This site lists the topics of discussion for the David Wilson Science and Technology discussion groups at the Jenks Center in Winchester MA. We meet every second and fourth Fridays at 10:30 to noon (except August).
On October 22nd, we will continue our conversation regarding energy conversion when Kerry Emanuel of MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences joins us by Zoom. Kerry is known for his views as a climate scientist for nuclear energy. His essay on Nuclear Salvation from the 50th Anniversary issue of The Bridge is given in the following link:
Bob Lewis will join us again, this time to talk about Henry Knox and George Washington’s Artillery Logistics. Henry Knox was George Washington's Chief of Artillery. When General George Washington took command of the Continental Army in Cambridge July 2, 1775, the Army needed a victory. The militias that had responded to the alarm of Paul Revere and others had forced the retreat of the British Regulars from Concord to Boston, and now surrounded the British army in Boston. Washington needed cannons to drive the British out of Boston. Henry Knox had come to Washington’s attention during an inspection of fortifications designed by Knox near Roxbury. Washington consulted Knox for advice in November 1775 on the acquisition of artillery to drive the British out of Boston. Knox proposed a plan to transport the cannons captured at Fort Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys to the siege lines around Boston. Washington endorsed the plan and Henry Knox began the 300 mile trek to Fort Ticonderoga in November 1775. This is the story of that incredible and successful effort in the dead of the winter of 1775 to haul 120,000 pounds of cannons down Lake George and the Hudson River, and then over the Berkshires to Cambridge and George Washington.
Retired Navy Captain and Navy pilot Bob Lewis spent seven years with the U.S. Navy as an Aircraft carrier-based Patrol Plane Commander, serving on the aircraft carriers WASP, INTREPID, and SARATOGA. As a Naval Reserve officer, he flew P-2s and P-3s and commanded his Naval Reserve unit. In his 30 years as an engineer with the MITRE Corporation, he spent 7 years in Germany at Headquarters, US Army Europe, helping to develop joint communication systems to integrate the Army, Air Force and Marines. He later returned to Germany to lead the communications engineering effort for an alternate command post in Romania. Bob is a gifted narrator and story teller and has met with us earlier this year to talk about The Pursuit of the Battleship Bismarck and the efforts of Norwegian commandos in Preventing Hitler From Building the Atomic Bomb.
