Paul Harrison, PhD’70
It may be of interest that Areoviroment, the maker of the small drones for the US Government, was started by Paul McCready, (bicycled powered airplane, etc.), Paul probably got the idea from a model airplane put together by graduate Arthur Tingle and local bicycle shop owner Fred Beaver. He was very interested in it at the time. It had an over 6′ wing span a was launched from a moving vehicle. It carried a thermocouple and a hair hygrometer! How primitive! “Paul Mac” was a frequent visitor to Ann Arbor and was a personal friend of mine. He asked me to be the president of his then new company, but I was the director at Chicago Environmental Control Commission at the time and was concerned about the management of a start-up science endeavor. I later joined Meteorological Research Inc. (the first McCready Co.) as the director of Industrial Air Pollution Studies. Paul never forgave me for not joining Aeroviroment but we remained friends and associates whose love for creativity and creative people was always a passion. Using aircraft to map air pollution movements was my specialty at the time. The technique was lifted from an NSF proposal written by myself and E. Wendel Hewson, (the founder of the Meteorology Dept. in the late 50’s) and also used by Paul, especially at MRI. He was a perfecter of good ideas and a leader of creative people. (Paul was a grad from CALTEC but hung around Ann Arbor a lot so what does that tell you?).
