Archive Record
Images
Metadata
Title |
An Interview with Gene Pong |
Catalog Number |
2021.074.043 |
Object Name |
Recording, Video |
Scope & Content |
An Interview with Gene Pong >>Oral history interview with Gene Pong, Portland, OR, October 24, 2022 >>In this interview, Gene Pong recounts his life and career, starting with his childhood as the son of Chinese immigrants who owned a hand laundry in Lorain, Ohio. He pursued a degree in forestry, first at Ohio State and then transferring to the University of California, Berkeley, and later earning a master's degree in wood technology from Yale University. His early work with the Forest Service involved highly specialized wood technology research for the government, including finding a substitute tropical wood for teak to use in laminated Douglas fir aircraft carrier decks and measuring the sheer strength of maple for helicopter components. Pong was heavily involved in Cold War-era research on the effects of atomic blasts on forests. This included setting up Ponderosa pine trees with strain gauges 20,000 feet from ground zero in Nevada for an atomic test, as well as simulating blast effects by strapping trees to a truck and driving at high speeds in North Carolina to collect data. He also helped establish a fire research lab in Macon, Georgia, but was so disturbed by the racial segregation he witnessed—specifically a black janitor being prohibited from using the government-funded "white bathroom"—that he immediately sought and received a transfer back to Berkeley. His later work focused on log grading to settle disputes with private industry over the value of timber, where he innovated a photographic system on the "green chain" to record and verify the grade of every piece of lumber produced from a log. COPY & PASTE LINK INTO BROWSER TO WATCH INTERVIEW https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OPDWY6x2kFsnaloNLqIa65dm6mj1bQD8/view?usp=sharing |
Additional File |
Click here to view transcript. |
Year Range from |
2022 |
Year Range to |
2022 |
People |
Pong, Gene |
Subjects |
Pacific Northwest Research Station |
Search Terms |
Oral History Research Timber-Milling Timber-Genetics |
Catalog date |
2023-01-31 |
Collection |
Oral History |