Engineers

When he was younger, inventor Herman Bany went tilting at windmills. And like the heroic Don Quixote, he found the whirling blades too fierce to tame. An engineer with General Electric, Mr. Bany designed and supervised the building of a large experimental windmill atop Grandpa's Knob, near Rutland, Vt., according to the Bany family. Unfortunately, the arms of the windmill were unable to withstand the fierce winds. They broke, and the experiment ended. But in the approximately 40 years he worked at GE until his retirement in 1961, Mr. Bany, who died Tuesday at age 94 at the Clara Burke Nursing Home in Plymouth Meeting, knew more successes than failures.

Ridley Park Borough Council wants to solve the flood-control problems at Ridley Lake once and for all, so council members are getting their feet wet by sampling ideas from a Philadelphia engineering firm. At a workshop meeting Wednesday night, three engineers from Pennoni Associates Inc. made an informal presentation to the council. They gave the council a list of their qualifications and prior projects. They also offered a possible solution to the water-management problems plaguing the lake: building a box culvert to drain overflow from the lake during storms.

Years of preaching, scolding, begging and finger-pointing didn't accomplish much. So now engineers and educators trying to get more minorities into technical fields are hoping the industry's pure self-interest will do the trick. American business must look for ways to encourage minorities to get trained for careers in engineering. If they don't, industry will run out of engineers in an era when their technical expertise is more important than ever. That was the message that emerged from the three-day conference of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering held in Philadelphia last week.

The Frankford locker room was festive after Thursday afternoon's drubbing of visiting Engineering and Science. Players drummed on the lockers and chanted one another's names. Twelfth man Frank Dobisch, on the strength of his 4 points, his high for the season, was given a nickname - "PTP", or Prime Time Player - at least for the time being. The Pioneers had just finished powering their way to an undefeated (13-0) regular Public League season, as well as an overall record of 21-1.

FOOTBALL COACH Anthony Pastore, of Horace Furness High, likes to call star player Sharif Smith "the engine that pulls the long train. " This season, that baby features about 500 cars. All stuffed to the brim with nothing but metal objects. Graduation, you see, claimed most of Smith's best playmates from the 2010 squad, which finished 9-3 overall and claimed second place in Public AAAA Silver. But as the 5-10, 190-pound Smith, a senior tailback/quarterback/WildFalcon snap-taker/free safety, showed yesterday at Northeast's Charlie Martin Memorial Stadium, any team with this No. 1 on its roster has a chance to finish on top. How did Smith help Furness, down by 17-6 at halftime, claim a 24-17 division victory over Jules Mastbaum Tech?

N.J. Transit officials, in an effort to avoid a threatened strike by rail engineers, yesterday asked a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order that would prohibit union workers from walking out Friday night. A hearing is scheduled in U.S. District Court in Newark today to allow lawyers for the Local Brotherhood of Engineers to argue against N.J. Transit's request. It is expected that the threatened walkout would affect only rail operations and that the impact on South Jersey would be minimal.

ETON, England - U.S. Olympic rowing coach Mike Teti terms his men's eight-oar team "seven engineers and Giuseppe. " It's a very good call - all but No. 5 oar Giuseppe Lanzone have studied engineering at one time or another. So, when something needs fixing - as it often does in this sport - Teti knows that "these guys can figure it out. " They've figured out a lot of things in the last three months - rallying from the brink of elimination from the Games in May all the way to a place in the Olympic final, a crack at the medals, and a date with destiny on Wednesday.

The girls' basketball team from Engineering and Science has patented this season's most emotional comebacks, yanking their loyalists from the despair of a deficit to a late rally to a victory so intense it produces tears. The players' pulses have always pounded louder than ball against hardwood. Yesterday - down by eight points at the half, by 10 in the third quarter, fouls flying, a key player wincing in injury - they did it again. They won. Everybody cried. With more than 3,000 fans standing and screaming in the Palestra stands, E&S rallied late to turn away Franklin Learning Center, 55-47, in the Public League championship to gain the school's first athletic title since it joined the league in 1982.

Take a space the size of the Reading Terminal train shed, enclose it and heat it, and you are likely to get weather. Indoor rain is just one of the possibilities that engineers are hired to handle. Architects come up with the ideas of how a place should look and function; engineers have to make the ideas work. "When they decide to make it a real building, that's when they bring the engineers aboard," says Thomas A. Bathgate, one of the principals in Pennell & Wiltberger Inc. (P&W)