Margaret S. Petersen
optimize the power generation while meeting requirements for flood control space and
minimum flows for navigation during the navigation season. That computer occupied a
space half as large as this room; it was huge. In Little Rock we didn't get a computer until
about `62, maybe `63. We didn't have it to use on the sediment studies while was there.
They did use it after left.
Q:
So it would have made a lot of difference for you?
A:
It would have made the computations a lot less tedious, yes. I was not involved in the details
of it, but the sediment transport computations were very tedious.
Q:
One of the things that Vern
said was that the computers allowed the engineers to get
away from spending a lot of time on tedious hand calculations and really devote themselves
to some major thinking about projects, and ideas, and designs, and get away from all of the
slide-rule type of-things. I guess there were mountains of calculations of these things.
Oh, yes. It's unbelievable, pages, and pages, and pages. And, of course, it not only had to
A:
be done, it had to be checked.
Q:
So if you had somebody working with you on this, you had to recheck what they did?
Somebody had to.
Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg
Well, let me take you back then to where we left off, which was when you were in Little
Rock working on the Arkansas.
A:
From Little Rock, I went to Vicksburg in the spring of 1964 to work at the Waterways
Experiment Station in the wave dynamics section for Bob Hudson. In the earl '60's in Little
Rock, we were working on feasibility studies for several of its locks and dams on the
Arkansas River, and preparing contract plans and specifications on others. We had many
different projects somewhere underway and there was a lot going on. When I went to
Vicksburg, there was nothing that was urgent and soon found that really wasn't very
happy to be back in the laboratory. One of the highlights of working at WES at that time was
working with
who was a very remarkable person. He was about 75 at that
time and had become a special consultant to
in 1960 after he retired from the Bureau
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