was Rice's teacher In the Central High School in Philadelphia.

Mr. Rice recalled Professor Thomson's technical soundness in predicting the trend of development in various inventions which other men had made. He told Rice that Bell's telephone receiver would eventually make use of permanent magnets in place of the electro-magnets which Bell at first thought necessary. He prophested that Edison would discard using tinfoil for his phonograph and would shorten the excessive length of the field magnets in his dynamo. These changes all came to pass soon afterward.

Mention was made by Mr. Rice of the diagram of a three-phase dynamo which was included in Thomson's early three-coil direct-current dynamo, and of the pioneer development which this represented. The two men, in their early period of association, discussed also the electrical connection of two alternating-current dynamos, one of which, Thomson declared, would run as a motor.

Predicted High Voltage

"This was several years before Tesla Invented his multi-phase system,” said Mr. Rice. “This incident is not mentioned with the intention of making any claim of priority for Thomson over Tesla, as the professor did nothing about it and a few years later, without, of course, any knowledge of Thomson’s suggestion, Tesla did reduce the idea to practice and gave it to the world.”

There was also the prediction by Thomson that the voltage of the larger type of are-light machines then in development, about 2,000 volts, was enough to produce a spark that would jump through free air. This was regarded by Rice as an “amazing statement” and both he and the professor wondered if they would live long enough to see such a sight.

“Yet but a few years elapsed,” said Mr. Rice, “before we saw electric power lines of the country carrying a current at potentials capable of jumping a foot or more through the free air. To obtain the proper perspective for our views at that time is must be realized that for many years static electricity and dynamic electricity had been regarded as separate manifestations.”

Declaring that Thomson had all his life shown an unerring capacity for soundness and simplicity in his technical work and his inventions, he said that Thomson, as a skilled workman, is able to do anything that he asks of others.

Thorough Builder

“He prefers to make his own drawings,” said Mr. Rice, “free-hand sketches to which he adds dimensions and a short written description. He selects his own material, supervises the work of construction and the final tests.

“Professor Thomson, perhaps more than any other scientific worker since the days of Faraday or Henry, combines in his person profound and accurate scientific knowledge with the most extraordinary technical skill. He has been a prolific inventor, a trained engineer and an inspiring teacher. Our generation has produced men who may have equaled or excelled him in some one of these fields, but no one has arisen who to such a superlative degree combined the quality of Inventor, engineer and teacher.

“His technical and scientific work has met with the enthusiastic approval of his fellow men, as evidenced by the honors of all kinds that have been showered upon him in this and other countries. But those who know him best prize him not only for his technical skill and scientific attainments, but for those qualities, ethical if you please, with which he is so generously endowed; those qualities which make up the personality of the man we delight to honor, so sincere, so modest, so full of sympathy with all that is good in life; a character which commands our confidence and wins and retains our affection. While he has made the most important additions to the world’s material wealth, he has added even more generously to its intellectual treasury.”

Young's Felicitations

The following communication from Owen D. Young, chairman of the board of the General Electric Company, who was unable to attend the event, was read at the dinner:

“I deeply regret my inability to attend the testimonial dinner to Professor Thomson in honor of his 80th birthday. I cannot let this occasion pass without sending my felicitations to Professor Thomson.

“In 1930, at a dinner given by the General Electric Company in celebration of Professor Thomson's 50 years' association with it, I said:

“A mind which Is dealing with intangibles is apt to find not only Its stimulation, but its nourishment in the constant seeking and apprehending of the new. A new system may be built on a single hypothesis, and over night a new discovery may destroy its very foundations, Minds engaged in such undertakings must be prepared to scrap everything they have at any minute and begin all over again. The thinking of years must be as freely discarded as a worn-out suit of of clothes. Men dealing with intangibles, who are capable of doing this, are young despite their years. Conversely, men who are incapable of doing it may be old at youth. The man who lives with Ideas as distinguished from these things has a life which is an exciting serial in which he is always anticipating the new instalment. His value is not impaired by age so long as he retains these qualities. He is old only in wisdom and experience.'

“I say now as I said then that by this criterion none will deny that Professor Thomson is young. I congratulate him now as I did then on his youth. Certainly his life has been an exciting serial, and we join with him now in anticipating the new instalment.”