Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: July 1986 Volume 24 Number 3, Pages 122–124

Notes and Comments

• Paoli Firm Helped Locate Challenger Debris
• New Paoli Presbyterian Church Dedicated
• Strafford Man Receives Patent
• Chester Valley Lyceum

Page 122

Paoli Firm Helped Locate Challenger Debris

After the tragic explosion and crash of the space shuttle Challenger off Cape Canaveral this spring, the Paoli-based Daniel H. Wagner Associates was given the task of directing the search for fragments of the ill-fated craft. The company, made up of mathematicians and computer specialists, is located in the Station Square One office complex on Central Avenue in Paoli, and also has offices in Washington, D.C., Yorktown, Virginia, and in Sunnyvale, California. Wagner is the son of Hobson C. Wagner, a former superintendent of schools at Tredyffrin-Easttown.

In the early 1970s the company developed a software program to assist the Coast Guard in search and rescue missions. It had also worked previously on similar projects for the government, notably in the search for the lost hydrogen bomb off Palomares, Spain in 1963 and for the submarine Scorpion that was lost about 400 miles southwest of the Azores in 1968. (It took more than five months, and the development of some 10,000 possible "scenarios", before the Scorpion was finally located!)

Actually, the Challenger assignment was not considered a difficult one, partly because the submerged remnants stayed relatively stationary and did not move with the ocean's currents, and partly because the extensive camera coverage of the blast-off made it easier to plot the trajectory of the falling debris. With this information and the use of advanced mathematics and computers, the company was able to direct the nine U.S. Navy search and recovery vessels and divers in their work over a 400 square mile area of the Atlantic. The thousands of pieces of recovered debris, of course, helped N. A. S. A. and other government agencies reconstruct what happened to cause the disaster.

Page 123

New Paoli Presbyterian Church Dedicated

Dedication services were held on April 13, 1986 for the new sanctuary of the Paoli Presbyterian Church, at South Valley and Waynesborough roads. It is the third location for the 86-year old congregation.

The Church was organized in 1899 at the old frame chapel building (later the Paoli Library) and received its charter in the following year. In June 1907 it moved into a larger, Gothic-style new stone building on apart of the Dingee property on the north side of Lancaster Avenue. (It is now the Baptist Church.) With the surge of growth after the Second World War, additions were made to the building, but in 1962 the Church was moved again, to its present site.

Among those participating in the dedication service were three former pastors of the Church -- the Rev. Dr. Kenneth A. Hammonds [1944-1954], the Rev. Ralph Osborne [1955-1967]. and the Rev. Wayne M. Hoffman [1967-1972] -- and four former associate or assistant ministers -- the Rev. David E. Erb, the Rev. James A. Churchill, the Rev. Donald C. Hoagland, and the Rev. Andrea J. McCaw Mack. Also taking part was the Rev. Paul Tuttle, of the Trinity Presbyterian Church in Berwyn. The Rev. Joseph H. Brady, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Manasquan, N.J. gave the sermon, "The Hallmark of a Faithful Church".

Strafford Man Receives Patent

Edmund Thelen, of Strafford, with Daniel Black III of Radnor, was recently granted U.S. Patent Number 4,564,310 for the invention of a resilient paving composition for play fields, sports fields, and recreation areas. The product, to be marketed as "Safety Substance", is designed to reduce injuries from falls on playgrounds, and was successfully tested at the West Hills Nursery School in Rosemont and at Marple-Newtown High School. It also has the advantage of being self-extinguishing if set on fire, and is a non-toxic material that cannot contaminate the underground water table.

Thelen, who for thirty years was director of the Franklin Institute's physical and life science laboratories, also has several other patents, including one for a porous, asphalt-concrete pavement that he developed for the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Chester Valley Lyceum

In the article on the Berwyn Lyceum in our April issue last year [Vol. XXIII, No. 2] there was a reference to an earlier lyceum, the Chester Valley Lyceum, which was held at the Howellville School. On the next page is a reproduction, reduced in size, of an 1858 broadside for that lyceum. The original broadside measures 51/2 inches by 18 inches.

Page 124

Broadside for Chester Valley Lyceum [orig. 5 1/2" x 18"]

Tredyffrin Easttown History Club