William R. Campbell
SESA President 1958-59
By C. E. Taylor, SEM Historian
Perusal of early volumes of the Proceedings of the Society for Experimental
Stress Analysis reveals only a small part Bill Campbell’s SESA history. He
joined the Society in around 1951 while he was working at the National Bureau of
Standards, and presented a paper entitled, “Determination of Dynamic
Stress-Strain Curves from Strain Waves in Long Bars” at the 1951 Spring SESA
Meeting in Washington, D.C. (see SESA Proc., Vol X , No. 1). Bill’s
second (and last) SESA paper was entitled, “A Transistorized AM-FM
Radio-Link Torque Telemeter for Large Rotating Shafts” and was presented
at
the 1956 Spring Meeting in Pittsburgh, Pa. (see SESA Proc., Vol X
IV, No. 2). The co-author of the latter paper was R. F. Suit, Jr. In
about 1953 Bill left the National Bureau of Standards and went to work for the
General Electric Company, first in Schenectady, NY and later in Philadelphia ,
PA.
In 1951 Bill was appointed to the SESA Papers Committee which then
consisted of a chairman (Milt Leven) and eight members. If that seems
small by today’s standards, remember that simultaneous sessions had not yet been
introduced. A typical meeting lasted two and a half days, had five
technical sessions, and a total of about twenty papers. Bill’s next step
up
the SESA ladder came when he was elected to served on
Executive Committee 1955-56, then he became a Vice President 1956-58 . Bill
Campbell’s terms and my terms on both the Papers Committee and Executive
Committee coincided, so we had become well acquainted. When he took office
as President in the Fall of 1958, he asked me to be Chairman of the Papers
Committee. At that time we had just one paper available for the Washington
Meeting, just six months away. Largely through his efforts, we were able
to put together a full program. Unfortunately, Bill had a heart attack
during his term as President, and Ben Lazan (then a Vice President)
had to preside in his place at the Spring Meeting in Washington, D.C. Bill
recovered sufficiently to attend the 1959 Annual Meeting in Detroit, but when he
arrived there it was apparentl that he was not at all well. We didn’t
realize just how sick he really was, and were shocked when he died a few weeks
later, just after his year as SESA President ended. Soon thereafter
the SESA lost touch with his family, so much about his personal life remains
unknown to us. We estimate that he was around 42 years old when he
died.
Now, some 41 years later, it is difficult to find anyone who really
knew Bill and who is willing and able to write an article about him. Very
fortunately, Pete Stein sent me a copy of the Proceedings of the Western
Regional Strain Gage Committee, produced in 1988, the fiftieth anniversary of
the invention of the strain gage. Included in those proceedings is a
biography of Bill Campbell written by Frank C. Smith which we will reproduce
here. I share Frank’s fond memories of Bill Campbell. He was a good man
and a good friend.– CET
I remember Bill well, and first met him in
the Fall of 1944, when I joined NBS in the Aircraft Structures Group of
the Engineering Mechanics Sections, Mechanics Division. As I remember the
organization at that time, Dr. Hugh Dryden was Mechanics Division Chief, Prof.
Whittmore (of the proving ring) was Engineering Mechanics Group supervisor, and
Bill reported to Dr. Ramberg. Dr. L. B. Tuckerman of the Tuckerman optical
strain gage was our Assistant Division Chief, and one of my mentors and close
friends. So, you see, I was fortunate to work with some of the “greats” in
the field of structure mechanics - but that is another story.
Below
section Chief, the organization was fairly loose and there were few, if any,
titles or “badges of rank”. Functionally, the section was divided into
working groups each led by a specialist, but the groups were fluid and younger
people like myself were simple assigned to work with one of the specialists as
the need arose. I believe I may have been assigned to work
for Bill for
a short time during which I learn to make gages. The ones I made used a
simple tool for winding and were patterned after the SR-4 design.
I was
going on 21 years of age when I joined that group, and Bill must have been about
27 or 28. I remember him as being one of the “younger” men, more my peer,
than people like Dr. Ramberg (then about 44) or others. Bill was the Section’s
wire strain gage expert, and was assigned to work with gages on a full-time
basis. I am not 100% certain, but I believe Bill’s mission at that time was
careful measurement of the characteristics of SR-4 and other gages under various
conditions. Such effort would have been consistent with a part of our
Section’s charter, which was precise measurement of the properties of materials
and devices related to structural mechanics in general and to aircraft
structures in particular. Anyhow, I remember Bill was concerned about gages
properties such as transverse sensitivity, creep and hysteresis, thermal
effects, etc.
Bill was a rather quiet personality - not a “hale fellow
well met”, but friendly enough when he got to know you. He was married and
kind enough to invite me (a lonely bachelor) to his home two or three times for
supper and an evening of conversation.
I left the Bureau in October,
1945, to return to college, and rejoined them in September, 1947, after having
completed my degree at Yale. Bill was still working with strain gages. I
believe most of his work was documented in N.A.C.A. “TN’s” at that time.
I transferred from that Section when the Korean War broke out
(June,1950) and lost track of Bill. In summary, all I can say
is that Bill was regarded as a competent, dedicated professional who was
our expert with wire resistance strain gages.