Walter W. Turner Papers

Walter Weeks Turner was born in 1922 in Augusta, Maine. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from M.I.T. in 1947. He was a professor at the University of Maine at Orono in the Department of Electrical Engineering from 1947 until his retirement as Professor Emeritus in 1990. His major teaching fields were in wire communications, feedback control systems, electrical machinery, and instrumentation. In 1986 he received the Ashley S. Campbell Award, established by the College of Engineering and Science in 1979 to recognize faculty members who brought distinction to the education of engineering and science students. He was also a member of the Maine Board of Registration for Professional Engineers from 1974 to 1988.

In 1959 and 1960 Professor Turner was a member of the Special Committee of Maine Engineers appointed to study engineering and economic aspects of the 1959 report by the International Passamaquoddy Engineering Board to the International Joint Commission. The Board had been authorized by the U.S. and Canadian governments in 1956 to survey the desirability and feasibility of the proposed Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project and to estimate the cost of developing the tidal power potential of Passamaquoddy Bay in the state of Maine and the province of New Brunswick. The Committee of Maine Engineers, sponsored by the Maine Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Maine Section of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and the Maine Association of Engineers, considered the Passamaquoddy project proposal from an engineering standpoint. They concluded in their report that it was not economically justified for the United States and would result in a waste of the country's materials and money.

Professor Turner also served in 1985 and 1986 on a committee to begin the planning process for an undergraduate program in electrical engineering at the University of Southern Maine. The proposal was supported by a number of technical companies in the Portland area but met with considerable resistance from the faculty in electrical engineering at the University of Maine at Orono. After much discussion, the program was approved by the University's Board of Trustees and began in 1988; it received accreditation from the Engineering Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology in 1992.

Professor Turner died on November 18, 2004.