Saturday, November 29, 2008

Dr. Charles Stark Draper

Was the father of inertial guidance. AND a champion ballroom dancer.

Call it a guess, but I'm thinking this man had no problems getting laid.

CC

Sent from my iPhone

2 comments:

LinguistFriend said...

I knew Stark Draper and his family quite well a long time ago, when we lived a few houses down the street from him on Bellevue St. above Newton Corner (MA.). At the time he was chair of aeronautical engineering at MIT, and Cal Tech would have preferred that he be in Pasadena. Stark had a basic baseball-catcher-type figure, and had briefly played professional baseball as well as done boxing. His wife Ivy was not an easy woman to get along with, and the four children (Jim, Michael, Martha, John) would have complained if there had been marital complications (I don't think he had time.) Some time take a look at his classic set of books on instrumentation engineering, which I have. They are fundamental for anyone who makes physical measurements, even as far removed from aeronautics as I am. I remember when he was writing them, but I didn't understand what they were about until I had learned a certain amount of engineering math.

Chalicechick said...

I didn't mean to suggest anything about his morals, I merely noted that he had two things well known for attracting women:

1. Success

2. Dancing ability

and had them in great abundance.

CC