Time Waits for No Man at Caltech

Caltech’s undergraduate pranks are legend. We have all heard about the Model T Ford that was dismantled and reassembled, running, in a student’s room in Ricketts House. Also well known is the great 1961 Rose Bowl caper, in which a Caltech team stole and altered the University of Washington’s half-time stunt instruction cards, so that stunt No. 14 turned out to be a huge CALTECH in black block letters on white.

Now Robert Finn, science writer for Caltech’s public relations office, calls my attention to another Caltech prank of which he was reminded by my recent columns on the great clock slowdown that resulted in 1948 from a PG&E; power shortage and drop in cycles from 60 to 59 per second.

The story is in “Legends of Caltech,” which was published by the Alumni Assn. in 1983. It is called “Professor Apostol’s Time Warp,” and it concerns an ingenious prank played on mathematics Prof. Tom Apostol by student Bob Durst, ’74.

Durst recalls that Apostol always made his lectures last exactly 50 minutes, reading from notes, and timing himself by a clock at the back of the lecture hall. He wore no watch.

Another undergraduate, Fred Sigworth, ‘74, happened to own a device that could change the frequency of a power source from the normal 60 cycles (hertz) to any desired level. “This was the perfect gadget,” he thought, “with which to test the professor.”

Over a period of three or four weeks Durst would enter the lecture hall before class, connect the frequency changer to the clock, alter the frequency, and change the clock setting so that it would be correct when the class started. Then sit back and listen.

First, he set the frequency up to 66 cycles (10% faster than normal) so that Apostol found himself falling curiously behind. He hurried up his delivery, but failed to finish before he had quite covered all his material.

Apostol’s next lecture was shorter, and he finished in time. The next time Durst upped the frequency by 12.5%, but forgot to reset the clock. The result was chaotic.

“When I arrived at class the clock was already ahead and running fast,” Durst recalls. “There was no way to stop or reset the clock, as Prof. Apostol was already lecturing. Students filtered in during the next five to 10 minutes and were surprised to find that he was already well into his lecture. He hurried through his material, cut his lecture short, and dismissed class when the clock read 10 till. There was considerable ruckus from those in the class who had watches and couldn’t understand why he had quit before covering all of his material when there was still plenty of time (15 minutes) left in the period.”

Durst was sure he was going to be discovered. For a week or two he lay low. Then he changed the frequency again to 66 cycles. For two or three lectures the professor failed to finish in time. He was obviously flustered. The next two lectures he speeded up and finished.

Then Durst set the frequency up to 69 cycles (15% faster than normal). The professor’s efforts to adjust to this speedup, of which, evidently, he was not conscious, were heroic.

“With about 30 minutes left to go (by the clock) he noticed that he was once again behind and noticeably sped up. With 15 minutes remaining (by the clock) he realized that, in spite of having sped up, he was still falling behind. With real determination to complete all of the planned material he sped up even more.

“With five minutes left to go and maybe 10 minutes of material remaining he let out all the stops, and in a very atypical manner began being sloppy. He started talking so fast we couldn’t understand what he was saying.”

When Apostol finished, dismissed the class and left, students were left to wonder why he had hurried so much when there was so much time left.

Durst had fiendishly planned to reverse the deception and set the frequency down to 40 hertz, which would have allowed the class to run on for 25 minutes more than usual. But instead he decided to end Prof. Apostol’s ordeal.

“Those of us who knew what was going on realized that he had been pushed beyond his limit.”