My Father's Watch

My Father's Watch:Aspects of the physical world

A textbook published 1974 by Prentice Hall, NJ. Authors Donald Holcomb and Philip Morrison.

History

Title

The title, My Father's Watch, comes from a poem, by John Ciardi, reproduced opposite the title page. WHG wrote July 2, 1969 that he preferred "Patterns," suggested by DFH's editorial assistant,(see 21 May 1969 DFH to PM) to "My Father's Watch," that he associated the latter with "My Father's Mustache." PM warned DFH "HOLD YOUR HAT. IT IS WAY OUT," when he thought of the title in June 1969.

Course

According to the book's preface, PM and DFH taught a course for those who would only take one course in the physical sciences,

Publishing

John Wiley & Sons was also interested in publishing (see reply to Wiley, August 20, 1969). Also interested were Churchill & Benjamin, LTD; and WW Norton & Company.

Fall 1968, the authors chose Prentice Hall to be the publisher, with WHG in charge of editing and most of the correspondence, and BM managing. DFH also thanks DE for publishing the preliminary version on schedule. John Riina, Assistant Vice President at Prentice Hall wrote a detailed letter on preliminary steps, August 23, 1968.

There was a back and forth between publisher and author about supplementary materials and addenda, including answers and solutions, teacher suggestions, unpublished "interesting asides," demo suggestions, further reading suggestions, AV aids or suggestions, and a test question bank. In his marginal notes on a letter from the publisher, DFH writes that he desires most of these ideas to be included in the textbook itself. In the fall of 1969, just as preliminary copies were being sent to eager college bookstores, the publisher asked the authors for a questionnaire to accompany.

Authors

During the summer of 1969, DFH was in Canterbury, UK. At the same time, he was appointed chair of the Physics Dept. at Cornell. In a letter 21 May 1969, DFH writes to PM that "Someone at MIT must have a magic touch, or you have a docile student body -- I have seen no reports of MIT having 'blown.'"

DFH was on sabbatic leave Spring 1969.

Reviews

Professor Manka of Sam Houston State U. June 1970, "the best we have received to date" according to the editor, WHG.

Albert Bork, UC Irvine, 1969.

John Allred, University of Houston, Spring, 1969.

Barney Sandler, NYCC. Prof. Sandler suggested a teacher's manual or solutions guide.

Rex Nelson, Occidental College, CA, Spring, 1969.

Use of text

Faculty from other colleges used MFW.

Prof. Donald Yennie and Al Silverman, also at Cornell used it in Fall 1969. PM writes to DFH July 3, 1969, that he would like to get Al Silverman to use it. Yennie and Silverman were team teaching Physics 201-202 1969-70.

Hans von Baeyer wrote to the publisher with a letter about how he would use MFW Fall 1970.

Prentice Hall provided a list of college bookstores that ordered multiples of the text between 10/01/1969 and 2/28/1970

Arizona (Tuscon campus), 20.

Student bookstore at AZ (Tuscon campus), 36.

Occidental Col. bookstore, CA, 150.

Oglethorpe U. Bookshop, GA, 84.

Cornell Campus Store, NY, 75.

Triangle Book Shop (Cornell), NY, 50.

Sam Houston State College, TX, 50.

Abbreviations

DE

David Esner, Director of Special Projects at Prentice Hall

MFW

My Father's Watch

DFW

Donald Frank Holcomb

PM

Philip Morrison

WHG

William H. Grimshaw, Physics Editor at Prentice Hall

BM

Bob Melendes, head of Project Management Group at Prentice Hall