D O C U M E N T 5 1 6 M AY 1 9 2 9 4 4 3 “The news that Stodola is retiring from teaching has deeply affected me. His youthful freshness at our meeting last year, which was all the more impressive be- cause he mentioned that he had just recovered from a serious illness, allowed me to take his allusions reference to old age and retirement from teaching as merely advance notices of something still far in the future. Only those first lessons are unforgettable What the school is losing is known to anyone who is still influenced, a third of a century later, by those unforgettable lessons, as the essence of technical insight and technical creation dawned on us, as bearings, connecting rods, seals, and reg- ulating procedures rose out of a formally closed distance and turned into a life with which we could empathize and filled us ourselves with creative confidence. Through the years, how Reynolds’s half-forgotten investigations into the nature of fluid flows shone as a high point, and became decisive for the understanding of friction that splendid sketching exercise, in which spatial conception and physical understanding were made to serve conscious construction in the simplest, most ef- fective form. There we learned not merely what technology is, but the whole of in- tellectually mastered creativity stood forever before us. Now what we have to do is to make this creative power closer and all the more effective for us because it is released from the bonds of the teaching profession. We have to preserve for us old people and for the rising generation the stream of life that caught us up and carried us along from the first encounter on. For years, Stodola has focused on nurturing the intellectual forum. That will happen all the more freely and unrestrictedly if we are able to stay close to him. A great deal depends on the development of a common sense of humanity. The teacher who is now leaving the school, but who cannot abandon the young, to whom the serenity and clarity of a higher world speak, is one of the very few peo- ple—the very few on whom we can all count as we continue to build.” I must always take care that a touch of daydreaming does not tinge my words. There is also wishful thinking, behind which loom wistful intuitions of the limits of humanity, in the words quoted above. Should they nonetheless appear alongside your clear and manly ones addressed to our dear old friend and teacher? Advise me, please! Your Michele