Last night there was an OSA lecture at the George Eastman House about Kodak's contribution to Cold War surveillance. Well it just so happens that the third year undergrads were planning a CIS-sponsored outing for the same evening, so I ran the idea past them that we all hit up the talk before heading out to dinner. I know I was interested in attending, and organizing a group to see the talk gave more relevancy to the outing overall. Lo and behold, they agreed! So around 5:30 we gathered in the lobby of Carlson and caravaned over to the Eastman House. (For the record, I got there first by taking a well planned route and driving the appropriate speed limits, despite SOME student's attempt to beat me with the bright idea of taking a "shortcut" and driving like a banshee at unsafe speeds. NOT well played, sir. Not well played. This time you put the STUD in STUpiD - oohhh, I got you there. You know who you are.) (PS> I'm just kidding but the adult in me still must scold you for acting irresponsibly.)
We arrived early enough to - oh wait, stop everything, there's a photo booth.
We arrived early enough to tour the Eastman House and museum (and Sam of course b-lined for the food, which he says was really good). While we really enjoyed browsing around, there seemed to be quite a crowd forming so we made sure to get to the Curtis Theater in time to all get seats together. So many people showed up that it ended up being standing-room-only, and there were people sitting on the floor.
The lecture began with a Kodak retiree detailing his time as an optical engineer at Kodak after graduating from the U of R Institute of Optics in the 1950's(!). He was actually Kodak's first employee to hold the title of "Optical Engineer". He showed a bunch of old draft drawings for lenses that were used in the Gambit and Gambit-3 reconnaissance satellites, and had old pictures of Kodak's Hawkeye building and labs. It was fascinating to see the "old way" of doing things, before easy computer models or even simple calculators. I really enjoyed seeing this perspective.
This was then followed up by a Corning optical engineer who had voluntarily gone about a quantitative comparison between the Gambit and Gambit-3 systems. He also detailed a bit more about how the systems worked and compared their layouts, and also explained how imagery was actually delivered back to the ground. This, too, was very interesting. Ah, it felt so good to be wearing my science hat again. Meanwhile, this speaker actually graduated from the U of R Institute of Optics a year after my dad, so I wonder whether they knew each other. (I tried discreetly texting my mom, asking her to ask my dad whether he recognized the name; to which I received the response, "He's asleep." Bear in mind, this was about 7:30PM....)
Overall, I thought the talk was fascinating. I'm not too sure the students felt the same way... Then again I'm not sure I would have felt the same way back when I was a student, either. Interesting how things change.
Anyways, after that it was on to the Distillery for - what's that place with all the goofy stuff on their walls and the mozzarella sticks? Oh yeah,
Basically we ate some tasty food, made fun of what was on the TVs (Summer 2012 flashback with Olympic gymnastics and Kobe Bryant in the NBA playoffs - Why?), blew off steam, and took silly pictures, like this gem:
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| Aww, all my widdle students, all tuckered out. |
And with our bellies too full, we called it a night. Sure, I got thanked because I had the credit card - but really the appreciation should go to our awesome students, because it's thanks to them that I have the best job in the world.
