Chemists' Mechanic [Harry S. Bush] to Have Busman's RetirementThe Ithaca Journal, Jul 27 1956, P. 3, Cols. 2-5, with two photos "Harry S. Bush of 136 Forest Home Drive, whose mechanical skill has been an important factor in chemical research at Cornell, is retiring after 31 years with the university.
As supervising mechanician in Cornell's Baker Laboratory, Bush brings to reality the chemists' rough designs of apparatus they need for their research.
Much of his recent work has been with
Prof. Peter Debye, Nobel Prize winner. For Debye's studies on the properties of very large molecules, for example, Bush built a light scattering apparatus which is the model for ones used throughout the world.
Another first was an electron diffraction camera which Bush built some years ago for Prof. S. H. Bauer. This camera was the prototype for one now produced commercially. Former staff members often write Bush for exact specifications on equipment he built for them here.
Bush has a busman's holiday sort of hobby - building model boats. It began with a do-it-your-self boat-building kit he got last Christmas, but he soon passed the kit stage.
He cuts the wood parts himself, as thin as a sixteenth of an inch, and makes all the metal hardware for the models. Of the four models he has made, his pride is a 30-inch version of a Chris-Craft sportsman.
Before his Cornell career, Bush worked 21 years for Lang's, when it was a machine shop and after it became a garage in 1908. In those days, he says, few people drove in the winter - they left their cars at a garage for checkup and repairs.
Bush himself owned one of the first cars in Ithaca, an Oakland he bought in 1905, and he recalls the Mercers, Hupmobiles, Reos and foreign cars he worked on. He met Pearl White of Ithaca's movie days, when she brought her famous Stutz Bearcat into Lang's.
Bush and
Gardiner Rogers, in the 1920s', built some of the first radios in this area, buying some of the components and making others themselves. These were storage battery models, with automatic charging equipment.
Several of the radios were elaborate cabinet models, selling for as much as $500. Rogers describes Bush as one of the few persons who can combine top quality work with speed.
Bush met his wife, then Miss Gracie Barker of Walden, when she was a student in Ithaca College, studying violin with Prof. Grant Egbert. They have a daughter, Mrs. Jean A. Dogette
[sic] of Syracuse and two grandchildren.
Bush was born in Lansing and attended Ithaca High School. During World War I he enlisted in the Signal Corps and attended aviation school. He has been a member of the Masons since 1917.
It's an example of Bush's precise nature and ability that all the hardware on his ship models is made by him from bits of metal, and when planking is called for in a model, he lays individual model planks instead of just scribing a solid sheet of wood."
Captions for two photos: Journal Staff Photos of his models (top picture) at his neat work table at home. Below, as he looks today.