1913: A Historic Mechanical Engineer
A Historic Mechanical Engineer: By the time Vannevar Bush A13, G13, turned 50, he had helped start a radio cube company, trained generations of students at Tufts and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and designed powerful mechanical calculators. Bush began inventing while at Tufts, securing a patent for a “profile tracer” in 1912. The device allowed land surveyors to automatically draw the profile of terrain. After graduation, Bush worked briefly for General Electric, taught at Tufts' Jackson College, obtained a PhD from MIT in 1916, and then joined the Tufts faculty. Upon Bush’s death the New York Times released an obituary hailing him as "the engineer who marshalled American technology for World War II and ushered in the atomic age."