Ralph Emerson Hersey
Class of 1918
Inventor – Telephone Engineer
Like many other Beloit College graduates, you have become famous in a technical field for which you received little if any training as an undergraduate, thus exemplifying once again the value of the liberal arts to which Beloit is dedicated. Following overseas service in World War I, you studied at the Sorbonne and at Harvard, and in 1922 began your life work in the field of electrical engineering which led you into thirty-seven years of specialized investigation in the telephone and communications field. Your research and inventions over a period of fifteen years have resulted in your being granted some forty-one patents, and have made possible for all of us the modern phenomenon of direct dialing which was largely undreamed of when you studied here. Your three Beloit-trained sons share our pride as we award you this Distinguished Service Citation.