Everything Old is New Again
By Erik Nordberg, University Archivist
Michigan Tech Archives and
Copper Country Historical Collections
Ships in the Pacific Fleet follow the USS Mississippi.
It's an old joke, but it goes like this:
A man walks into the archives and says "What's new?"
The archivist responds: "Nothing . everything we have is old."
Yet, this isn't always necessarily true. Sometimes there are new things at the archives. It is like buying a used car-things are just new to us. At other times, things appear new simply because we see them in a new light. For instance, last week we were digging through some boxes of material left to us by Julius T. Nachazel. For those unfamiliar with the name, Nachazel is one of those Tech old-timers who probably deserve a building named in their honor. A 1926 mining engineering graduate, he became assistant professor of mathematics and physics shortly after graduation. More importantly, he served as the College's first director of Publicity and Extension. Through this work, including thousands of excursions to high schools throughout the Midwest, Nachazel almost single-handedly grew student enrollment from 141 students in 1926 to more than 900 in 1941.
He continued to teach throughout his career at Michigan Tech but was also involved in civic and community groups. He served three terms as mayor of the city of Houghton, was director of Civil Defense for Houghton County, and directed a job-corps training program during the depression.
A veteran of World War I, Nachazel took a great interest in nurturing relations between the College and the nation's military. He is credited with spearheading the establishment of Army ROTC at Michigan Tech in 1928, one of the first on any college campus in the country.
But my interest in one of those boxes last week had a more direct connection to World War I. Tucked down underneath the folders of correspondence and office files was a small box wrapped in brown paper. Scrawled across the top-in handwriting I've come to recognize as Nachazel's-was the following puzzling inscription:
Historical Value!!!
1918 Artifacts
Open in Year 2000
and see the changes
J.T. Nachazel, class of '26
1963-Very Fragile!!!
Seeing as we were about six years late in our historical duty, we jumped right into opening the package. Eschewing all standard precautions (can anyone say "1918 Spanish influenza virus"?) and spurred on by all those exclamation points, we ripped into the paper like children at a Christmas party.
 Inside were two smaller boxes that contained positive glass photographic slides-more than two dozen pieces in total.
Although a bit murky, most of the images are of armed naval vessels at sea. A short note, also in Nachazel's hand, indicated that they were "plates taken by Dr. F. W. McNair, president of Michigan Tech (MCM) 1917-18 figuring gun data for battleship Miss."
So we started digging a little deeper.
I shouldn't have been surprised to find the lives of Julius Nachazel and Fred McNair so closely intertwined.
I knew that McNair (like Nachazel in later years) was a strong proponent of the College's role in support of the US military. During World War I, McNair had chaired a special committee that united forty-one of the nation's leading engineering colleges in a cooperative advertising campaign to draw men into technical training.
He also worked with the War Department to establish a mining and drill-running training program at the College, a program that later became known as the Student Army Training Corps. This program provided subsequent inspiration for Nachazel's development of the ROTC program.
I hadn't been aware, however, of McNair's naval activity. A February 1919 clipping from The Daily Mining Gazette recorded that McNair had been appointed a consulting engineer with the United States Bureau of Standards. Although the paper was quick to point out that there "was not much being said about the intimate details of the work," it did indicate that the bureau was engaged in tests of materials used in war munitions and military, naval, and air construction.
 Although the German armistice of November 1918 suspended much work, additional articles in the Gazette-and reprinted in the Michigan College of Mines Alumnus (the predecessor of the Michigan Tech Magazine)-detailed McNair's work aboard the Battleship USS Mississippi. It turns out that McNair was one three civilians from the Bureau of Standards to weigh anchor with the ship during a training excursion from Norfolk, Virginia, through the Panama Canal to San Diego, California, during summer 1919.
The men were assigned to the Mississippi in connection with the installation of a new fire control instrument. "The new instrument," noted the Gazette, "makes it possible to get a true horizon as a point of aim for firing, even though the enemy has hidden himself and the horizon by a smoke screen." Further details on the technology were not released to the public.
McNair returned to Houghton in August 1919 after three weeks at sea. We were unable to locate any diaries or personal recollections of this naval work, but the Board of Control did release the contents of a letter of commendation from the Navy Department of Ordnance for McNair's work on the project.
Other than this, however, the glass plate photographs and these few newspaper clippings are all that remain of this small but important project in which Michigan Tech shared its expertise with the nation's military forces.
Sadly, McNair lost his life in a train accident in 1924. I probably shouldn't have been surprised by the tiny handwritten note at the bottom of his obituary that listed J. T. Nachazel-still an undergraduate student at the time-as one of the pallbearers at his funeral.
Not really news but certainly "new" to me.
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