Professional

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The doctor who was treating me for Rheumatic fever–see my life story for details of my illness–gave me an old radio to take apart believing that electronics might provide me with a career I could do with limited physical capabilities because of my illness. I was 14 at the time. Two of my friends and I started building more and more elaborate crystal sets. These involved getting a “hot” crystal made of galena and probing it with a “cat whisker”. Here’s a picture of a popular cat whisker device:

After a year or so I added a vacuum tube amplifier to the crystal set and it now had enough volume to connect to a speaker instead of headphones. I was incredibly excited when it started working. I then moved on to building radios with several tubes and finally got interested in ham radio.

 At age 16 I passed the written exam plus the 13 words a minute morse code test and became a ham with a call sign of W9DEB. I purchased a Hallicrafter’s S-38 ham receiver (on the left) and a war surplus transmitter with money I received as a paper boy and theatre usher. For the hams reading this, I was on 40 meters CW. I didn’t have enough money to buy a transmitter that had voice capability.

At age 18 I joined the Air Force. I was trained in electronics theory, radar, and radiation instrument maintenance and repair at Keesler AFB in Biloxi MS. From there, in February 1952, I was stationed on the top of a mountain in western Honshu, Japan as part of the 527th Aircraft Control and Warning Group. I spent 2 1/2 years there during the Korean War as a heavy ground radar mechanic. Back in the US I was discharged from the AF in April 1955. You can read much more about my time in the Air Force and Japan in my life story section. Here are pictures of two radars I worked on in Japan.

In 1956, at age 24, I was hired by the Philco Corporation in Philadelphia as a Field Engineer. We were referred to as “Philco TechReps”. I was first sent to Fort Knox KY where I was responsible for providing guidance and instruction to the same AF heavy ground radar mechanics that I had been. I stayed three years there and then was sent to Fort Bliss in El Paso Texas to become an instructor. After several weeks of learning how to be an instructor in the army–very structured, I was assigned to teach army personnel how to maintain and repair a van-mounted radar that controlled a 120mm antiaircraft gun. The radar also contained a large analog computer that computed the necessary trajectory for aiming the gun. The students mostly consisted of National Guard personnel on their two week annual immersion into the army plus foreign nationals. I stayed there until close to the end of 1959 when I was approached by a head hunter from Convair Astronautics in San Diego asking if I wanted to instruct for them. I would move to a much more pleasant place to live plus make more money. I agreed.

In December 1959, now at age 27, we moved to San Diego. California was my home until November 2019 when I moved to Colorado. I once again went through instructor training this time to conform to the requirements of Convair. I was to teach Air Force officers the launch control of the first operational Atlas ICBM’s located at Vandenburg AFB outside of Santa Maria. I was part of an instructor pool where each of us learned and taught a specific function involved in launching the liquid fueled Atlas D. I was assigned to teach the launch control of the re-entry vehicle (a euphemism for the nuclear warhead) and the engines. The officers ranged in rank all the way up  to a one star general. For someone who had been an enlisted man it was hard not to be intimidated by their rank but it never became an issue. As you have no doubt seen in movies, the launch complex was a large room filled with dozens of consoles, each console performing a specific task. Our responsibility was to teach what all the lights and buttons did during a launch. It was exciting for me to enter into the world of aerospace. The thought that I was teaching someone how to launch a vehicle that could kill millions of people didn’t detract from the thrill. Here’s a picture of the Atlas ICBM.

In September of 1959 I was contacted by the Philco Corporation asking if I was interested in re-joining Philco at a location in Palo Alto. I would retain my time already spent at Philco and would start as an regular engineer. Again I would get an increase in pay. It was an offer too hard to resist. We packed our things and headed up the coast to Palo Alto in the San Francisco Bay area where I  lived for almost 60 years. Again I accepted their offer.

in September 1959 we moved to Sunnyvale CA to be close to Palo Alto. Being new to the bay area, we rented a home while we got our bearings. I started work as an engineer at the Western Development Labs. My first assignment was to work on the Discoverer program. 

• This was a spy satellite that took pictures, then dropped the pictures over the ocean using a parachute that was grabbed out of the air by an airplane. We worked on the transponder that was used by the aircraft to locate the falling canister containing the film. At one point I actually was able to ride in a test flight. Later I worked on various communication satellite projects and, for a while, was in charge of a microwave test lab after I was promoted to senior engineer. In the mid-sixties WDL was purchases by Ford and the name changed to Philco Ford Corporation. I was promoted again to project engineer, spent a very intense week learning digital electronics (integrated circuits were just starting to be used) and was put in charge of testing the in-process electronics of the Lunar Surface Magnetometer (LSM). It was incredibly exciting for a young engineer to be part of the Apollo program! I needed to design test fixtures and test methods to test the various modules of the LSM, then test the completed electronics including temperature tests. The completed electronics was worth a million dollars in 1960’s dollars. Since the electronics contained modules that required 28 volts and others that required 5 volts, the engineer doing the testing was often covered in sweat since, if the two test leads carrying the two voltages touched each other, a million dollars would be lost in a few microseconds, along with many, many, hours of work. Fortunately, this never happened. See the clickable picture of the LSM sitting on the moon.

While still at Ford Aerospace, I became an avid scuba diver. I first met Al Giddings at a dive club meeting where he showed one of his films. He was using an underwater light that would not illuminate the entire scene. I went up to him after the meeting and suggested that I could design and build a light that would light the entire scene. He agreed to have me build one. I ended up using a 400 watt helicopter landing light powered by a huge NiCad battery pack that more than did the job. He asked if I wanted to collaborate with him to design and build a general purpose movie light. He designed the housing and I manufactured the battery pack in my garage. He marketed it as the Cinestar 20 movie light.

One night, after drinking a sizable amount of Stolichnaya vodka that I had gotten earlier at the Montreal World’s Fair, I had a eureka moment. All the rechargeable underwater lights currently on the market required opening to charge the batteries. This broke the watertight seal and, if not put back together correctly, would cause the light to leak and potentially fail. I realized that there was a way to recharge without opening it. Although it was late evening, I called Al. He drove down, heard my idea and the next day constructed a plastic housing. I built the battery pack and we tried it out. With some tweaking it worked. He then asked me if I wanted to join him as a business partner and, once again, I agreed. This was a huge life change for me. I’ll leave my personal changes out of this section. They were major and they’re shared in my Life Story section.

I was now a co-owner of Al’s company. The name was changed to Giddings Felgen, Inc. My side of the company was to use my electronics knowledge to design lighting products. This included an underwater strobe called the “Sea Star” but most of all the Sea Light. We hired Heiko DeMan, a top plastics mold designer, to design the injection molded housing, spent $25K on molds and committed to building 500 units. They were immediately sold. In the end they were cataloged and sold by U.S. Divers, AMF Voit, and Sears. The light became our most succesful product.