ALLAN S. BOCK, PAST PRESIDENT American Society of Photogrammetry

Hopkins, M N 55343

Mark Hurd* Memorial Address

M ARK HURD did not fit the normal business man or executive mold. He was more adven-

turer-promoter-explorer-dreamer, yes . . . and hunter, than he was business man. He loved the wilderness of northern Minnesota where he had spent many summers as a boy and a young man. o n e or more of these summers was spent with the Minnesota Museum of Natural History collecting in- formation and species of wild life and plant life for the museum. Mark Hurd

His party travelled by canoe just a few years be- 1892-1969 hind the French voyageurs who were boatmen, trappers, traders, and explorers of the 18th and 19th While I was a boy in the 1920's, the book stores centuries. and movie theaters were producing a large volume

Figures 1 and 2 show Mark in the Minnesota wil- of war stories. Richthofen, Brown, Rickenbacker, derness in about 1916. He was probably in his last Frank Luke, and many others were my heroes. I year in college when these were taken. It was quite gobbled up everything I could find about them- natural that this love of the wilderness was instilled and here 1 was fishing and hunting with one of these in Mark because his father, Joshua Hurd, was a fighter pilots who had actually experienced these logger and lumberman. moments I had read so much about. He told me

Mark was born on 11 May 1892 in Minneapolis, about a few of these . . . bullet holes in his wings Minnesota, We don't have information about . . . close friends shot down . . . but he was never him during his childhood, but we know he grad- willing to dwell on them. I remember him saying uated from the University of Minnesota in 1914 with that he always got butkrflies in his s t ~ n ~ a c h when a degree in Chemical Engineering. After gradua- he was getting ready for a mission but the butter- tion, he plunged into the construction business and flies left as soon as he took off. had a successful home-building business going. He It was during this period that Mark became in- married Sarah Bush of Minneapolis in 1917. Also, terested in aerial photography. He was cimazed at in 1917 the United States was deeply involved in the amount of information aerial photographs con- World War I, and the patriotic songs, speeches, and tained and he saw great commercial applications for enlistment posters got to him. He terminated his them. Upon h s return from France at the end of building business and enlisted in the U.S. Signal World War 1, he bought a Sopwith Chmel airplane Corps which then included the fledgling air arm of and plunged into commercial aviation activities. the U . S. Army, He was sent to flying school in His wife presented him with a daughter, Patricia, Waco, Texas and, after learning how to fly and how in 1919. Mark and his first d e , Sarah, were di- to shoot down enemy planes, he found himself in vorced in 1920 or 1921. France doing just that. He was involved in so many things during this

In Figure 3, taken in 1917, Mark wears his wings stage of his life that it is dficult to know where one and second lieutenant's bars. While in France, he left off and the other began, both as to time and became a member of the famed Lafayette E ~ ~ ~ - areas of interest. He did a lot of barnstorming im- drille. It was difficult to get Mark to talk about him- mediately after his return from France, and I think self, but I did coax a few things from him while we this was a period of his life which held particular waited in our blind for a flight of ducks or sat in a relish for him. It was a period when he made many boat waiting for a bite. lasting friendships among the early pioneers of avia-

tion. After I joined him in 1937, many of these old * Presented at the ~~~~~l convention of the ~~~~i~~~ timers were still dropping in to hash over old times.

Society of Photogrammetry, Washmgton, D.C., 14 March During the twenties (Figure 4), Mark was in- 1984. volved in just about everything remotely connected

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PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING, 1984

FIG. 1. Mark in the woods, 1916.

with aviation. In 1923, he did take time out to marry Florence Sullivan, who gave him two sons and two daughters between 1925 and 1931. His sons are Mark, Jr. and Joshua and his daughters are Grace and Florence.

Mark held the 5th pilot's license issued in the United States. The great majority of the first 300 pilots in Minnesota were trained in his flying schools. During this period in the twenties he was manager of the Aero Club of Minneapolis. He was elected an honorary member of the "Great War Vet- erans of Canada'-one of ten people extended this honor in recognition of his work with the Royal Flying Club of Canada and his work in rehabilitation of Canadian veterans.

Mark's exploits as a fighter pilot during World War I, together with his participation in air shows and his barnstorming throughout the Northwest, made him a very well known aviation figure of the period. He counted among his close friends many nationally known aviation personalities of the time.

One of these friends was Jimmie Doolittle, who

T I ~ . 3. Second Lieutenant Mark Hurd, 1917

he was flying for Shell Oil. Doolittle, of course, later became General Doolittle and led the first bombing raid on Tokyo. Another friend was Eddie Stinson (Figure 6), who at that time, according to Mark, had more flying time than any man in the world. Stinson later went on to become a large aircraft manufac- turer.

In Figure 7, we see another friend of Mark's, Amelia Earhart, who of course lost her life in the Pacific on a round-the-world flight. This picture was taken at the Chicago Air Races. A fellow Minnesotan by the name of Charles Lindbergh and Mark were acquaintances before Lindberg flew to Paris.

In Figure 8, Mark stands on the right in front of one of the aircraft he used for aerial photography and charter in the late twenties or early thirties. I'm not sure whether it is a Fairchild 71 or a Hamilton.

Mark was one of the organizers and the treasurer of the Aircraft Owners and Operators Association in 1926, and a charter member and director of the Na- tional Aeronautical Association. He launched Mid-

FIG. 2. Around the campfire. FIG. 4. Mark in the 1920's.

MARK HURD MEMORIAL ADDRESS

Plane Sales and Transit Co. In 1927, which merged with Air Transportation Co. to form Universal Avia- tion Corporation. This company, which Mark headed, started an airline with routes from Min- neapolis to Chicago to St. Louis and to Fargo, North Dakota and Duluth, Minnesota. The Company merged with American Aviation in 1929 and later became known as American Airlines. The same year, he organized Great Northern Aviation Cor- poration under which he set up flying schools in St. Paul, Duluth, Cloquet, and Coleraine, Minnesota. He also set up the first aircraft welding school in the United States, an aircraft mechanics school, and a secretarial school for aircraft terminology. Great Northern Aviation also designed and built one of the first civilian light airplanes in the U.S. Mark test-flew it successfully but the stock market crash and the great depression arrived about then and it never went into production. During this period he founded Aerial Photographic Service Corporation, which was the predecessor company of Mark Hurd Aerial Surveys.

During the early part of the depression, Mark operated his one remaining flying school until he had to close it for lack of students. He continued his air-taxi service for a while, flying prominent Twin City business men about the country until even they could not afford that kind of travel.

With the flying business dead, Mark turned his full attention to aerial photography. He photo-

graphed the City of Minneapolis in the early thirties and made a controlled mosaic at a scale of 1: 12,000 with the photography, one of the first in the country. Selling copies was another matter. Everyone thought it was very interesting but not quite inter- esting enough to warrant laying out cold hard cash during a severe depression. Mark rang a lot of door- bells before the mosaic began to move. It attracted the attention of a Minneapolis mining executive, Mr. Theodore W. Bennett, who envisioned the po- tential of aerial photography in the natural resource field. Mr. Bennett purchased stock in the fledgling company and furnished capital for reorganization and the purchase of much needed equipment.

As I mentioned earlier, the country was in the throes of a deep depression at this time. President Franklin Roosevelt had launched a farm program designed to subsidize the farmers by paying them for crops they did not raise. In order to do this, the Department of Agriculture had to have an efficient way to measure the acreages of the fields upon which the farmers did not raise crops. Aerial pho- tography proved to be the answer, and Mark was the successful bidder on a contract to photograph 10,000 square miles of southern Minnesota for this purpose.

I had just graduated from the old Air Corps Tech- nical School in photography at Rantoul, Illinois. Mark had hired me as an aerial photographer to

FIG. 8. Mark [right) stands in front of the lane used for FIG. 6. Another friend, Eddi Stinson. aerial 1930.

PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING, 1984

assist in the performance of this contract. Having been raised in Chicago where the formula for sur- vival during the depression was "every man for him- self and may the devil take the hindmost," it was indeed inspiring to be associated with Mark Hurd.

Mark told me once that the golden rule was his religion, and that was not an idle statement. I don't think I have ever known another human being who lived more by those dictates than Mark. He had an abundance of charisma. He was good at delegating responsibility and he never second guessed his em- ployees or associates after agreeing on an assign- ment. He was one of those rare leaders whom every one wanted to please, not for the purpose of self gain, but for recognition and approval. I worked for Mark for four years as an employee and we were partners for twenty six years and I can't recall one word of criticism from him nor one occasion when he was disagreeable to work with.

Mark was a strong supporter of the American So- ciety of Photogrammetry from its beginning in 1934. He was a director in 1942-44 and again in 1948- 50. The picture (Figure 9) of the members of ASP gathered for the convention in 1939 hung in Mark's ofice for many years. By a strange coincidence, this picture was taken by Kargl Aerial Surveys, the founder of which is the subject of the other me- morial lecture today. The image may be a little too small to recognize very many of the members. Mark is in the center of the next to the last row. His wife, Florence, is next to him on our right. She was a delightful person with a terrific sense of humor. Every year she would greet Commander Quack- enbush at the Convention with the same question,

"How is your boat, Admiral?" Bob would come back with the disgusted exclamation: "Florence, it is not a boat, it's a ship"!!!! I can identify Virgil Kaufman in the front row, center, and next to him on our right is Ralph Moyer of Agriculture, and I'm not sure but I believe that is Pliny Gale on the right of Ralph. Over on the left, the third from the end in the second row, is Ted Abrams. Also in the second row, behind and to the left of the fellow in the white suit, is Bob Colthorp, who I believe owned South- west Aerial Surveys in Austin, Texas. I can also iden- tify Lewis Dickerson in the fourth row from the back and third from the right side and Marshall Wright, Sr, in the front center with arms folded, I believe. I'm sure there are many more we could identify if we could take the time.

About the time this picture was taken, Mark de- cided he could build a better aerial camera than was available on the market, at what he considered a reasonable price. He organized Mark Hurd Manu- facturing Corporation and embarked on that task. He completed about fifteen 8'14-inch focal length 9 by 9 inch format cameras and mounts and a number of shutter testers before the war mobilization effort cut off critical materials. About ten of these cameras were sold to aerial survey companies and used ex- tensively on the Department of Agriculture crop compliance program. The other five were used by the Hurd Company. The camera is pictured and described in the First Edition of the Manual of Pho- togrammetry.

Mark had remained active in the air force reserve after World War I and now had the rank of major. As the international situation began to heat up in

FIG. 9. ASP Convention, 1939.

MARK HURD MEMORIAL ADDRESS

Europe in 1940, Mark's duties as an Air Force re- serve officer multiplied. Soon after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he was promoted to It. col- onel and called up to active duty. He spent the first part of the war in England where he was in charge of procurement of photographic materials and equipment. Figure 10 shows him at his desk some- where in England. He said it wasn't a very difEcult job. He just told every manufacturer to make all they could make. He later joined Patton's 5th Army in France where he was a member of the 10th Photo Reconnaisance Group. Mark is shown in Figure 11 in his quarters in France. Photo reconnaissance was his specialty here, and he was awarded five Battle Stars while with General Patton. He was on the last motorized vehicle to leave Bastogne during the "Battle of the Bulge." That vehicle was a motor- cycle, and he said he could hear a lot of shooting as he departed and he wondered why they didn't shoot at him. When he reached a safe haven and examined his motorcycle, he did find a number of bullet holes in his side car and field pack.

I have a copy of a newspaper interview with Mark which appeared in the Minneapolis Star and Tri- bune on 21 March 1945. I'll read a couple of para- graphs which are pertinent.

"Patton was criticized by some for leaving his southern flank 'exposed' during the march," Hurd said today. "Actually Patton knew everything hap- pening along that sector through reports of our re- connaissance planes.

"We watched one group of 20,000 Germans fleeing along a road for several days and when they were in suitable position, Patton sent in a ground force to cap- ture them all." Sometimes Hurd's outfit would turn over to the general 24,000 pictures within 24 hours, he said, and this is a partial explanation for the scarcity of civilian photo film and paper. When con- ditions were unfavorable for pictures the observers drew sketches."

Figure 12 is a picture of Mark on the left, with Haymond Miller in the center and myself on the r i d t , in front of a high altitude vhoto index. When irk returned fromY~urope in i945, we formed a

FIG. 10. Lt. Col. Hurd at his desk in England, World War 11.

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FIG. 11. On duty in France, World War 11.

partnership and acquired Mr. Bennett's share of the laboratory and photographic equipment which had been stored during the war. We re-activated the company and re-hired former employees who had "returned from the wars," as the old saying goes. Mark remained active in aviation circles. He main- tained his commission in the Air Force Reserve and held an office in the Order of Quiet Birdmen. With the advent of high-resolution wide-angle lenses in the U.S. after World War 11, Mark went back into manufacturing and produced the first 5.2- and 6- inch focal length wide-angle 9 by 9 inch format cam- eras made in this country for civilian use. He ac- quired one of the first Cartogon lenses made by Bausch & Lomb to make the first distortion-free camera in the U.S. Mark designed these cameras with "quick-change shutters," which was another product of his inventive mind.

Prior to the advent of vertical aerial photography, large camera shutters would perhaps be cycled one or two thousand times in their total life. Now with faster aircraft and large projects to be photographed vertically, a shutter would have to cycle as much as 1000 times in one day. The consequence of this was a high incidence of shutter failures, each resulting in the total immobilizing of a costly operation. The camera had to be returned to the factory for repair

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FIG. 12. Mark Hurd, Ray Miller, and Allan Bock with photo index.

PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING, 1984

and then to the Bureau of Standards for re-calibra- tion, while the flight operation remained at a stand- still. Mark's quick-change shutter made it possible to carry along an extra shutter and make the change in the field in 30 minutes without disturbing the lens calibration. These cameras, installed in surplus military P-38 and B-17 aircraft, gave the company a substantial lead in high-altitude photography.

In Figure 13, we see Mark with his two sons at his daughter Grace's wedding in Minneapolis in May 1947. Mark is in the center with his oldest son Mark, Jr. on the left and his youngest son Joshua on the right.

In November 1952 Mark suffered a severe heart attack while duck hunting at Heron Lake, Minne- sota. Fortunately, he was in a duck blind with a six- foot-two farmer who picked him up like a baby and carried him a half mile through swamp to a car. Because of this quick action, his life was spared but the heart attack forced him to retire from any stren- uous activity. He did continue to maintain daily of- fice hours where his counsel and long experience were valued assets.

In 1954 Mark's wife, Florence, died suddenly of a massive heart attack. In 1955 Mark moved to Santa Barbara, California where the company had estab- lished an aircraft modification center and photo- grammetric facility. Mark continued as chairman of the company and we held our board meetings in Santa Barbara instead of Minneapolis.

In 1963 Mark married Jean Lilly and they retired to Palm Desert, California, spending their summers on a lake near Alexandria, Minnesota. He passed away on 3 April 1969.

In memory of this lovable old warrior who spent his whole life in the advancement of flying and pho- togrammetry, which today is our livelihood, I think

FIG. 13. Markand two sons atwedding ofdaughter Grace, 1947.

it is fitting to close this lecture by reading this poem entitled "high flight." It is fitting because the poem was written by an American pilot in England im- mediately after he had completed a high-altitude experimental flight in a Spitfire, and it is more fit- ting because it describes Mark's feelings perfectly, and furthermore it was found in Mark's belongings after his death.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth, and danced the skies on laughter silvered wings, Sunward I have climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun- split clouds, and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of. Wheeled, and soared, and swung high in the sunlit silence hovering there, I have chased the shouting wind along and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air, Up . . . Up the long delirious, burning blue I have topped the windswept heights with easy grace, Where never a lark nor even eagles flew and while with silent lifting mind, I have trod the high, untrespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand, and touched the face of God.