Electronics Laboratory

Scrapbook

Alumni are encouraged to provide information for our alumni scrapbook. Scrapbook entries can be simple documents with recent events (i.e. family happenings, holiday letters, etc), links to personal web sites, links to relevant business web sites or any other information that might be of interest to alumni. Please provide scrapbook submissions the committee using the following MS Word template. Short scrapbook items will be published below. Larger items will be published as standalone documents. Offsite links will be identified as such.

D'Antonio, Nick: We are scheduled to go to the WHO in Geneva for a Nov. 2 meeting to demonstrate a completed version of the mass immunization system, and immediately after that, either Linda, or me (or both if requested) are headed to two different sites in Africa for a Field Acceptability Study, i.e. that translates to seeing if the people that will actually use the system think its OK, and of course, offer feedback for improvements if they see any that will help them. Two people from the WHO and two from PATH (a health related organization heavily funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) will be on the evaluation team.

Denny, Neil: Started at GE in Schenectady at the General Engineering Lab on 7/21/52 (the exact same day that Jerry Suran started his career with GE). Began working in the E-Lab in May of 1956. In 1981 left E-Lab & went to Twin Oaks Drive under GE Computer Service Retired 3/1/92.

Harrison, Dan: I truly enjoyed my time at E-lab. I got to work with a lot of very talented people (technical and non-technical) and on many very interesting projects. But… times change and we must also change and move on. While working at CRD, I took classes at RPI and in 1988 received my PhD in EE. So, for me, the move from E-lab to GE/CRD was a very good one.

Holonyak, Nick: A snippet by Steve Tehon: Nick was a student in one of the classes I was teaching at Illinois. It was a difficult course, my first time through, and I learned early on that he was brilliant. If a question came up in class that stumped me, I might take a guess at the answer. Nick sat on the front row, and if he shook his head I was ready to say that I stood corrected. We became friends, and when he came here to Syracuse saw each other often. I have seen him only once since he returned to Illinois, but he welcomed my visit enthusiastically. He now seems to have won every honor except the Nobel, but I feel sure he'll get that also. I spoke to him about this reunion and he very much regrets not being able to attend.

Mills, Loring: My time at E-Lab was 1953 to 1958, at which time GE transferred me to the Hanford Laboratories in Richland, WA. I left GE in 1967 and have worked in Illinois, Oklahoma and Maryland since - retiring in 1993 from the Edison Electric Institute.

Mullen, Earle: Here is a very short resume of my career and life after the Lab. I left in 1973 after tiring of the constant financial pressures to obtain support for my group. I was never happy in being part of the small "military- industrial complex" comprising the Lab and GE's military departments from whom we had continually to beg for financial support. So, when in '73, with Jerry Suran's support a managerial opportunity opened in Schenectady, I took it. It was with the Telecommunications Operation which ran GE's internal domestic and world-wide phone and data systems. The former were leased from AT&T and the latter from IT&T, Cable & Wireless, etc. It was different work from Solid State Devices at the Lab, not as technical, but challenging in its way - and I didn't have to worry about funding. It also presented opportunities for foreign travel - Mexico, Europe (to deal with IT&T about the underseas cables we leased from them), Singapore to set up trans -Pacific facilities via Hong Kong so that GE's domestic departments that had plants in Singapore could easily communicate with them. I stayed with that organization until I retired in 1987 at age 62.

Nalin, Carlo: Dear Jim [Thrall], Thanks again for reaching out and finding my dad and me. I will be sure to mention our conversation from last night with Ottorino when I talk to him this weekend. I am sorry that I cannot join in the reunion in September. As I mentioned, my work often takes me to Europe, and mid Sept to the end of October will find me traveling to Switzerland, Austria and Japan. It is good to know that the fine folks of the E-lab are keeping the spirit of the place alive. I look back on that summer of 1977 at the E-lab as a very special opportunity for me - one that probably influenced my decision to go into industry rather than into academic research. In my office, I still have my old lab notebooks from my early training and graduate school. That includes a notebook that I began at the E-lab which contains descriptions of instruments I had a chance to operate, such as the auger analyzer, the differential scanning calorimeter and the mass spec. As a student fresh out of college, operating these instruments was a hands on primer of the physics and chemistry that I had studied in school but never knew how to apply. Working with all of you in John Mills department and particularly with Virginia Russell was a real treat. It also was nice to have the chance to work at the same company to which my dad had dedicated so much of his career. I am sure that if he and my mother were in better health, they would be thrilled at the chance to see old friends and colleagues again. Please pass along my best regards to all the wonderful people at the E-lab who opened their labs to me and gave me a chance to learn. with best wishes, Carlo

Seely, Gil: I did not leave Syracuse voluntarily but because I was drafted, as I hope your information indicates. After 2 years in the Army, most of it at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and a Post-doc at the University of Washington, to get back into the swing of things, I spent 4.5 years at Shell Development in Emeryville, CA. I learned a lot about polymer chemistry there, but found that I was moving sideways rather than ahead, so when I heard about a position at the C. F. Kettering Research :Lab in Yellow Springs, Ohio, I took it. There I undertook to make a career of investigating the photochemistry of chlorophyll in relation to photosynthesis, and to develop artificial systems of energy conversion in imitation of photosynthesis, employing some of what I learned about polymers. In 1965, the Director of the Lab, Leo Vernon, asked me to co-edit with him a book, "The Chlorophylls", which summarized what was known about the pigment and its role in Photosynthesis up to that time. I wrote two chapters for it, on chemistry and on photochemistry of chlorophyll. The book was well received and was the standard text on the subject for about 20 years. I continued work developing model system based on chlorophyll at CFKRL and later at Arizona State University until my retirement about ten years ago. I have also done some work in polarography and cyclic voltammetry with special reference to its relation to photochemistry. Now I am retired and living happily in Bellingham, Washington, which happens to be the place where I was born.

Shea, Dick: A snippet by Steve Tehon: Dick Shea was my first boss at E Lab; he hired me when I came from Illinois in 1952. At that time, Dick was one of the real old timers -- considerably older than me. He had developed GE's first FM radio, and demonstrated it at corporate headquarters in NYC. (They invited the news people to see the unveiling of the radio. When the reporters came to the meeting, in an auditorium, a man was seated at a piano playing. After a while, he got up and walked away. The music continued; it had been coming all the time from the new FM radio, and the audience was fooled. (A typical thing Dick would do.) Dick had been pretty profoundly deaf since illness as a child, and was sent to lip reading school. He was expert. Shortly after I joined the group, where we at that time all shared one office, I was talking to a customer with my back to Dick. When I hung up, Dick told me I should not have said what I said over the phone -- he had been reading my lips from behind! His group were involved in building applications of the new thing, the transistor. He build his own hearing aid, with the electronics carried on his shirt like a tie-pin. It had a volume control knob. If you were talking with him and saw him turn up the volume, you knew he was interested. If he turned down the volume, you knew what that meant, too. He told us when his wife and girls got too noisy, he could let them know by turning them down. We all admired and respected Dick. From the E Lab, he moved to Schenectady to work in the atomic power group. Never at a loss for words, after his retirement he became author of columns in local news letters, at his homes in Florida and Cape Cod. His book "Principles of Transistor Circuits" edited with inputs from eight other E Lab authors (see Technology Page) was a 1953 innovation.

Thor, Bob: In conjunction with Herb Ramp and Earl Wingrove, we three developed the Linear FM Pulse Compression system that was used in many of the GE ground and airborne radars. For many years I worked on the FTD Project analyzing Foreign radars and am still doing consulting work for the people in Dayton.

Thrall, Jim: After leaving in 1995, I attended the Martin/Lockheed Training Facility on 7th North St. Liverpool. I received an offer to come to work for Eastman Kodak Labs. in Rochester, NY in the fall of 1995. I worked there as a temp. for two years as a Scanning Electron Microscope Technician studying film emulsions. When returning to Syracuse, I received an offer to work at the Gray-Syracuse Foundry Lab in Chittenango, NY as a metallographer till my retirement in 2002. Currently, Peggy and I reside in Fairmount. We're retired and recently built a summer camp on the north shore of Oneida Lake where we enjoy boating, fishing and hunting with the family and six grandkids. We enjoy traveling to Florida in early spring to visit old friends and relatives on the west coast.
 

Van Velzer, Harry: A snippet by William Leyshon: Dr. Harry L. Van Velzer's wrote "Physics and Chemistry of Electronic Technology" published in 1962 by McGraw Hill. It was completed by his two daughters after his death, from a large set of notes that he had written for courses that he gave to employees of the GE Microwave Laboratory. It is a fine book and I have a first edition copy. Incidentally, Van was Professor of Physics at Penn State before Chet Lob lured him to Syracuse. Van had two daughters, Virginia C. and Verna. Neither ever married. Virginia C. was a librarian in E Lab under Catherine Lukens. She was very popular and when they held a beauty pageant at Electronics Park, Virginia won. Partly because everyone at E-Lab liked her and voted for her, and partly because she was quite beautiful. When the family moved to California they bought a house in Palo Alto, and after the deaths of their parents the girls lived in that house until last year when they had to sell the house for health reasons They were wonderful people and I corresponded with them since the middle 1950's.

Wilbur-Crans, Pat: I currently work for GE-Energy in a group that designs, builds, and tests substations and reactive compensation systems. In 1999/2000 I was the Global Elfun President