Geosynthetics October/November 2019 - 53

We (Welsh and I) were delighted with
the book's initial reception-its sales were
good and, more importantly, my phone
"never stopped ringing." Clearly, my
subsequent decision to go completely
into this newly emerging field was very
obvious and with an interest level well
beyond all other research activities I
had at the time, e.g., deep foundations,
particulate behavior, acoustic emissions
and ground-penetrating radar. The one
cloud that arose, however, was a review
by Dr. Alan Haliburton of Oklahoma
State University, who commented that
it was "too much salad and not enough
meat and potatoes." For those of you
who remember Haliburton, you can
somewhat understand the context of his
comment. What it did for me, however,
was to propel me onward to a "meat and
potatoes" book, which emerged six years
later when the first edition of Designing
with Geosynthetics was published in 1986.
Subsequent editions have been in 1990,
1994, 1998, 2005 and 2012.
Somewhat after the publication of this
first book in 1980, I learned from England's
Peter Rankilor that our "Construction
Fabrics" book was very close to not having been the first hardbound geosynthetics book. It seems that he had submitted
his own manuscript to the Wiley Book
Co. in London about the same time as
we submitted ours to the Wiley Book Co.
in New York. Of course, neither London
nor New York knew of the overlap of the
two respective book topics and, more
importantly, Wiley in London lost all of
Rankilor's artwork, photographs and drawings, forcing him to do everything all over
again. (Remember, these were the days
before computers and an all-electronic
publication system.) The delay cost him
at least a year, which resulted in his book

appearing in 1981, a year later than ours.
Somewhat more disconcerting was to
learn from Georg Heerten of NAUE that
he had studied under Professor Zitscher
at Hanover University who had written
a book in 1971 titled Kunststoffe für den
Wasserbau (Plastic Materials in Hydraulic
Engineering). Had I known about it, our
original book would have been much more
detailed and authoritative.
At any rate, the Koerner/Welsh hardbound book of 1980 certainly put me on
the map and (fortunately) I never looked
backward. All subsequent research at
Drexel University, along with courses,
students, projects, etc., was focused on
geosynthetics, and it has not stopped to
this day, although the work now occurs
within the context of the Geosynthetic
Institute. Geosynthetics is a marvelous
field of endeavor and a technology that
has had, and will continue to have, an
awesome growth and benefit to society. I
am delighted to have been a part of this
growth and hope to continue for as long
as possible. G

The cover of the first hardbound
book on geosynthetics

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Geosynthetics October/November 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Geosynthetics October/November 2019