LeTourneau Tech's NOW, Volume 1, Number 29, July 25, 1947 Page: 2
9 p. : ill.View a full description of this periodical.
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V- FORK a horse or a mule 73
per cent as hard as Robert
Gilmour LeTourneau pushes
himself and, Mister, the Humane So-
ciety will be in to see you, not to
mention the neighbors and the pick-
up truck from the rendering plant.
$ix days a week the workingest
worker on the payroll of R. G. Le-
Tourneau, Inc., or its affiliates starts
his stint about 7:30 a.m. and knocks
off for the night around 9:30 p.m. or
2 a.m. On the seventh day he dawdles
in bed until about 8 a.m., preaches two
to four times and scurries off from a
few hundred to a thousand miles or
more to get in a night's rest to face
the next work week.
He has four offices-one in each
U. S. factory, which he visits each
week-but his favorite seat is on a
high stool at a drawing board. It is
easier to take a new bicycle away
from a twelve-year-old than to drag
him off from a design project. Argue
that he ought to take some recreation
and he'll declare he is having more
fun working than a barrel of chim-
panzees.
Tell him he ought to stir in a little
variety with his rigorous work diet
and he'll itemize the variety of prob-
lems he has tackled that day. Variety?
He actually thinks he has more than
most anybody because he always has
new industrial puzzles to solve and
an assortment of bugs to blast out
of his latest machinery. Variety?
Well, some might call it monotonous
visiting the same factories 50 times
a year, facing the same issues year
after year, everlastingly designing
machinery, listening to the same sort
of introductions three to five times
every weekend, making very similar
talks 250 or more times annually,shaking hands with about 25,000 peo-
ple who murmur, "I enjoyed your
message," and grinding endlessly
through the skies between plant and
plant, and mid-week and weekend
speaking dates.
A grind-that's what it is-a week-
ly grind. Toccoa, Vicksburg, Long-
view, Peoria, Syracuse, Saskatoon,
Superior or some other strange city,
Toccoa, Vicksburg, Longview, Peoria,
some other week-end city, Longview
counterclockwise (for a bit of a
change, you know), Vicksburg, Toc-
coa, Peoria and interminabilis. Noth-
ing but a grind, and NOW determined
to expose the whole dreary drudgery
with the aid of several photographers
and a reporter who has no compunc-
tion against sticking his nose in places
and asking questions.
Between them the shutter snappers
covered about ten consecutive days,
and the reporter made a week's round
within that period: Peoria to Peoria,
Tuesday to Tuesday. Between 3:37
p.m. Saturday, May 24, when the
Lodestar took off from Peoria for
Chicago and Detroit until it landed
at Peoria at 8 p.m. Tuesday, June 3,
R. G. LeTourneau traveled 4,502
miles-and that was about average
travel for that length of time-and
he put in ten and a half days of work.
OOK," shouted the reporter above
the drone of the Lodestar's props
as they ploughed through the sky
from Toccoa, Georgia, to Vicksburg,
Mississippi, Wednesday night, "what
did you do today at Toccoa?"
"At breakfast," the boss dutifully
recalled, "I discussed with Joe Salva-
dor making gears out of a certain type
of alloy. Joe had a nice theory as to
the cause of failure, but I wantedMay 24, Mrs. R. G. LeTourneau boarding Lode-
star at Peoria Municipal Airport, for flight to
Chicago and Detroit. Others, from left, Elmer
Isgren, LeTourneau director and general man-
ager at Longview, R. G. LeTourneau, Guy Eby.
Passengers not in picture: Vice President Robert
F. Nelson, Charles Claus, Peoria traffic dept.,
and Mrs. Claus. Takeoff at 3:37 p.m. CDT.
proof, so-we are making ten gears to
test out. Discussed a new type of mo-
tor with Jack LaBaume, one with 24
slots instead of 36. Jack and I figured
how to wind them. Jack's tests show
we get 100 horsepower with a four-
teen-inch diameter motor, and she
puts out more torque standing still
than the ordinary 100 h.p. motor will
running. Changed design on the shaft
of a motor. I'm taking along a set of
coils Jack wound today. Vicksburg
will dip and bake them tomorrow and
Longview will put them in a frame
and test them next day.
"Discussed production schedules
with Jack Salvador, Warren Wemple
and Joe. Talked motors by long dis-
tance with Bill Bagley at Vicksburg
and Fred Stevens at Longview.
Talked about equipment with Ray
Peterson in Battle Mound, Nevada.
Talked with Dr. John Brown at Si-
loam Springs, Arkansas, about surplus
machinery. Figured with Chester Hall
on the foot-pounds required to tighten
properly all the nuts on a Tournapull
and made up a chart of all larger sizes,
with preliminary figures on the foot-
pounds required. One nut requires
8,000 foot-pounds. To tighten it we
use a gear reduction of six to one on
the machine and two men on the end
of a six-foot wrench. Prescribing the
foot-pounds of torque will eliminate
some troubles due to nuts not being
adequately tightened."
"Yes?"
"With Nardin Adams, purchasing
agent, I talked about the purchase of
copper wire and steel and about dis-
posal of some surplus. Had a short
visit with Dr. Forrest of Toccoa Falls
Institute.
"Chester and I discussed a better
(Continued on Page 4)
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LeTourneau Technical Institute. LeTourneau Tech's NOW, Volume 1, Number 29, July 25, 1947, periodical, July 25, 1947; Longview, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1526561/m1/2/: accessed June 10, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting LeTourneau University Margaret Estes Library.