Subzero engineering: At ¿40°F, with the wind howling at 60 miles per hour over permanently frozen ground, unconventional engineering techniques were required

The whine of the jet engines dropped in pitch as the pilot of the Alaska Airlines 727 throttled back and began the descent into Nome. Although it was but late afternoon, the November sky over Alaska was black, the stars obscured by a cloud cover. It was 1970 and I was a young electrical engineer aboard the plane in search of adventure, after two years as a computer designer and a year and a half as a U.S. Army commander in Korea.