Shuttle Bus, 1985

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Melissa Kean

This is actually labeled: “Summer School 1985, Ballet students on shuttle.”

New Shuttle summer school ballet c1985

I’m prepared to believe they’re ballet students (although I don’t know what they would have been doing at Rice) but that looks like a laundry truck to me.

Bonus:

L1020884

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12 Responses to Shuttle Bus, 1985

  1. Philip Walters says:
    June 16, 2015 at 7:14 pm

    Those solderless breadboards register in my mind as a “recent” lab equipment innovation, but then I remember using them when I was in high school, so they ain’t THAT new. Those now ubiquitous white strips were invented by AP Products back in 1968. I have tested many a design on this type of breadboard. It is interesting that while many things from 1968 fit under the “obsolete technology” category, this prototyping system has endured well.

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  2. Marty Merritt (Hanszen 84/85) says:
    June 16, 2015 at 7:54 pm

    Interesting. I have never seen that vehicle. I thought the shuttle originally came about when the Tidelands became the Graduate House, and was later expanded to include the Inner Loop as interior parking lots gave way to buildings and more faculty/staff parking moved out to the stadium. Back in 1986-87 or so the shuttles were operated by RUPD and they would allow us to use them to move double basses and their players from Hamman Hall to the old Bonner Lab rehearsal hall for orchestra rehearsals three times a week. (That was approximately where McMurtry auditorium in Duncan Hall is for you newcomers.) They were Ford Econoline vans with bus bodies. That’s an early-70s Grumman Olson Kurbmaster (or Kabmaster) bus body which is very similar to (but not identical to) the College Food Service trucks. It probably had a Chevrolet chassis and engine. You see rounded-off Grumman Olson designed trucks all the time, painted the chocolate brown of UPS.

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  3. Deborah Gronke Bennett BSEE Hanszen 1982 says:
    June 17, 2015 at 1:06 am

    I did my project in digital electronics on a breadboard very much like that one. We used discrete TTL logic to build a music generator. It read the melody out of PROM (represented as a table of note value and length in 32nd notes) and used an 8-bit processor, maybe a Z80? We also used the HP Microprocessor development systems. I’m thinking the course number was Engi 421, taught by J. Bob Jump.

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  4. e55 says:
    June 17, 2015 at 9:20 am

    The depth of knowledge evidenced by the comments on both of these pictures is unbelievable!

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  5. Don Johnson says:
    June 17, 2015 at 10:56 am

    The portable (notice the handle) solderless breadboard was designed by J.D. Wise in the ECE department for use in ELEC 326 (not ENGI 421). According to J.D., it appears that the left side is an interface to a microcontroller and the right side some sort of optoelectronics experiment.

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    • Deborah Gronke Bennett BSEE Hanszen 1982 says:
      June 17, 2015 at 11:22 am

      Thank you for reminding me of the course numbers. My project was in Elec 426, which you could take after Elec 326. Our breadboards were also portable, but did not have any power regulation on board. We connected to a 5 volt power supply. Ours was also just the long panels perpendicular to the handle, running the length of the aluminum case. Because this was the days of discrete TTL logic, we needed all the space to implement our project. I have a picture of my project somewhere which I will try to dig up and post.

      Reply
  6. Edward Feustel says:
    June 17, 2015 at 11:25 am

    Were the two pictures related historically? Could the women have been attending a pre-engineering summer school? These STEM schools are now relatively popular.

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  7. marmer01 says:
    June 17, 2015 at 4:24 pm

    Ballet students? Maybe one of the summer athletic camps or something run by Linda Phenix?

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  8. marmer01 says:
    June 18, 2015 at 9:51 am

    Ah, that might explain why I never saw that bus, if it was provided by HB. Summer ’85 was when I joined the staff at Rice.

    Reply

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