EE Academic Genealogy Project
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Wynant James Williams
Professor of Electrical Engineering
Rensselaer
1884-1950
| B.S., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1910 | William L. Robb |
| B.S., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1905 | Palmer C. Ricketts |
Prof. Wynant J. Williams (1884-1950), was one of the nation’s pioneers in radio work and head of the Department of Electrical Engineering at RPI. He received his bachelors degree from RPI and attended Berlin Technische Hochschule 1910. Professor Williams had directed engineering research throughout his professional life. He was engaged in radio research work since 1909 and later worked on the development of television. During the war he directed the development of a high frequency shielding device which was used by the armed forces of the United States and Great Britain. The device made possible the use of electricity in places where it could not be detected . This work was done for the National Defense Research Committee. Wynant J. Williams was born in Port Dover, Ontario, Canada. Following his graduation from RPI, Professor Williams became associated with the Institute as an instructor. When RPI was ready to establish a course in electrical engineering in 1910, the late Palmer C. Ricketts, president at that time, and Dr. William Robb sent Professor Williams to Germany to study electrical engineering courses. The information which he obtained was used to establish the Electrical Engineering Department at the Institute. He became head of the department in 1940.
For years he had been consultant, consulting engineer and advisor to many firms in electrical matters and radio work. He was technical advisor for the National Electric Light Association at a time when 11 projects were being considered simultaneously and the results of the research were new equipment and measures which now permit all power and communication systems to operate in the same medium without disastrous interference. He was associated with the American Radio League and the Croft Laboratory of Harvard University in research in the short wave used for television. Professor Williams was a member of the New York State Society of Professional Engineering and the American Institute of Electrical Engineering. His hobby was farming. He disliked public speaking.
[Information courtesy of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Archives. Special thanks to Ms. Jenifer Monger of RPI.]
J. Francis Reintjes
Professor of Electrical Engineering
MIT
1912-2008
| M.S., 1934, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | Wynant James Williams |
John Francis (Frank) Reintjes was born in Troy, N.Y., on Feb. 19, 1912, the son of George and Katherine (Lynch) Reintjes. Reintjes was a graduate of LaSalle Institute in Troy, N.Y., and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.
During his career as an electrical engineer, educator and researcher, his work touched many of the technological advances of the 20th century. He began his career as an engineer with General Motors in Lockport, N.Y., and subsequently taught electrical engineering at Manhattan College in New York City.
Reintjes playfully described himself in a 2006 interview for the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems as “the man who came to dinnerand never left.” The dinner was a gathering in Boston of the Institute for Radio Engineers at which he met and was later invited by W.L. Barrow to become involved in the new radar school at MIT–ultimately joining the Institute in 1943. He would remain in academia, earning a faculty appointment at MIT in 1947.
Over his 65-year association with MIT, Reintjes’ research interests expanded from the areas of radar and electronics, and early information storage and retrieval, to applications of computer-communications technologies. After five years working as a research staff member in the Research Lab of Electronics, Reintjes was appointed as the director of the Servo Lab, where he remained for 21 years.
As the Servo Lab grew under Reintjes’ leadership, the emphasis focused increasingly on computerization of numerical control. Using the Whirlwind I computer, Reintjes and colleague Douglas T. Ross MS ’54 developed an automatic programming system for numerical control in two dimensions, collectively known as Automatically Programmed Tools (APT).
Although he referred to the early Servo Lab as a kind of “military job shop,” Reintjes was well aware of the need to build its theoretical and academic side. With added faculty through the 1950s, the lab, renamed the Electronic Systems Laboratory (ESL) in 1959, became a haven for not only master’s but also for doctoral studies. Annual reports in the 1960s gave testament. Thesis research averaged 47 per year–not only in electrical engineering, but spilling into chemical and mechanical engineering, physics, mathematics, biology, nutrition and food science and aeronautical and astronautical engineering. ESL continued to prosper, ultimately taking on its current, independent lab status and from 1978 on became the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS).
