08/02/06

CONTENTS

Professional Bio

1 Page Biography

Ancestry

Childhood (1924-34)

Adolescence (1934-38)

Holocaust (1938-39)

Music (1931-)

New York (1939-40)

Philadelphia (1940-41)

Military (Jun 43-Mr 46)

Paperclip (1945-46)

MIT-Undergraduate (1946-50)

MIT-Post-graduate (1950-55)

MIT-Lincoln Labs

MIT-Magnetic Lab (1961-82)

Weir Meadow (1954-)

Motorcycling

Aviation (1959-97)

Enterprise

Enterprise Years (1958-1992)

Here is an overview of my industrial enterprises, with detailed chapters to follow. Many grew out of my consulting practice. Dates are approximate.

1958 I helped Convair division of General Atomics in San Diego turn my pulsed field metal forming experiments into a spin-off company called Magneform, later Maxwell Labs. It was my first technology transfer enterprise, and I naively allowed Convair to patent my inventions without even naming me as co-inventor. The first application was a method for magnetically swaging terminals to aircraft control cables by means of a helical pulsed field coil and a flux concentrator. Mechanical swaging had a high failure rate, while the magnetically "imploded" sleeves wrapped themselves around the irregular stainless steel cable so uniformly that failures dropped to zero. To this day all aircraft control cables and torque tubes are swaged magnetically. See Thermomagnetics below for other applications

.

1969 I invented the magneplane (now called magplane) and formed a team consisting of the MIT Magnet Lab, Raytheon Corporation and Avco Corporation with support from the Department of Transportation. . We modeled vehicle dynamics, discovered the inherent instability of resiliently levitated vehicles and stabilized our magplane by active damping with a linear synchronous motor. The OMB in Nixon’s White House terminated all maglev support in 1975, and my team started to work on electromagnetic aircraft catapults for the Navy using linear synchronous motors and flywheel disk generators. The Japanese "adopted" our LSM shortly thereafter, but they never understood the importance of a semi-circular trough guideway. To couple heave, sway, yaw, pitch and roll. Their vehicle fishtailed in its square guideway and eventually burned up when one of their rubber tires caught fire. They ignored all my proposals of collaboration, and they still don’t understand the basic vehicle dynamics of maglev, after spending billions on a full-scale test system.

1959 I joined Bill Barbour to start Magnion to design and manufacture high field water-cooled solenoid magnets for other research labs. They were edge-cooled ribbon pancakes in a clam-shell enclosure. We called them Botticelli magnets after one of his paintings of a mermaid in a clamshell. We are still using some in our wastewater pilot plant (see Micromag) We sold several dozen solenoids, and sold the company to Ventron in about 1966. I met Bill as an enthusiastic Bonanza pilot, and his daughter became an air traffic controller assigned to the Bedford tower.

1967 I invented High Gradient Magnetic Separation (HGMS) for Huber Clay Corp, and joined Peter Marston and his consulting firm of Magnetic Engineering Associates to form a spin-off firm named Sala Magnetics Inc, a division of Sala International, a Swedish Mining Equipment firm. We manufactured equipment to purify kaolin for coating glossy paper, which has been used ever since by the paper industry world-wide. It was also proven effective in concentrating low-grade taconite and hematite iron ore and purifying other minerals and pharmaceutical products. The most recent application is the removal of phosphate and other contaminants from waste-water, and also removing Coliform, Cryptosporidium, Giarta and viruses from drinking water. Ultimately we form Paramag Corporation , and its successor, Micromag Corporation .

1969 I joined Ted Morin, then a professor at BU, to start Thermomagnetics, later Industrial Magnetics and finally the Thermatool division of Inductotherm. We invented and built machines that used a combination of radio-frequency induction and pulsed magnetic fields to perform many welding and heat-treating operations, some of them not possible previously. Examples: welding aluminum tubes to brass fittings in the air conditioning industry; welding and shaping large torque tubes for trucks, earth moving and mining machinery and ships; welding artillery shell tubes to carbon steel penetrators; welding boiler tubes to holes in end-plates; seam-welding curled steel and aluminum strips into tubing continuously in pipe-mill machines; forming steel band rings into wheel rims for cars and trucks (Kelsey & Hayes); forming aluminum sheets into automobile radiators (Honda); swaging connectors to stainless steel aircraft control cables and torque-tubes; forming titanium honeycomb panels into engine nacelles for supersonic aircraft (Stresskin); proof-loading bonded aircraft skin panels (Boeing). (I sat in the cockpit of the first B-747 in the brand new Boeing plant in Everett WA.)

1970 Elizabeth and I helped my brother Eric start US Sonics Inc (ultimately Sonus Corporation) to manufacture piezoceramic crystals and "bilams" (bending elements). We built kilns for firing PZT elements. The company went bankrupt in 1978.

1974 I started Kolm Associates with my brother Eric, a consulting operation across the street from the MIT Magnet Lab. We invented products for large firms threatened by domestic and foreign competitors ,and lacking the talent to innovate. Rotron, Gillette, Compugraphics and Baker Security Systems are among the firms we rescued. We invented and built a clinical device with individual octave controls known as the "train-a-lyzer" for analyzing hearing deficiency and training professionals and patients in the adjustment and use of hearing aids. We launched a spin-off company called Accutone and left it in the hands of a partner who let it die of neglect while Eric and I pursued new ventures.

1979 Piezo-Electric Products Inc, or PEPI, was a serendipitous spin-off from Kolm Associates, Eric’s previous ventures, and my own consulting practice. We aroused the interest of Carlos Schidlovsky, a very successful underwriter in the prolific Denver Penny Stockmarket, known as the fastest-growing investment banker in the country. He lived in a palatial ranch south of Albuquerque, collected Katchina dolls, practiced Tae-Kwon-Do, and owned a Cessna Citation Two business jet. He launched dozens of high-tech start-ups, most very successful, before he finally spent a few months in jail when the penny market collapsed under a new SEC enforcement campaign. Carlos lived happily in Spain ever after. We later toured the country in Carlos’s Citationjet making presentations to local stock brokers from coast to coast. , Carlos’ crew obligingly let me fly left seat for several hours, including landings in Albuquerque, Denver, Boulder, Omaha, Columbia, Cleveland, Kennedy, Newark, and Boston.

Carlos appeared in our office across Mass Avenue from MIT out of nowhere. He never asked for the business plan venture capitalists always want. We simply discussed our plans for a piezo business, and Carlos sat down and typed an MOU (memorandum of understanding). Six weeks later Eric and I rode our bikes across the Charles River to deposit a six million dollar check (bridge funding) in Bank of Boston. The branch manager insisted on walking us to our car, and was somewhat surprised to watch us unlock two bikes from the parking meter.

Pepi is a long and eventful story with a sad frustrating ending. More later. Let me say only at this point that it made my aviation career. A prospective investor from Ireland objected at seeing Eric and Henry flying around the country in a single-engine Mooney. I now had an excuse to step up to a multi-engine rating and a cabin-class executive twin. And I had the money to do so. After several trips comparing leased twins, I bought a Navajo Chieftain. I never regretted the choice. It became my second love, and Elizabeth often joked that it had become my first. But she came to love it also. See chapter on Elizabeth.

1979 I form Kolm Air Transport Inc to own my Navajo Chieftain, and join Ken Robinson’s Part 135 air charter operation at Beverly airport with a dozen planes. I hire Steve Flint, a Downeast Airline pilot as copilot and to fly missions when I am too busy. Our customers include Digital Equipment Corp (for a daily night flight to bring repair equipment from the New York and Philadelphia area to their Maynard plant), Hood Milk Corp in Beverly (for executives to visit dairy suppliers in NH, VT and ME), several leather dealers (to visit tanneries), A Boston patent law firm (to visit remote clients), organ transplant teams, medical emergency cases (for instance to bring emergency eye injury cases to Eye-and-ear infirmary at Mass General Hospital, or to deliver transplant organs) , a chemical engineering firm (A.D. Little) to visit paper companies in Maine and Nova Scotia, G.E. Plant in Lynn to bring jet engine proposal drawings to the Pentagon, G.M to bring auto upholstery from Rochester NH to Detroit "as needed" (Navajo is one of very few planes that could take off on Rochester’s short runway with half a ton of upholstery). A Ford dealership to fly their salesmen to Dearborn to drive back new cars (quicker and cheaper than having them trucked). Continental Can Corp in Danvers when their company plane is in the shop. United Shoe Machinery to deliver parts when an assembly line breaks down. And an increasing number of my own ;business flights to New York, Islip, Linden, New Jersey, Washington DC, Lakeland, Tampa, Orlando, Miami, West Palm Beach, Kirtland AFB, Sandia AFB, Los Alamos, Santa Fe, Boulder, Denver, Climax CO (highest airport in the US), Fort Belvoir, Lakehurst, Chicago, Albuquerque, Montreal, Ontario, Wichita, etc. I have logged about four thousand hours, and landed at most major airports in the US and Canada.

In 1982 economic decline and the famous air traffic controllers’ strike makes corporate aviation unprofitable (they keep me holding over NYC and Boston for hours enroute to and from Trenton with Digital equipment cargo). I end my partnership with Ken Robinson and use my Navajo for my own business and pleasure.

In 1986 Kaman buys EML, my Electromagnetic Launch Research team. I move my office from Cambridge to a new five million dollar plant we built in Hudson MA I move my Navajo from Beverly to Bedford. I open a second office for my Magplane operation at the Jet Aviation corporate terminal, overlooking the airport. I have arrived at heaven on earth: an office overlooking my private hangar, nine scenic miles from Weir Meadow, with a gourmet in-house catering service. Jet Aviation is a Swiss company with operations world-wide. Their customers included the Agha Kan, The Shah of Iran, Malcolm Forbes, Jr, Lee Iacoca, and all other VIPs who visit Boston in their corporate jets.

1980 I take early retirement from MIT, incorporate my Magplane team as "Electro-Magnetic Launch Research Corp", called EML and move them to temporary offices at Central Square. I lease and later buy a plant building at 625 Putnam Avenue, from Cox Engineering Company, a sheet metal duct manufacturer. It has a large shop in which they manufactured Curtis Jenney biplanes during World-War one. (A bit of history remembered only by the late Professor Koppens, who was an undergraduate at the time). All photographs of the Jenney plant were destroyed in a fire in 1947) We install ten Nimitz class submarine battery sets, and connect them in parallel (not a simple job) to supply three hundred thousand amperes for testing our aircraft catapults. We needed them to replace the generators at MIT. . Peter Mongeau, a graduate student, is chief engineer. Steve Flint, my corporate pilot, turns out to be a very poor financial officer and needs to be replaced. . Daughter Juliet leaves Tandy Corporation (Radio Shack) and joins EML as contracting officer, security officer, chief financial officer, human resources officer.

1985 We sell EML to Charley Kaman and Become Kaman Electromagnetics, wholly owned subsidiary of the Bloomfield CT -based helicopter manufacturer.

1988 We build a five million dollar plant on a 30 acre farm in Hudson MA, along route 495, and move our team there, eventually grow to three hundred employees with a parking lot to match.

1989 I retire from Kaman and move to my office at Bedford airport, incorporating as Magneplane International Inc. We win a 2.8 million dollar contract against giant teams including General Dynamics, Westinghouse, Boeing, Kaiser, Bechtel, Mitre, etc. We do a 2.8 million dollar "Concept Definition Study", ending with a 2500 page report, on time and on budget. It was funded by DOE (Dept pf Energy), DOT (Federal Railroad Administration), and managed by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

1992 The Federal Railroad Administration kills the maglev reports (to protect their Amtrak interests) but the Army Engineers publish their own report, recommending Magneplane as the concept best able to "leapfrog foreign technology (German and Japanese). Senator Pat Moynihan (D NY) manages to get the Army Engineers to support magneplane, and I work with program manager General Pat Kelly, commander of civil works. But he is assigned to put out oil fires in Kuwait after the Gulf War, and thus ends all government support of maglev.

(Continue to Elizabeth)