Full Speed Ahead, Princeton Edition

It’s official: Princeton has approved Matt and my book (War Stories) for publication (subject to some relatively minor edits for readability and flow). When he and I started working together for the first time on that chapter for Cox Han and Heith’s volume almost six years ago, who would have thought it would have grown up to be such a beast?

Speaking of beasts, the above pic is from the U.S.S. Midway, which is now permanently moored as a floating museum in San Diego Harbor. My brother-in-law was visiting San Diego for a conference and wanted to visit it, so I took the girls down for a tour. Interestingly, the engines aren’t hooked up to the control at all: It’s a communication device to send the orders down to the engine room, who use the same device to acknowledge the order has been received (note there are two arrows in each dial). Also note the gauges were built by Bendix, which was one of the major manufacturers in my hometown back in the day. The ship was built in 1945 and only recently decommissioned… talk about “built to last.”