Archimedes C. Terwilliger



   Our Founder:   The A.C.T in ACTLab

Archimedes Calvin Terwilliger (1802-1910), truly a renaissance man, enjoyed a series of creative careers as an inventor (he is credited with developing squid jerky), scholar (he definitively proved who was buried in Grant's Tomb), and statesman (he served as Bergen County Coroner for over twenty years) before experiencing a religious epiphany in July of 1873. Immediately following upon that experience he wrote in his journal that "God had caught me up unto the heavens, and in a flash of pure light did grant me a view of the future...and behold, there were ranged before me in infinite ranks a succession of mechanical Calculating-machines like unto those described by the Lady Ada (Lovelace), and at each one a Student toiling amid the whine and clatter of the great wheels in perfect absorption to his task, the issue of which shall be nothing less than the Transformation of the World by means of messages travelling faster than the swiftest Mule..."
 
Terwilliger did not live to see the fruition of his vision, but we who push the boundaries of the possible are grateful to him. In our dedication to the Great Work his spirit lives on.
 
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