Seventy Years Of The Worcester Polytechnic Institute: Page 188

years he received additional assistance from various alumni. He lived to the ripe age of ninety-one, and until a few months before his death maintained an art studio in Worcester.

Also in 1896, the Mechanical Engineering department lost the services of William W. Bird, who gave up teaching to devote his entire attention to his prospering foundry business in Cambridgeport. The first appointee to the chair of Mechanical Engineering was James J. Guest of McGill University, the post having been tendered previously to Prof. Thomas Gray of Rose Polytechnic Institute. Professor Guest was thirty, an honors graduate of Cambridge in 1888, very much an Englishman. During his three-year tenure he was not a marked success, lateness to classes being one of his characteristics. He resigned in 1899, because the "Board of Governors" had persistently refused to act on his numerous suggestions. Later he returned to England. About 1930 a notice in a London paper stated that the "late Professor Guest" was available for tutoring.

The next occupant of the chair of Applied Mechanics was Albert Kingsbury, a graduate of Cornell, '89, and for the previous eight years a professor at New Hampshire State College. Mr. Kingsbury was not only a keen and inventive engineer and an authority on lubrication, but an active member of engineering societies. At the time of his appointment he was secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, later its vice president.

To succeed Mr. Higgins as superintendent of the Shop in 1896, the trustees secured Clarence A. Chandler, '74, who since graduation had accumulated a wealth of experience. He came directly from the position as superintendent of the Carver Cotton Gin Co. Since several of the leading figures in the shop organization, including Frank B. Williams, instructor in molding, W. Frank Cole, '83, chief designer, and Ezra Walls, elevator superintendent, had gone out with Mr. Higgins it was necessary for Mr. Chandler completely to reorganize this department. Noah Ashworth came in as instructor in

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