Sweeney: This is James Sweeney, the University Archivist of Old Dominion University. I am conducting an oral history interview today with Professor Stephen Barna, of the School of Engineering. The first question I would like to ask you, Professor, is could you tell me about your childhood, your parents, and your early education in Europe?

Barna: I was a very active child. In addition to going to school, I learned to play the violin; I studied two languages; I played soccer; and I was mechanically inclined. I built movie equipment and had my own movie projector. I did a fair amount of studying and reading.

Sweeney: As a young man in Hungary, what attracted you to the study of mechanical engineering?

Barna: I always felt that I must become an engineer in one way or another. Mechanical engineering was nearest to my talents, I thought. I started off as a civil engineer because civil engineering faculty had more openings than mechanical. Universities in Europe were already filled with students, so one had to take the easiest way to get into a university. After the first semester, I quit the civil engineering which wasn't interesting to me anyway, and went over to the mechanical and I never regretted it.

Sweeney: Just as an addition to that, what was it specifically about mechanical engineering? You said that your talents were in that direction, but could you be more specific about what it was in mechanical engineering that attracted you?

Barna: Being an active child, I was always a creative one. The creativity spectrum fell into the area of mechanical engineering and mechanical engineering design.

Sweeney: Why did you choose to go into private industry in 1935 before your graduation from college?

Barna: I had a slight setback. Too much studying didn't agree with my nerves and I became rather nervous toward the end of the third year. I had a very good friend who could use me to help with the administration of the faculty and I was employed there for one year as an undergraduate engineer who was practicing. I learned a great deal; my nerves steadied themselves and I went back to the University and graduated much better than if I had stayed with the University all that time. The practical experience is what I recommend for every student to do.

If you look at engineering as a science, it is a different view than if you go out and practice engineering awhile. I was a full-fledged practicing engineer in the industry when I did my work and I enjoyed it.

Sweeney: Why did you become so much interested in air-conditioning as an area of research?

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Barna: Towards the end of my studies at the university, I became intensely interested in power cycles. One of the power cycles is the refrigeration cycle. We had a professor who wasn't a particularly good teacher, so I started to study in addition to the lecture notes he produced, from German books which were available at the library. I got so involved in it, I became so interested, when I graduated my graduation thesis was on large refrigeration plants.

With this experience I applied for a job which was opening at one of the biggest factories in Europe called Ganz limited. Ganz at that time was producing trains complete with diesel engines and coaches and they were going to be air-conditioned. A small group of engineers was formed to perform the air-conditioning design, and I became one of the team.

Sweeney: Why did you migrate to Australia in 1941? And what activities did you pursue there?

Barna: In 1941, started in 1932. I had a very strong feeling for democracy and I was maybe about twenty years of age, when I realized Hungary was a feudalistic country. This discrimination of the rich against the poor and the noble against the peasant left a very bad taste in my mouth. I was never really interested in politics and was never a member of any political party or took interest in rallys, but I just felt it was completely out of place what Hungary was doing.

At one stage I even had a quarrel with my own father because he was underpaying his laborers to such a degree they were practically starving. There was no need to underpay those people. But he said he couldn't free a precedent to pay them more. I turned around and I didn't speak to him for a whole week. That hurt him a great deal because we were very close friends.

Of course, when Hitler began to emerge, I became more and more alarmed at what was going to go on in Europe later on. By 1936-37 I had applied to various countries for migration; amongst them was America. I was, rejected here, but accepted in Australia. It took me a whole year to finish my research and I nearly didn't get to Australia because of that.

In 1941 it was extremely difficult to leave Hungary, but I was very lucky because there was a route across Siberia open for a few weeks and I was able to get out of Hungary. I rode the Siberian Express from Moscow to Vladivostok; from Vladivostok to Japan where I caught a British vessel. It was sailing a few days after I arrived in Japan to Australia. I arrived in Australia approximately three days ahead of schedule.

Sweeney: Did you leave Hungary after the German invasion of the Soviet Union?

Barna: No, I left Hungary well before that. When I left Hungary, Poland was already conquered by the Germans and the thrust into the Balkans was about to begin. London was already burning, but nobody in Hungary at that time dreamt, except maybe the Nazis, that Hungary would sooner or later get involved in a war.

It came as a surprise to me, about four months after I arrived in Australia; the Hungarian prime minister, Count Teleky, committed suicide. We don't know whether he did commit suicide or not, but he was an anti-Nazi. After his suicide, the regime changed from moderate to extreme to dire extreme, then of course Hungary entered the war later on the side of the Axis.

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Sweeney: When you arrived in Australia, what activities did you pursue?

Barna: I immediately got a job with a firm designing air-conditioning equipment. I was only there for a month when we switched over to defense, and the normal routine of designing air-conditioning equipment and ventilating equipment was set aside. I left that job and went to another one, which was producing refrigeration equipment and I was designing compressors for a while, but that folded up because of the war. Then I was designing earth moving equipment for them for awhile.

Altogether I spent approximately one year in industry in Australia, before Japan entered the war. When Japan entered the war, I volunteered for active service.

Sweeney: Could you describe that service in the Australian Army during World War II? You were involved in research and I would like to know what kind of search you conducted. I understand that part of it was in developing a bulletproof radiator. Could you tell me more about this?

Barna: After I volunteered for the armed services, I discovered there was a great deal of need for designing a motor car radiator which would be resistant and less sensitive or vulnerable to projectiles like flying bullets. And with the idea in mind I approached a professor at the University of Sydney who liked the idea. As you know the Army moves slowly. While we had submitted to the Army a proposal, it was extremely slow at the beginning to get any new ideas funded.

Then MacArthur came, the Supreme Commander in the Pacific. He emphasized the need for Army inventions and that helped me a great deal. I was approximately serving six months with a service unit when I was recalled and then for the duration of the war I spent doing research at the University of Sydney. It was a continuation of my transfer of studies which I started in Hungary. In fact, those experiences which delayed me in my immigration came very handy to us later. Not only did I invent a bullet proof radiator which was a viable device, but my knowledge was later on used by the aircraft industry in consulting capacity.

At one stage I worked for the Conovers Aircraft Corporation. A major project was the only fighter airplane which was designed by Australian engineers. But they didn't know how to solve the heat dissipation problem. I was called in as a consultant. It took me about two and a half months to solve this problem which led to an aircraft which eventually flew. I was very happy about these activities. They gave me a great deal of confidence and established me quite firmly in Australia as a consultant.

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Sweeney: In connection with this question, were you at any time approached by the Army to go into the field in terms of demonstrating the things that you had been working on, or perhaps even becoming involved in the combat situation?

Barna: I didn't ever get involved in combat situations because at that time I was not a British subject. The British only wanted subjects who were naturalized; they didn't trust foreigners. However I was given a great deal of liberty in moving around. I was given a lieutenant's pay whilst I was in uniform to carry on my activities.

I was allowed to live outside barracks. I was given an Army car at my disposal, which naturally was fitted with a bullet-proof radiator. I was the only soldier in Australia running around in a car with a bullet proof radiator. The army tested this radiator and they found it satisfactory. It was not the radiator which I invented; that wasn't a satisfactory design. We had fired -the Army had conducted and fired into this radiator dozens of bullets from a close range - forty yards with a 30-called brand- gun, machine gun, a very powerful gun. It didn't leak, so it was 100% success. However high priority in other areas prevented the development of this radiator into a production job.

For some reason or other I was not able to persuade the Army to change the radiators over. The war was going in different directions. I thing the African campaign was almost over and that's where they needed mostly bullet-proof radiators. You only have to fire one bullet into an armored car and if it hit the radiator, the car is disabled. Had they adopted my radiator, it wouldn't have happened.

Sweeney: Just one other point on that. What was it that you did to the radiator casing to make it bullet-proof? I mean how did you develop it?

Barna: The bullet-proof principle came to me in bits. It didn't come to me in one lump. I set out to design a bullet- proof radiator. I had an idea that if I bullet-proofed the water passages and made them fire resistant, then I would have less passage area to fill with surfaces which dissipated the heat.

So I combined a special type of tube which was made out of armor plate with a special type of heat-transfer surface. The two ideas were entirely different from each other. The heat dissipation surface was a study on it own, and the bullet-proof surface was a study on it own, also.

Putting these two together proved a very powerful invention. I had a patent with several countries, but after the war patents became more and more expensive and I was not able to finance it out of my own pocket. But it was a I had good fun with it while it lasted.

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Sweeney: Could you tell me about your immediate post-war career as a faculty member at Sydney University in Australia?

Barna: I realized that I would need another degree. By that time I had published three papers and Sydney University was a particularly academic-type atmosphere where I could pursue studies in peace without being overloaded. I was appointed for three years as a demonstrator and teaching "fellow" which is like an associate professor.

After I finished all my research and publications, I embarked on a master of engineering degree study. Now that is a different proposition in Australia, or was in those days, (I don't know what it is now) than it is in America. Mostly the engineering degree is equivalent to a PhD in as much as you are given the liberty to pursue a study, but you have to do everything. You have to find a field which has not been exploited or explored. You have to get a topic submitted to the university for approval.

Then you are free to work anytime you like within or without the university. That's why it is a master degree. You can go outside the university to work on it, or you can work on it inside the university.

For a while I worked inside the university and later went to another university where I became a teacher in a higher enumeration and I still pursued these studies. Luckily I found an area which was completely unexplored. A theoretical study was done by two American scientists who published their finding in the Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Engineering. After a while I discovered that they had assumed a simplification I thought may be worth checking with experiments. I built an elaborate apparatus and in addition to disproving the theory, I also found a whole host of new areas which were unexplored.

So I got my masters degree at the end, but it took me about five years to get it.

Sweeney: From 1948 to 1963 you served on the faculty of the University of New South Wales. Could you tell me about your research there, especially in developing the aerodynamics laboratory and designing the large wind tunnel?

Barna: As a matter of fact when I got to the University of New South Wales from the well-equipped Sydney University, I was very disappointed. I immediately started to work on improving the existing laboratory facilities.

I drifted into the aerodynamic area because heat transfer and associated fields are very close to aerodynamics. I studied a great deal. A lot of work had to be done in wind tunnels where you can model an airplane to scale and test the forces acting on

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it, or you can model anything which has to do with air flowing. All my heat transfer studies were done with small-scale wind tunnels - very small-scale wind tunnels. I had a large fan and had cross-ducts and all sorts of things in which air was moving and moving in a counter-current fashion.

Large wind tunnels always fascinated me. I went on to study them. There is a minimum size of wind tunnel which can be used successfully in a university or anywhere else. If you go below that size, then the results will be less accurate.

So, having studied the subject over a number of years, and visited research establishments, I decided finally which size of wind tunnel would be the best to use. Interestingly enough I found that other people were also working in various parts of the world along similar lines. I designed wind tunnels by the dozens. Unfortunately administration was always against it. They always found an excuse why it shouldn't be built.

I had at one stage a wind tunnel, which part of it went out one window and returned through the next window. Finally around 1959 I managed to persuade the dean and my colleagues that a wind tunnel would be a good thing.

So at that time a former student of mine who graduated with a university medal, came to see me for a job. I told him I had an excellent job for him. I wanted him to come and be my technical officer and help me design this wind tunnel.

The university agreed to take this man on. He's still there. He's still doing a marvelous job. Between us we designed this tunnel which took more than a year to design. The we started to look around for equipment like large motors and so on. We found that too. We found a firm which became interested in manufacturing the ducts. And just around 1963 when I was coming over to America by invitation of Auburn University, large parts of the wind tunnel started to come into the University to be put in their place. I have never really seen that wind tunnel in operation, but I contributed a great deal to it.

But this was only one project. I designed several others-small wind tunnels, compressible floor tunnels, fan units, demonstration units. I have a full album of photographs to show you one of these days.

They were all by-products of my creative activity, not associated with teaching. And not just associated with research, either. Teaching I kept separate; research was another activity I kept separate. The laboratory improvement I had in mind, I also kept separate.

The University was satisfied with my activities and I was promoted to senior electorship which was just one thing below professorship and gave me the charge of the aerodynamics laboratories. I had five very productive years in research and laboratory development.

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Sweeney: Why did you leave Australia and come to the United States to teach at Auburn University back in 1963?

Barna: Auburn University, as you know, is a land grant university. It was know as the Alabama Polytechnic. It was also know as a university which was very advanced in agricultural engineering -in agricultural methods all together. Well, my dean was over in America in 1961-1962 visiting various universities. He was interested in agricultural engineering. He'd been to Auburn University. It was summer and not too many people were about, so he couldn't see everybody he wanted to see. So he went around to see the engineering school and met a professor there who showed him a wind tunnel. He complained to him that the wind tunnel wasn't working satisfactorily. "Why," said my dean, "aren't you going to get in touch with my colleague, Stephen Barna? He's a wind tunnel expert, so to speak." So Auburn University did get in touch with me and I told them what I thought was wrong with it. I also told them that I was due to go on sabbatical leave and I didn't have a place to go yet. Would they be interested in having me for that year. I got back a letter immediately stating that they would. So that's how I got to Auburn University.

Sweeney: I can't help but ask this question which just occurred to me, it's not on the list. Coming from Australia to Alabama in 1963, and this of course, was a time of considerable racial unrest in Alabama. I would just like you to give me your impressions and comparison of the society you left in Australia with the society you came into in Alabama in 1963.

Barna: To illustrate how green we were and unversed in matters and social standings in the United States, when we arrived in Miami and had a day of rest, we took the train, the Jacksonville Line, up to a place called Pelica. It was about seven miles from Auburn to the railroad. So when we got out of the train it was about midnight.

The conductor of the carriage was a very nice Negro. A bright man who treated us very well, very courteously. When I got off the train I shook hands with him and gave him a tip. Not only did I give him a tip, but I shook hands with him in a friendly sort of a way. Very little did I know that the department chairman and another professor were standing waiting for us at a little distance further away.

My wife tells me when he sighted them that he turned white. So this was the first faux pas I made in five seconds of arriving in Auburn. We had very happy days there, but we were rather sorry to see the social troubles America had which were not experienced in Australia or anywhere else in the world where I ever lived.

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We would have been able to put up with it for a while, but what really upset me a great deal and nearly caused me to turn around and leave America and go back to Australia was Kennedy's assassination which came on the 23rd of November, only a few months after we were in Auburn. I was terribly upset over it. I could not understand why some of the Auburn people weren't upset by it, but this is politics.

Sweeney: During the summer of 1965 you worked for the Aerodynamic Research Station of Douglas Aircraft Corporation as an Engineer Specialist. Could you describe this service?

Barna: I was very interested in boundary layer research all my academic and engineering training because heat transfer is closely associated to the thin layer which is adjacent to a solid surface. This area is called a boundary layer. For some reason or another an engineer specialist visited Auburn University and gave a talk on boundary layers, and I attended it.

After that talk I told him how interested I was in boundary layers. He, in turn, took my name and address with him to Douglas. Then it turned out that during that summer they didn't have anybody whom they would hire to do some research on boundary layer development over aircraft wings. So they hired me, and I worked on that project right through the summer.

Sweeney: After you returned to Australia in 1965 you spent a year advising the University of South Wales on American teaching methods. Could you tell me what advice you offered? To what extent did Australian teaching methods differ from the American?

Barna: After I returned to Australia in 1965 I found a great deal of merit in the American teaching system. By that time I had two full years, which is eight quarters of teaching experience in America. What impressed me most was the industry of the students: their interest in homework problems, their industry in getting a homework problem in time, the way it was presented, and the way they appreciated my lectures, on one hand.

On the other hand, I also liked the flexibility of the system. I would teach a course for one student because he was intensely interested in my lectures. I was paid for it.

I was also greatly impressed by my department head's interest in me as a teacher and researcher. The help he handed out to me, I never had to battle for what I needed. It was automatically understood that what I needed I must have in order to be able to continue my research. I didn't know that that was almost a unique place and I was very happy about this.

In Australia the door of the dean was always closed. You had to get special permission to go and see him. Faculty meetings dragged out for hours on end. Very little was ever resolved. The students didn't turn in their homework problems on time. I didn't realize that Australia was years behind the American education system. This doesn't mean that the standard was below, just the system was. It wasn't as flexible as it was here.

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Of course when you make comparisons, you have to make studies on a much broader basis. I would never understand why the American education system, the examination system in particular, doesn't allow for an error or a weakness in human behavior or wouldn't allow a student to repeat an examination on a subject without repeating the whole subject. In Australia we had the opportunity to give a student a post examination in one or two subjects, not more. If the guy was sick on the day an examination was held, he didn't lose a whole semester or a whole year.

But this is beside the point. The American education system is flexible and people are encouraged to stay in a university, to do graduate work. Funds are available for graduate work. You don't have a struggle with a department chairman and a dean to get funds. It's automatic. If it's available you only have to have a good cause. But a good cause wasn't really enough in Australia.

After a while I came to realize that America is a more alive country, especially in the research field. In Australia I was on my own. I invented my own problem and I amused myself by solving it. In American they give me a live problem and they want me to solve it so they can make use of it. This happened to me in Australia two or three times in my whole academic life. It is much more frequent in America and it is much more rewarding.

Sweeney: How did you first learn about Old Dominion College? Why did you choose to leave Australia to come to Virginia in 1966?

Barna: To me this question is very important. I happened to visit Tulane University when Dr. Ralph Rotty was department head of the mechanical engineering section in 1965 in April. I went there on a vacation. Dean Rotty took me around. He was department chairman. Rotty showed me his laboratory, and asked me what improvement I would make to it. I was able to do this right on the spot. Rotty recognized my special knowledge in laboratory matters and told me right there and then that I was a guy he needed. He called me long distance from Norfolk to Sydney. I think Mr. Cooke is still paying the bill. It was around $100.00 dollars.

Sweeney: I can see how much he valued your services. Could you give me your impressions of the new School of Engineering, its faculty, its curriculum, and its equipment when you came here in 1966?

Barna: When I arrived in Norfolk in 1966 and inspected the laboratories, I was appalled. Not even a second-rate technical college in Australia had so little equipment. Honestly I nearly cried. I could almost turn around and go back to Australia and say, "This isn't America. These people have nothing."

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However I'm a positive thinker, and I turned around and immediately started to improve the laboratories, whatever way I could. I've kept on improving those laboratories ever since.

I must tell you something. Dean Rotty wrote me a letter while I was in Australia in which he recognized my talents as a laboratory developer. He told me this country needed talent like this, and he would get me a job as soon as he could. He did.

In February this year, 1977, the ECPD Accreditation Commission committee made an evaluation about the School of Engineering. In this evaluation there is a very nice little sentence which reads something like this: "The conversible air flow facilities at Old Dominion University are exceptional." I'm very proud that I created every one of those facilities. Not only did I design them and supervise their manufacture, but at one stage I got $30,000 from the National Science Foundation which was matched by Old Dominion University. And another time I got $9000 worth of equipment from NASA which was made to my specifications.

Sweeney: Could you comment in general terms or perhaps be as specific as you like, on the curriculum and faculty strength of the School of Engineering when you came in 1966?

Barna: In 1966 the engineering curriculum at Old Dominion University was basic. In 1977 it is still basic. During these intervening years there has been some up and down, but nowhere do we really improve our curriculum to match the needs of industry where we would employ experts, people who are well-versed like me in laboratory development, people who are well-versed in design, people who would be well-versed in other areas.

We have good people on our staff, but somehow I will never understand why American universities are looking for young PhD's who are fresh out of a university and obviously talented and capable, lacking experience though, to come into a university and become engineering professors. Most of them never practiced engineering, and most of them are textbook professors.

Engineering is not a field where you can gain experience by reading textbooks. You have to practice engineering. You have to create hardware. You have to see the follies and fallacies that go with design. We have a complement of very able young professors. Some are not so young. I feel however that my philosophy and the University's philosophy differ in this respect. I value a man with a Ph.D. when he's young, but I value a man even more without a Ph.D. and has gray hair if he has practiced engineering over a number of years.

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Sweeney: Could you tell me what kind of administrator Ralph Rotty proved to be as dean of the School of Engineering?

Barna: Ralph Rotty at the beginning was a very pleasant man. As the department grew, however the tension which goes with growth proved to be too big for us. I think there was a time when he really lost the vista of his leadership. I think he did not feel that he could delegate power to people where it was needed. Although he was a pleasant man and socially very acceptable, sooner or later his leadership became questionable and rather under fire.

I his friend, was also no exception to this. Although I had designed very valuable equipment, like the water tunnel, he would come, after the water tunnel was built, he would come and tell me I had designed a ,white elephant. For a while it looked like I had designed a white elephant. It cost a lot of money and nobody ever used it. But I told him over and over again that the time would come, and it did, when that facility was the only one in all Virginia that could solve a very knotty problem.

Sweeney: You've already commented about the role you played in developing laboratory facilities at Old Dominion. Do you have any addition comments on that?

Barna: I developed laboratories for Old Dominion University mostly in the fluids flow area. I did acquire other equipment also. The ECPD Commission pointed out in their recent assessment of Old Dominion that we do not have adequate laboratory facilities in other areas.

That is interesting. You see there are few people who are dedicated to laboratory development. I didn't say there are none; there are some people. I had that particular talent and I explored it in every way I could and I went ahead and maybe by hook or crook got my wind tunnel here. I designed a big wind tunnel before the engineering laboratory was ever built. There was space provided for it, and I had enormous opposition amongst my colleagues to have this wind tunnel built when NASA has so many wind tunnels at our fingertips only 15 miles away.

But I checked this out with NASA. I talked to the director at NASA and he told me that we wouldn't have a thousand dollars to pay them for an hour's use of their wind tunnel. We had better build our own and we did. And that wind tunnel had a contract wanting for it before it was even delivered to the doorsteps, and it has been in use practically night and day ever since.

Sweeney: What have been you chief areas of research interests at Old Dominion?

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Barna: It varies. It was always in the field of aerodynamics. At the University of New South Wales, my area of specialization led me into turbo machines. It was at the time that I designed one of the largest fans ever made for industry. Something like fifteen feet in diameter. I had considerable success with that because nobody in Australia was capable of designing a fan like that. Nobody I knew about anyway.

The turbo machine field had to be abandoned for a while in America; I couldn't get any, funding for it. But strangely enough I'm a member of the turbo machinery committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

The reason for this is that in the sixties, American education in engineering drifted towards the analytical approach. More mathematics, less experiments,less practical approach to it. As a result,in the 1970's industry started to realize that the engineers who were being turned out could not read a booklet. Could not create anything. They could analyze all right, and calculate all right, but they lack creativity. Now we are going to put this back and the professors who have been helping in this area, in the design area, are going back to the old days in the mechanical engineering design.

The turbo machinery area therefore had to be abandoned; I couldn't get funding for it. Then for a while I was pursuing a project that had no relation to anything practical, but it was an interesting project. The forces arising from the interaction of a jet with a spherical object. As a matter of fact, I'm still working on this paper. I once submitted it for publication. They sent it back for more work because nobody ever did this research before, and it would be extremely valuable if I just could repeat some of the experiments on a different scale so it could be enlarged. I did this and I got myself into such a hole of hot water, I haven't been able to get out of it yet. I takes a long time.

My research at Old Dominion in the last few years centers around the needs of NASA and I think you have a question about this so I'll wait until we get there.

Sweeney: Have you been involved in much graduate instruction in the School of Engineering?

Barna: How much is much. That's a good question. I have taught three or four subjects and two of those were never taught by anybody before me. One was turbo machinery design. This of course relates back to my younger years when I did an enormous amount of research and design work in turbo machines, from centrifugal machines to large windmills. I was very interested in the aerodynamics of wind-

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mills, also large fan, pumps, and turbines. I visited every turbine factory in Europe. I got as much information of of them as I could. I conducted a lot of research on vortex flow.

The other subject which I taught here with considerable success was wing theory. I don't know if you noticed that in 1956 -1957 I was on another sabbatical leave and I spent the whole year in England. I went to the College of Aeronautics where I had to work on a contract for the Ministry on swept-back wings.

But the contract allowed me a certain amount of latitude and I spent some time in classrooms attending lectures. I attended a whole series of lectures over two semesters on boundary layer theory and wing theory. Subsequent to this I spent a whole year in studying these subjects and doing no research. Attending to my lectures, which may be ten to fifteen hours a week, I spent the whole year, the balance of my time studying boundary layer theory and wing theory. These I give here in graduate courses. My students reported back to me that those were the most practical courses they ever had in the graduate school.

Sweeney: Have you directed many theses?

Barna: Yes, I conduct thesis work now and I conducted some thesis work before, mainly in Australia. Here I conducted research with research assistants who did not have an aim to go into graduate studies. It is only recently that I am working on a thesis with a PhD student.

Sweeney: Could you comment on the strength of the program in mechanical engineering as it has developed at Old Dominion University over the eleven years that you have been here?

Barna: The strength of this course, the instructional program, is that it is very basic. Because it is very basic, it gives the fundamentals with a high degree of competency to the students. But it does not go beyond that.

Sweeney: Have you personally benefited from the proximity of the NASA installation at Langley? What consulting work have you done there?

Barna: I am constantly consulting with NASA. Since 1969 I have been working with various projects. The proximity of NASA was a great inducement to come to Norfolk. It took me two years to get into NASA because I wasn't an American citizen until 1969. From the moment I became an American citizen I gained entry to NASA and I'm usually working on two projects for them. I have benefited a great deal and I think NASA benefited from my industry also.

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Sweeney: Have you been involved in any other interesting consulting work since you began teaching at Old Dominion?

Barna: Yes, I am consulting here and therefore knotty problems with the industry come up, and I learn a great deal from them. I usually end up solving the problem, but sometimes even the simplest problem can be very complicated. At times it can happen that I can't even solve that one.

Sweeney: Could you tell me about your service in the course as an expert witness in several litigations involving injuries and loss of life to human beings.

Barna: As an experimenter I have the advantage of figuring out things, how they happen. I do not try to visualize things. I do not try to assume things. Anything that happens in industry, whether it is a mishap or an injury, I try to build a laboratory model. Usually that laboratory model tells the whole tale. So far out of three, twice I was completely successful and once I couldn't persuade the jury that the accident had a ramification in it that the apparatus used was dangerous and killed a child. The jury thought and told the judge that the accident happened; it was a freak accident and had nothing to do with the danger of the device. I maintained it had. That's where the matter rests nowadays.

Sweeney: Could you tell me how you resolved the problem causing the collapse of the roofs at the Robert Hall village store?

Barna: Again I experimented. When the problem was given to me that the roof was flooded and the water wouldn't part. And it had pushed the roof in, I immediately looked at the gratings through which the water had to flow down. I proposed I build a model with the grating in it to see how the grating performed. I was granted a sum of money to do the experiments. We performed experiments and found out that the gratings which were installed were very inferior to the ones which were specified. We won the case out of court.

Sweeney: Where were the stores located?

Barna: There were two stores, one in Portsmouth, one in Chesapeake; both of them collapsed simultaneously under the same condition at the same time.

Sweeney: Could you compare the students you have today in your classes with those who were in your first classes her in 1966? Can you compare them as to interests, enthusiasm and dedication?

Barna: The students I had first here were more professional than the students I have nowadays. I find the students we have now are a product of a permissive society. They think they can get away with everything. The fact that they can go to complain to the dean about anything without coming to us first, the professors, leaves a great deal to be desired

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in the area of discipline.

I think this gives the students a handle; it gives the students a certain liberty to do whatever they want to do and get away with it.

Sweeney: Do you believe more women will be coming into the field of engineering and specifically mechanical engineering?

Barna: I believe so. The trend is quite clear. We have more women students and some of them are quite excellent.

Sweeney: Have you participated in the annual Engineering Open House programs, and how successful have they been?

Barna: From time to time students come to me for advice and I help them. Actually I don't participate because it's a student affair, but I keep an eye on them.

Sweeney: Why has the School of Engineering not been more successful in granting doctorate degrees?

Barna: I think tradition has a great deal to do with it. The University is not old enough to attract people to go for a PhD level type of activity. We have another setback. Old Dominion is an urban university and the site which was seventeen miles from here was selected for graduate studies. Coming and going between Old Dominion and the VARC location disrupts things; saps energy and dislocated the center of these studies which had always been at Old Dominion. Besides, most of the students who are at the VARC location live in that area. It would be very hard to persuade them to pursue studies especially when it comes to experimental work.

Sweeney: Could you tell me about the textbook you recently published entitled Fluid Mechanics for Engineers?

Barna: After World War II many GI's were taking courses. So much so, that I had to teach the same fluid mechanics course sometimes three times a week. The same stuff over and over again. Being a guy who likes perfection, anytime I gave a course I improved it a little bit.

Finally I came to something in my mind that was crystallized. I wrote it down and published it. It became a textbook and survived three new additions and several reprints. It sold all over the world. It was used in India a great deal, and in Romania. I had letters from Africa. Australia used it exclusively at Madden Technical College for a while, and it was used in England. I was very lucky with this textbook and even nowadays when it is out of print, some students will come to me and say "Could I borrow your textbook? I can't understand the current textbook." Last year several students xeroxed the out-of-print book I had. Unfortunately the publisher, Butterworth, amalgamated with Noones in England and they decided to go out of the engineering textbook

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market and they are no longer printing my book.

Sweeney: In summary do you believe the School of Engineering at ODU is fulfilling its mission today? Do you see any areas of possible improvement?

Barna: I always feel that Old Dominion has a mission to cater to the undergraduate students. Good undergraduate tuition, with basic foundation first, and then some practical experience to the students is beneficial. I always view the practical experience as a necessary addition to the fundamental. This practical experience is not yet fully explored at Old Dominion to be added to the existing basic curriculum.

Sweeney: Could you look back on your eleven years on the faculty and reflect on your principal satisfactions and disappointments?

Barna: By and large I have been happy at Old Dominion University because much of my creative ability was rewarded by assisting me with funds to build an apparatus and then when the apparatus was built, facilities I should say - when the facilities were built then I always had the satisfaction of using these facilities.

Coming back to a remark I made before, the Robert Hall Village experiment used water and that was the white elephant which I was told I designed at a great cost and had never been used. It was used all right and has proved to be a major advertisement for Old Dominion University. When finally the court case ended with a settlement out of court, my experiments were so powerfully convincing, the opposition finally gave in. Some half a million dollars was involved in this litigation. The facilities at Old Dominion University cost I think less than ten thousand dollars.

Sweeney: One additional point on that Robert Hall Village case. Was the point that you were trying to prove that the grating that had been installed was insufficient or of low quality?

Barna: It was insufficient.

Sweeney: Now I would like to get your comments on your current activities and your future plans in terms of research and how you feel about the question of retirement.

Barna: I have a contract with NASA that has just been recently renewed. It's actually a grant and it will take me up to March 1978. During this period there is enough money in grants to pay me on a full-time basis. I will not be required to teach.

As you know I am retired involuntarily. When I came here I understood that the retirement age was seventy and this

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understanding was well known to me before I even left Australia. Everybody knows on campus that in 1972 the retirement rules were changed. I was around sixty one years of age then. I didn't know that these retirement rules were going to affect me, and I didn't bank on working only for eleven years. I did not accumulate enough funds for equity in the retirement system so I could go into retirement and live free of worry. That bothers me a great deal, and I am still arguing with the University that this involuntary retirement is unfair.

Sweeney: Thank you very much for this interview Dr. Barna. I think it has been a major addition to our holdings in the area of oral history research.