190 COLLAPSE OF TEXAS TOWER NO. 4. 



TESTIMONY OF GIVEN A. BUEWEE, BREWER ENGINEERING LAB- 

 ORATORIES, INC. ; ACCOMPANIED BY ROBERT VANSTONE, ASSIST- 

 ANT ENGINEER TO MR. BREWER 



Mr. French. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Your appearance here, Mr. Brewer, is in response to a subpena issued 

 by this subcommittee, is it not ? 



Mr. Brewer. Yes. 



Mr. French. Would you briefly acquaint the committee with youi' 

 general professional qualifications as an engineer, and include both 

 your education and experience, please, sir? 



Senator Stennis. Pardon me just a minute, Mr. Brewer; please 

 speak into the microphone so that the committee can hear you. 



Mr. Brewer. Yes. Can I be heard satisfactorily ? It sounds like 

 I can fi'om the room. 



Senator Stennis. I beg your pardon ? 



Mr. Brewer. Can you hear me? 



Senator Stennis. Yes, just so you stay directly in line with the 

 microphone. 



Mr. Brewer. How is this ? 



Senator Stennis. Very good, 



Mr. Brewer. Fine. 



My background is a graduate from Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology in 1938. My courses combined mechanical, electrical, and 

 some aeronautical engineering. 



Following graduation I joined the Lockheed Aircraft Corp., and 

 I was a structures engineer with that company throughout the war 

 years. 



After the war ended, I began as a consulting engineer specializing 

 in experimental mechanics. 



This system that I consult in utilizes electronic instruments and 

 electric strain gages to measure stresses and vibrations in structures. 



electronic instruments to ivieasure stresses and vibrations 



I utilized these techniques when I was an engineer with Lockheed, 

 and during this period, during the war, I decided that this might be 

 an interesting field for me to conduct after the war. 



So I started after the war as an independent consultant, and in the 

 intervening time have conducted some 200 studies on mechanisms and 

 structures utilizing these techniques of electric strain gages, and 

 oscillographic recording devices. 



This is a teclmique that is somewhat like an electrocardiogram, 

 where we paste a strain gage on a structure, such as this tower, and 

 connect it to a machine that looks very much like an electrocardio- 

 graph. 



Then, as the tower oscillates in the waves, the stresses are converted 

 into electrical signals which then make a wavy line on a paper, and 

 by analyzing these lines you can determine the stresses and the fre- 

 quencies, very much like a physician does when he analyzes some 

 organ such as the heart in a human being by analyzing this record. 



So, very briefly, this is the general teclmique that I have used to 

 study structures that vary from helicopters to these Texas towers 

 that we have under discussion today. 



