A grainy clock counts down black-and-white seconds, and two wineglasses appear as suspense-inducing music scratches in the background. “Here are two snifters, one with wine, one with water,” a voiceover intones. “If you put a tablespoonful of wine into the water, and a tablespoonful of this mixture into the wine, is there more wine in the water than water in the wine? The answer in a moment.” The wineglasses fade to a shot of Gilman Hall.
Between 1948 and 1960, Johns Hopkins produced several educational television series. Johns Hopkins Science Review opened in March 1948, on WMAR-TV— a weekly program featuring world-renowned scientists and scientific “firsts” that was telecast to Baltimore from Remsen Hall. The series specialized in demonstrations, discussions, and dramatizations by Hopkins faculty and guests, with topics ranging from the first televised live birth to segments with “Big Bang” theorist George Gamow and pioneering rocket engineer Wernher von Braun. At least seven episodes in the four series featured engineering themes, including this Nov. 2, 1958, segment titled “Think and Answer.”
The snifters crackle back onto the screen along with the show’s host, creator, and producer Lynn Poole, who is introducing the episode as a quiz show testing rigorous thinking. Eliezer Naddor, a Hopkins professor of industrial engineering, solves the puzzle. “The answer is rather simple, Mr. Poole,” Naddor says. “There is just as much water in the wine as there is wine in the water.”
“It was problem solving; looking at a new set of facts and trying to figure out a doable solution.” Robert Aberneth
As the episode unfolds, freshmen Karvel Rose and Robert Abernethy take on two Arts and Sciences classmates in a contest to tackle eight mind-teasers posed by Naddor. At the conclusion, the engineers prevail with a score of 4 to 3.
Fifty-four years later, Abernethy— president and chairman of American Standard Development Co. in Los Angeles—recalls being glad he participated in the episode. “My memories of it are fond,” says Abernethy, who spent three years on the electrical engineering track before switching to mathematics in his senior year. In addition to his real estate business, Abernethy is deeply involved with numerous charities and boards, including the Hopkins board of trustees. And at least one skill he relied on during the 1958 episode has continued to serve him in all those endeavors. “It was problem solving; looking at a new set of facts and trying to figure out a doable solution,” he says. “In a way, that was a little start to what has been a lifelong pursuit.”
Soon after the program’s Baltimore debut, CBS agreed to broadcast the Science Review from Boston to Richmond, making Johns Hopkins the first university to produce a weekly program on network television. In fall 1950, the series switched to the DuMont network and its local Baltimore affiliate, WAAM-TV, which later became WJZ. Johns Hopkins Science Review became the first American program to be seen in Europe in 1951, and by 1952, the show was being broadcast in 21 cities across the United States and in Canada.
“Tonight we want you to see how sanitary engineering protects my life and yours,” Poole says by way of introduction to “Don’t Drink the Water,” a March 20, 1951, segment on water and sewage filtration. Abel Wolman ’13 (A&S), ’15, chair of the Department of Sanitary Engineering, narrates a history of water purification from simple filtration up through modern chlorination processes. The episode closes with an ad for U.S. Savings Bonds.
On Feb. 17, 1954, “Concrete with Muscles” opens with a shot of Poole against a partially constructed Ames Hall to demonstrate concrete in action. Concrete, strong when compressed, suffers from weak tensile strength, explains civil engineering Professor Walter Boyer. Pre-stressed concrete—“ordinary concrete held under a permanent squeeze”— addresses this challenge, he notes, and Boyer demonstrates by pressing together a row of books to show the weight they can bear.
Johns Hopkins Science Review ended in late 1955 when DuMont went out of business, but the ABC network jumped in with an idea for a new series. Tomorrow’s Careers, focusing on career possibilities in a rapidly changing world, ran from March 1955 until June 1956.
In an episode that aired on May 22, 1956, Poole noted that demand for engineering, chemistry, and physics graduates was 47 percent higher in 1956 than the previous year. In this episode, Poole interviews three engineering seniors who have just accepted job offers. “I’m sure there’s quite a future in computers, that’s why I want to get into it,” says senior Edward K. Hahn, who says he plans to design computer circuits for IBM.
With network producers seeking to appeal to a wider audience, Tomorrow’s Careers gave way in 1957 to Johns Hopkins File 7, which explored the arts and humanities as well as science and industry.
In the April 26, 1958, segment, “The Educational Pursuit,” Poole asks five students to share some thoughts about the education they have just completed and their plans for the future.
Electrical engineering senior Henry James Lory anticipates a career in computers, and says he would have appreciated more technical courses in the curriculum. Fellow electrical engineer Marvin Garbis plans to go into industry and take part-time graduate courses, and wishes the engineering program had included more humanities. Poole jumps into the fray, opining that engineering and science students need as much background in the humanities as possible because life must include more than work.
By 1960, production for commercial TV was becoming more elaborate, and though viewership was still high, Hopkins could no longer afford to carry the program’s expenses. In the series’ final engineering- themed episode, “100 Gallons a Day” (Nov. 29, 1959), sanitary engineering Professors John C. Geyer and Charles E. Renn explore the engineering and social issues posed by our increasing water consumption. In earlier times, Geyer says, individuals needed just two quarts of water a day. Between drinking, bathing, cooking, and recreation, that figure had climbed to 100 gallons.
Renn holds up a utensil. “This steel fork required some 34 pounds of water to make,” he tells us. He goes on to note that a small rubber ball used 400 pounds, and a wool scarf, one ton. All our industries combined require about 100 billion gallons of water daily, he says—about half of our nation’s total, or a 3-inch deep puddle the size of Connecticut.