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Monday, June 5, 2017
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Texas History Minute exploration efforts. McDermott picked up five patents for his devices. With World War II, the company began making equipment for the military, making radars and equipment to detect submarines. In 1946, the company developed its own electronics lab. Though there was still a lot of money to be made in oil exploration, McDermott and his partners realized that the future was in electronics. In 1951, McDermott pulled together a team of partners, including J. Eric Jonsson, the Dr. Ken Bridges future mayor of Dallas, Cecil Green, an English-born geophysicist, and engineer Patrick Dr. Bridges is a Texas native, writer, and history professor. He Haggerty to re-form the company as Texas Instruments. can be reached at drkenbridges@gmail.com. As they created electronic products, the company began developing ways for these The world is changing fast. Some products to run faster and new see that as a reason for fear, while ways to process information. In 1954, TI engineers developed the others see an opportunity. The silicon transistor, a new type of most successful men and women are those who seize what life has to semiconductor. This was followed by Jack Kilby’s invention of the offer and charge ahead into the integrated circuit for the company future. Those most worthy of admiration are those who not only in 1958, a breakthrough that become successful themselves but heralded the beginning of the also open a door for the success of computer age. Texas Instruments became a runaway success and others. One of those Texas builders of the future was Eugene pushed for steady improvements in computer technology through the McDermott, co-founder of both 1960s. While the company Texas Instruments and the rewarded innovation, it also strove University of Texas at Dallas. for efficiency, weeding out waste. It also moved into consumer Eugene McDermott was born in Brooklyn, New York, in February products, producing the first handheld electronic calculator by 1967. 1899, a time when cars and airplanes were still only dreams Education became a special and electric lights and telephones passion for McDermott. Green were still distant luxuries for and Jonsson also recognized the others. He had a sharp sense of critical problem that the lack of curiosity, and as a young man, locally-available engineers posed enrolled at Stevens Institute of for the long-term viability of the Technology in New Jersey. He company. To create the products graduated with a degree in and breakthroughs of the future, mechanical engineering in 1919 they needed trained professionals. while still only 20 years old. As a result, the three founded the Graduate Research Center of the In 1923, he started working at Southwest on the campus of Western Electric, an electrical Southern Methodist University in engineering and manufacturing Dallas in 1961. Not only would firm that mostly developed this help ensure a steady supply of telephone wires and components future engineers and scientists for for American Telephone and Texas Instruments, but it allowed Telegraph Co. At the same time, countless students to have the McDermott began furthering his skills to be on the cutting edge of own education and earned a developing science and masters degree in physics from technology. New York City’s Columbia University in 1925. The school steadily grew, and the three helped fund a new building After graduate school, he soon for the facility in Richardson in began working with Western 1964. In 1969, Texas reorganized Electric co-worker Clarence the center into a full university as Karcher, who had started a new the University of Texas at Dallas. company in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Geophysical Research McDermott remained an active Corporation. Karcher was using part of the company as a member seismographs not just to detect earthquakes but as a promising new of the TI Board of Directors until tool in oil exploration. Along the his passing in 1973. Though he way, McDermott used his skills to left behind a successful, thriving company with Texas Instruments, fine-tune their techniques. he left a legacy for education. In 1930, McDermott partnered with The Eugene McDermott Karcher and E. L. DeGolyer to Foundation, established in 1955, form Geophysical Services Inc., continuing their seismographic oil gives grants for educational and
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cultural purposes. With more than $70 in assets, it has become one of the largest foundations in Texas. One of the UTD libraries is named for him. In 2000, his wife, Margaret, gave $32 million to UTD to establish the Eugene McDermott Scholars Program, which brings together students majoring in engineering, physics, medicine, and the humanities to train not only future minds but help transform them into future leaders. Margaret
McDermott has continued generous philanthropy to the university with a new multi-million dollar gift in 2010 to improve and modernize the look of the university and a donation of $10 million in January 2017 to the honors school at the university. Texas Instruments today is a multibillion dollar corporation, and UTD boasts more than 26,000 students.
HMS Fifth Grade Orientation and Grade 6-8 Meet the Teacher Howe Middle School Principal Clay Wilson sent a memo stating that Thursday, August 24 would be the date for Fifth Grade Orientation. It will take place from 7 pm through 7:45 pm in the Cafeteria. Grades 6-8 will hold their "Meet
the Teacher" night on the same night from 6:30 pm - 8 pm at Howe Middle School. The schedule is for sixth graders to meet in the foyer by the main office, the seventh grade in the courtyard, and for the eighth grade to meet in the hallway leading to the bandhall.
Feed My Sheep monthly report During the month of May, the Feed My Sheep program fed a total of 116 families. This included 118 children, 149 adults, and 56 seniors.
