The windows were all opened wide. The typing teacher, Virginia Gore, was standing at the front of the room observing the students doing their typing exercises. Suddenly there was a very loud clap of thunder. Without hesitation, Loren Rierson, who was seated next to one of the open windows, leapt out of his chair and jumped out the window! Miss Gore screamed with a look of horror-she had just seen one of her students jump out the window from the top floor of Milford School. Evidently she hadn't looked out to see the gymnasium roof just a few feet below the opening. Loren quickly reappeared climbing back through the open window. The class erupted with laughter. Miss Gore didn't think it was funny at all.
Another typing room incident occurred in the class of `47. As I remember, we were doing speed tests. I was seated next to one of the west windows. The wall below the windows extended up higher than eye level when we were seated at the typing tables. Seated to my left was Joe Harper. Typewriters were all manual- no electric models. The left hand was used to throw the carriage to the right to start each new line of typing. Joe, being left handed, probably threw the carriage with more authority than those of us who were right handed, and in a speed test showed even more fervor in starting a new line. We were all engrossed in achieving maximum speed when suddenly the carriage from Joe's typewriter came flying across right in front of me and crashed into the wall just to my right. Joe had really thrown the carriage this time! Needless to say- so much for that speed test as laughter abounded. See Typing class page 288.
By Dale Hughes `55
Milford Twp had a quite good science lab in the early 1950's. In about 1952, Dave Allen and Dale Hughes, as perhaps sophomores, were to demonstrate a physical principle that air has weight. We took no time to experiment with the experiment and the first time we tried the experiment was in front of the class for a grade.
The basic premise of the demonstration was to suspend a special bottle on a balance beam and then pump air out of the bottle and theoretically the bottle would rise with the balance beam. We have a hand pump that looks like a tire pump but it has a switch at the hose that reads -vacuum, neutral, pressure.
We took a very long time getting the thing set up and hooked up and balanced and the classmates were offering all kinds of not too helpful suggestions. Finally we were ready- set the switch to vacuum and with one of us pumping the pump, great things were expected. However, instead of rising-- the bottle sank. More suggestions, more laughter. “OK boys, try it one more time”, says the teacher. More time spent rebalancing the apparatus, more wisecracks.
Finally, we're ready for the second attempt. Man the pump, and again the bottle sinks. More laughter. Except this time in spite of the laughter, I hear the sound of glass cracking, like the sound of ice that is too thin starting to break and dump one in the cold water below. I didn't think too much about it, but was rather puzzled by it. By now the teacher has lost patience and tells us and the class that sometimes things don't work as planned and to move the apparatus to the side of the room and let's get on with other assignments.
Dave and I take our failed demonstration to the side of the room and start to disassemble the thing. I pull the hose from the bottle and a blast of high pressure air hits my hand. Then we realize what has been happening. Instead of removing the air --the pump has been building pressure. The glass breaking sound that I had heard was the bottle getting ready to explode, ready to send razor sharp splinters of glass in every direction. These, undoubtedly, would puncture and probably ruin the eyes of most everyone in the classroom, many of whom were setting as close as 6-8 feet from the demonstration. One possible explanation for the bottle not exploding might be that within the glass there had been a layer of “plastic”, but, never-the-less, this layer could have also failed.
The experiment was actually proving the theory that air has weight except we were increasing the amount of air instead of decreasing the amount in the bottle.
We examine the pump quite closely and discover that, in fact, the directions on the switch are backward to what is really happening. After class we talked to the teacher about the backward construction of the valve but there seems to be no interest there to do anything about it so we taped a note onto the pump stating that the valve has been put in the pump backwards and when the indicator reads vacuum it really is