Bill Minter has delivered and installed a new Ultrasonic Welder for polyester encapsulation at the University of Iowa Conservation department. His visit was remarkable. He had previously installed one of the earliest welders here in 1984 and he mentioned that it was unusual to be describing features of a new machine in terms of differences from the previous one.

The current OT-D4, #1147 at Iowa is the most recent of more than 160 installedmachines world wide. Bill provided many details of the history of his development of the Ultrasonic Welder and credited Sid Huttner, Head of Special Collections here at the University of Iowa, for his early encouragement. Of course, another prompt for Bill’s reminiscences was his work with Bill Anthony. Bill Minter was Bill Anthony’s first apprentice finishing his term in the late 1970s.

Bill Anthony subsequently came to the University of Iowa as its first Conservator, founding the Conservation lab here in 1984.During his stay here, Bill Minter attended and addressed the University of Iowa Bibliofiles and attended Lynn Amlie’s lecture on the production of the Oakdale papers used to underlay the Charters at the National Archives & Record Service. He also exchanged research findings on naturally aged paper stocks with another UI expert on the topic, Tim Barrett.