La Licorne
FINISH
The last few years of my study I rented rooms
with Francis and Bob at the east-end of High Street. During that time I was on and off
in and out of Wageningen completing the principal
subjects of my study, writing research papers and doing the necessary field
work.
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The Patrician house at the east-end of High Street
where we lived contained remnants of the former Town Gate. When the house was
taken down the historic site was reconstructed as shown here. |
In the early sixties a second generation
electronic computers was being introduced in the country. All this sounded
exciting and made me write to IBM to indicate my interest in getting to know
more about it. As a result I was invited to attend to a course in Amsterdam. It
was a co-incidence to find there another computer pioneer from the University,
in this case a member of the staff of Mathematics. We were instructed about the
archaic 650 and the modern 1620, the latter with the unbelievable internal
memory of 20 kB, expandable to 100. Altogether new
-to me at least- was the concept of a flow chart for solving a problem,
logically, step by step. After having been introduced to the rigid machine
language we were pleasantly surprised with the easier to handle FORTRAN.
This introduction was enough to awaken my
appetite for more. So I arranged a three months training at IBM's department
for applied science. They were so kind as to grant me an allowance of 300
Guilders a month. The 1620 had just been installed in a few places of the
country, and staff was welcome to work on them. It didn't take long before I
was operating the machine under the guidance of my tutor Kees
van Leeuwen. Meanwhile I had identified a subject for
a thesis on which the computer could prove its usefulness. It concerned the
calculation of groundwater behavior resulting from day to day rainfall and evaporation.
The later professor D A Kraijenhoff van de Leur had developed the solving formulas and was
experimenting with an electric machine to simulate the reality. His outfit
allowed the input data to be fed in one by one to show the matching results on
meters. He did in an analog and manual manner what I intended to do digital and
automatic. When I told Kraijenhoff of my plan he was
surprised, but proved to be a good sport and wished me success.
And, believe me, good luck I needed. My math
could be above average, the formulas this scientist had brewed were tough to
crack and gave me pains for making them digestible for the computer. Then I had
to arrange the input data. The head of the faculty Professor Ir F Hellinga had suggested to
elaborate the daily weather records of seven consecutive years, and he was not
the type to accept anything less. On the other hand I was lucky to find the
meteorological institute being able to deliver the data on punch cards. When I
tried things out it occurred often enough that the computers showed funny
behavior for known or unknown reasons. One bad spot on a punch card could mess
up the whole thing and was not easy to locate. No question that I got lateral
support, but I was the one who had to do the trick. While Hellinga
waited patiently, Kraijenhoff stayed in doubt and the
IBM people looked on, I managed to produce the thesis for one of my principal
subjects.
That didn't change the fact that altogether
there were four subjects to be dealt with. One of those concerned a detailed
soil survey according to certain specifications that did not allow much room
for own initiatives. On the other hand the subjects of economy and irrigation
required original research. Pondering on that demanding task a devious plan
came up: a study on the economy of
irrigation! With such a scheme I would be killing two birds with one stone.
However, the connected professors could not be fooled, so I had to make it
sound-looking and appealing.
To this end I organized a (paid) job at the
institute for farm management, where they were still number crunching by hand
or hiring computer time from elsewhere. In the IBM library I located a program
for problem solving by linear programming. I am indebted to Mr
J van Eldik of the institute who helped me to find
input data from the nearby farm of Mr J Jurrius. This enabled me to make off-beat models for farm
planning under irrigated and non-irrigated conditions. The fact that a student
produced a publication on such a heavy matter within a period of three months
made some creatures at the institute -that I hadn't liked from the first
moment- look green with envy.
When you start thinking about it is it great
wonder how students manage to combine their study with so many other
obligations, such as raising their income, participating in student
organizations, fooling around with girls, attending to parties and managing
their daily worries. As far as I was concerned, meticulous planning got me
through the exams, the labs, the fieldwork. Of course standard study programs
existed, but these were designed for regular study. In my case revolved
planning was needed to satisfy the whims of the examiners who sometimes failed
to disclose my vast knowledge base. Be that as it may, I am very much indebted to
their courtesy and patience, and notably remember the highly learned professors
Edelman, Hellinga, Kuiper, Kruithof, Polak and Schuffelen with great respect.
With the end of my studies in view I became
more serious and started to think about such things as obtaining my degree and
finding a job. Mieke and I, however, realized we
could not bank on assured result for these ambitions. So, we designed a set-up
for getting married first. To that end we framed the necessary arguments to
convince our parents. That opened for me the route to propose to her, which I
did in a writing fabricated on the first computer which had just been installed
in the Math barracks at Duivendaal in Wageningen.
In the morning of 20 July 1963 I closed behind
me the door to the premises of 1, High Street for the last time. The night
before my friends had taken well care of me, but the cool air and brilliant sun
evaporated any strain so I didn't forget to pass by the flower shop. With the
finest bouquet Jet ever made I continued my track down the street, returning
with a friendly nod the big smiles of the shopkeepers to whom the day before I
had served my last debts. Something sprang in me when I realized how well they
had treated me throughout those seven years. The fashion house I headed for was
bathing in flowers, but it looked as if I was not expected. So, I rang the
bell.
When the door opened I detected my fairy
princess hovering in a cloud of tulle and lace. I took my girl by the hand and
led her to the altar. Together we walked through the day, accepting
congratulations to finally board a boat on the river Rhine for buffet and
dance. At dusk we disembarked to get under a shower of rice into our Renault-4.
An hour later we enjoyed watching from the balcony of our hotel the partying
ship float by. As for our twosome I had decided not to rush with the
proceedings, but to wait for Mieke's next
anniversary. Five minutes later the clock struck twelve and I set off
congratulating her with twenty three kisses.
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Wedding
present from my
sister Els (*19 Jan 1933), showing the conversion of water into wine by Jesus
during the Marriage in Cana. Although traditional sources do not disclose the
identity of the marrying couple, speculations have emerged that the event could
have taken place on the occasion of the marriage of Jesus himself with Mary
Magdalene Els provided the following explanatory notes on
her creation: The
wedding of Cana was made bij
me in July 1963 for Mieke and Pith's wedding. It is
a Monoprint The design depicts: The wedding of Cana:
seated at the table, bride and groom ; in front of the table is one of
the servants filling the jugs with water; |
For our honeymoon we spent a few days in Paris
and four weeks in Croatia, all-in for one thousand guilders. A few weeks after
our return, I had to undergo my last exam. I hadn't seen much of the books
during our trip, but Professor Folkert Hellinga (*1917) , known as severe but just, proved understandingly
as well.
That month of September a bunch of freshmen
made the obligate call at the door of the Club as usual. In previous years I
had acted as the nasty figure letting them in, but times had changed. The lot
which presented themselves now were of the post war generation; in number some
seventy of them instead of the usual forty, many of them girls. The most
disgusting change however was their big mouth. New Age had arrived. As for
myself I felt old and wise; this was no stuff for me any more.