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| Home : Volume 31 : Fall 2004 : | |
| Looking in on COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING alumni | |
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William Gurstelle, BS '78
Mechanical Engineering Author, lecturer and licensed professional engineer |
William Gurstelle
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If William Gurstelle has to live with the notion that he's a grown-up 12-year-old, so be it. It's not everyone, after all, who can parlay his training in mechanical engineering into a career that focuses on catapults, robot wars and exploding potatoes.
But Gurstelle, who graduated from UW-Madison in 1978 with a BS in mechanical engineering, has found his niche in toys and gadgets that most of us gave up in our pre-teen years. He's an author, lecturer and professional engineer whose specialty is gizmos for the young and the young at heart. "I've always had an interest in things that go whoosh, boom and splat," he says.
Gurstelle has authored three books: Backyard Ballistics, Building Bots, and The Art of the Catapult. The books are a combination of history and how-to: You learn not only how to make a catapult, but also why they were invented in the first place and how they were used.
He first became interested in do-it-yourself gadgets when living as a freshman in Sellery Hall. A nearby resident took a bunch of friends outside, including Gurstelle, and showed them how to blow a tennis ball into the sky using ordinary household products. "My jaw dropped and I thought, 'Holy cow,'" he says. "I sort of had an ephiphany."
He graduated and eventually received an MS in management from the University of Minnesota. But he never lost his love of gadgets and things you could make with your hands. "I went into management, but I always thought engineering was much more fun," he says.
So on something of a lark, he jotted down notes he'd kept on devices you could make in your backyard out of stuff you could find around the house. Among them: the tennis ball mortar, the dry cleaner bag balloon, and the potato cannon. After shopping Backyard Ballistics around, he found a publisher in Chicago Review Press, and the book — to his everlasting surprise — became a hit. It's been reviewed in the Chicago Tribune, the Journal of Chemical Education, and other publications, including newspapers in his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota. It's also led to interviews on National Public Radio, CNN and in USA Today.
"I didn't even think I'd get a publisher for this — it's such a wacky book," he says. It has sold more than 100,000 copies.
He lectures at museums and schools, and continues work on a fourth book, tentatively titled Notes on the Technology Underground. It's focused on amateur and basement gadgeteers like himself, who turn out to have a well-connected community.
Besides his love for creating gadgets like potato cannons, Gurstelle admits to another motivating factor for his career: teaching youngsters about a world beyond computer games and chip-driven devices.
"It was a much less virtual world," he says of his youth some two decades ago. "We did things hands-on. I think we live in a world that's kind of sanitized. If you're going to be an engineer, you have to take reasonable, educated risks."
Content by perspective@engr.wisc.edu
Date last modified: Friday, 10-Jun-2005 15:29:43 CDT
Date created: 29-Nov-2004
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