AUTHORS

William T. Powers

Bill Powers is:  inventor, astronomer, computer systems designer, author and most important, a brilliant theorist in the advanced study of behavior, from the physics of a cell to the interactions of a community. He received a B.S. in Physics and did his graduate work in  Psychology at Northwestern University, where he worked in the Department of Astronomy, and provided consulting to The Center for the Teaching Profession. His work in medical physics planted the seeds for his long-term investigation into control theory. Powers holds patents for a number of inventions, from electronic instruments to a beautifully conceived strategy game. His published articles include an important series, The Nature of Robots, which ran in BYTE from June to September, 1979: "Defining Behavior"; "Simulated Control Systems"; "A Closer Look at Human Behavior," and "Looking for Controlled Variables."

According to Paul J. Bohannan, then Stanley G. Harris Professor of Social Science, Northwestern University, Powers' first book, Behavior: The Control of Perception, (Aldine de Gruyter, 1973; Sixth Printing, 2001), offers an alternative to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis. "It provides a way, both elegant and sophisticated, to include the basic contributions of both without being partisan or converted. It allows us to bring the soma, culture, society, behavior, and experience into a single framework.Today, Bill Powers continues his leadership and active participation in the Control Systems Group (CSG), an international forum for a diverse group of academicians, clinicians and other professionals in several disciplines. Annual meetings have been held since 1985. CSG publishes books, a newsletter and Closed Loop, a quarterly compilation of discussions on what is now called Perceptual Control Theory (PCT). These lively debates on PCT take place nonstop on CSGnet, a worldwide electronic mail network for individuals interested in control theory as applied to living systems. Experimental studies, research and modeling around PCT are under development in psychology, medicine, human development, education, sociology and more. The CSG website is at http://perceptualcontroltheory.org.

Powers is working on his seventh book, scheduled for publication by Benchmark Publications. This work is on modeling PCT and includes a CD with demos and programs by the author..

Alice P. McElhone

Before entering the high tech world, Ms. McElhone was founder and president of un-com'mon gãmes, marketing intellectual and strategy games to an international clientele of top-of-the-line bookstores, department stores, gift shops and consumer catalogs.

That experience and some twenty years in information processing and instructional design for high tech corporations give Ms. McElhone a unique perspective to share with other desktop marketers. As senior technical editor, customer education, Dictaphone Corporation, she was responsible for editorial standards, quality control and documenting the more complex system functions for the customer education department.

Later, as manager of curriculum development and publications, Exxon Office Systems Corporation, she lead a team of professional writers, editors and designers in creating customer education tools for five lines of high tech products. She is co-founder and president of Benchmark Publications Inc., New Canaan, Connecticut, a business communications firm (est. 1987) serving Fortune 500 companies and leading software publishers nationwide. IBM, Apple Computer, GE, HBO, Pitney Bowes and SBC/SNET are just a few BPI clients.

Awards and Publications: Ms. McElhone has won top honors from the Society of Technical Communications (STC) and Women in Communications International (WICI) for her software user guides, Learning DrawApplause (Ashton-Tate), HyperPad (Brightbill-Roberts) and ProcessWriter (Holt-Rinehart), and management communications (Coopers & Lybrand and Apple Computer, 1995). She is co-author of the chapter, "Computer Skills," for the Third Edition ASTD Handbook (Training and Development, McGraw-Hill, 1987) and co-author of Mail It! High-Impact Business Mail from Design to Delivery (Benchmark Publications Inc.), which won a 1996 award of Excellence from STC.

She lives in New Canaan, Connecticut and is a member of ASCAP, ASTD, MAC and STC.

Edward B. Butler

Edward B. Butler is senior marketing writer for General Signal Corporation. He has been in the business of business writing for almost three decades. He began as an account executive with the advertising/public relations firm of Poutray & Holyoke. After six years there, he moved to Marquardt & Roche of Stamford, Connecticut, where he won numerous industry awards for copywriting.

Before joining General Signal, for the past eight years Mr. Butler has been a free lance writer, working on projects for companies such as Benchmark Publications, James River, Union Carbide, CIBA-GEIGY, Nestea, GE Capital, North River Press, MCI and The Danbury Mint.

Mr. Butler has won the B/PAA awards for New York, Boston, Fairfield County, Connecticut and National competitions. Twice winner of the prestigious Andy Award, he has also taken home the New York, Boston and National Art Directors award, and the Fairfield and Westchester county Ad Club awards. He is co-author of the book, Mail It! High-Impact Business Mail from Design to Delivery (Benchmark Publications Inc., © 1996 Pitney Bowes).

In addition to countless live advertising campaign presentations, Mr. Butler has delivered a series of lectures at Sacred Heart University on Writing for Advertising. He lives in Trumbull, Connecticut.

Treval C. Powers

T.C. Powers' book, Leakage: The Bleeding of the American Economy, has been hailed as a pivotal work in the field of macroeconomics. It has found its mark in universities and among economics leaders  here and abroad. Leakage represents a departure from his earlier works (in the field of research chemistry), notably The Fresh Properties of Concrete, Wiley, 1968, which is still cited as one of the foundations of modern materials science. Where is the link between these disciplines? Perhaps it is in Powers' stated credo, borrowed from Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist (d. 1907):

"When you can measure what you are talking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it, and when you cannot measure it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind. It may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thought advanced to the stage of a science."

Powers has authored a vast body of imaginative, original research on concrete technology published in various distinguished scientific journals. He is best known for his studies of the colloidal structure of hardened cement. As reported in the "Journal of the Portland Cement Association Research and Development Division," `His concepts have achieved worldwide recognition and have been used both by himself and others to interpret such important concrete properties as strength, dimensional changes, permeability and response to freezing and thawing.' It has been said that his findings have changed the way dams are built and highways are constructed from Bull Run to the Autobahn.

A three-time winner of the prestigious Wason Medal for Materials Research "for noteworthy research," in 1964 he received the Sanford E. Thompson Award of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). The citation for his Anderson Award from the American Concrete Institute in 1972 reads, "for his pioneering investigations of the physical properties of portland cement paste, which have provided the foundation for the existing understanding of concrete behavior."

On his retirement, he co-founded the original "Over-the-Hill Gang," a group of mountaineering retired executives, and got reacquainted with life outside the lab in the high country around Green Valley, Arizona.

For his new mental exercise, he undertook a study of "The Phenomenon of Inflation" for the local current affairs forum. That presentation was the beginning of an exciting journey into uncharted territory once again. He "read for Economics," as one would at Oxford, becoming a scholar and authority over a period of about twelve years. As he studied, he applied basic scientific research methods to the analysis of raw historical data to better understand this new discipline. But his conclusions persisted in diverging from orthodox economic theory. A casual volunteer assignment became a crusade to get at the truth. The forum presentation grew into a book. Powers resists calling his findings a "new theory." In his eyes, it is simply an analysis. In the honorable scientific tradition, he demonstrates his findings in charts, discloses his methods in equations and invites the community to test his ideas.

From the perspective of one who has lived through many more presidential administrations than most, T.C. Powers makes a compelling argument for a new understanding of economics, particularly as it applies to the American economy.

Born in Palouse, Washington in 1900, Powers completed high school in a one-room schoolhouse in Christmas Lake Valley, Oregon, first in a class of 12. (He gave the Valedictorian address and played a violin solo.) After World War I, he graduated from Willamette University and worked as a chemical and testing engineer for the Oregon State Highway Commission and other construction organizations until 1930, when he joined the Portland Cement Association Research Laboratories in Chicago, Illinois, where he remained until his retirement. While at PCA, he did postgraduate work in colloidal chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Cincinnati in 1965.

Powers has been a member of the American Concrete Institute for nearly 70 years, and was given the high privilege of Honorary Membership in 1960. He is also member of ASTM and RILEM (International Union of Testing and Research Laboratories for Materials and Structures). Two international symposia have been held in his honor, the most recent sponsored by the Highway Research Board, National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council, with papers and presentations representing 15 countries. The proceedings of this symposium are preserved in the monumental Special Report 90, published by that group in his honor.

Coda:  June 30, 1997 -  Treval Clifford Powers, D. Sc., died in Green Valley, Arizona, after two extraordinary careers--as a scientist and as a maverick economist. His trademark was his collection of hats and hiking sticks. Here he is in an Alpine number, in a place he loved to be—in the mountains.

T.C. Powers, 1900 - 1997
Scientist, Economist, Author, Mountaineer,
at Mt. Rainier when the glacier was young,
circa 1924.