Karl Β. McEachron—Edison Medalist for 1949

The Edison Medal for 1949, an annual award for meritorious achievement in electrical science which constitutes one of the nation's highest engineering honors, was presented to Dr. Karl Boyer McEachron of the General Electric Company on Wednesday, February 1, during the 1950 AIEE Winter General Meeting in New York, Ν. Y. Dr. McEachron was awarded the medal "for his contributions to the advancement of electrical science in the field of lightning and other high-voltage phenomena and for the application of this knowledge to the design and

protection of electric apparatus and systems."

The Edison Medal

J . B . M A C N E I L L F E L L O W A I E E

TH E EDISON M E D A L is being presented this year for the 39th time since it was originated in 1904.

The Edison Medal Association, a group of associates and friends of Thomas A. Edison, "was organized for the purpose of appropriately recounting and celebrating the achievements of a quarter of a century in the art of electric lighting, with which the name of Thomas Alva Edison is imperishably identified."

It seemed to the association " tha t the most effective means of accomplishing the object for which it was formed would be the establishment of an Edison Medal, which should, during the centuries to come, serve as an honorable incentive to scientists, engineers and artisans, to maintain by their works the high standard of accomplishment set by the illustrious man whose name and features shall live while human intelligence continues to inhabit the world."

The AIEE was given the responsibility of making the awards and does so through the Edison Medal Committee of 24 members.

T h e bylaws of the committee require that the award go to a resident of the United States of America or its De­pendencies, or of the Dominion of Canada, whenever in the judgment of the committee such a resident is deserving of the award, provided funds are available. The award is for "meritorious achievement" in electrical science or electrical engineering or the electrical arts.

The medal, designed by James Earle Fraser, carries on the obverse the portrait of Thomas A. Edison and, on the reverse, an allegorical conception of the genius of electricity crowned by fame.

With the growth of the electrical industry, as shown by the great increase in membership in the Institute, there have developed many outstanding engineers and inventors who would qualify for this award. Of recent years the number of meritorious nominations has made the task of selection a difficult one, and final choice has been possible

Full texts of the presentation and acceptance addresses given at the Edison Medal ceremonies held during the AIEE Winter General Meeting, New York, Ν. Y., January 30-February 3, 1950.

J . B. MacNeill , Chairman of the Edison Medal Committee, is Manager, Switchgear and Control Division, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, East Pittsburgh, Pa.

only after complete discussion in the committee. This fact only adds to the honor which is conferred on Dr. Karl B. McEachron, who now joins the illustrious company of 38 previous holders of the Edison Medal.

Dr. McEachron has contributed, through his research on high-voltage phenomena, to the successful growth of the fundamental electric system which Mr. Edison initiated. He has carried forward the tradition of invention and de­velopment which marked the work both of Edison and of Dr. Elihu Thomson who received the first award in 1909.

The Edison Medalist D. D. Ε W I N G

F E L L O W A I E E

TW O H U N D R E D years ago Benjamin Franklin, by vocation a printer and journalist, and by avocation,

a politician, diplomat, philosopher, and scientist, was spending his "avocation t ime" experimenting with static electricity and the newly invented Leyden jar . He pres­ently came to the conclusion that the discharges from a Leyden j a r were similar in general character to those occuring during a thunderstorm. But how to prove this conclusion experimentally? With a little shed in a small field near Philadelphia as a laboratory and with his precious Leyden j a r and a kite as experimental equipment, and a thunderstorm as a source of electricity, Franklin in 1752 proved his theory. He thereby demonstrated conclusively that a lightning discharge is neither a display of the power or wrath of deities nor of the arrogance of devils, but rather is a large-scale demonstration of the silk cloth and glass tube experiment. Franklin's experimental work was of necessity of a qualitative nature. However, he blazed a trail that has been assiduously followed and greatly widened and extended by the man who has been awarded the Edison Medal for 1949, the highest honor bestowed by the Institute for meritorious achievements in "electrical science, electrical engineering, or the electrical ar ts ."

T H E M E D A L I S T

Karl Boyer McEachron was born in Hoosick Falls, Ν. Y., in 1889. He grew up there, and as a boy did the usual

D. D. Ε wing is Head, School of Electrical Engineering, Purdue University, Lafayette, Ind.

200 Edison Medalist ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

things a small-town boy of that time did. His father was a jeweler, and so the boy grew up among ticking watches and clocks, possibly thereby acquiring quite naturally a considerable amount of mechanical mindedness. As a youth he built canoes, automatic skate sharpeners, and cameras, and learned to play a horn. While in high school he served for a time as a night operator for one of the Bell Telephone companies. For four years following gradua­tion from high school, he worked for a small telephone company, serving in progression as a helper, lineman, cable splicer, switchboard maintenance man, and trouble-shooter.

Living so near the great General Electric Company plant at Schenectady, and hearing so much of the fame of Edison and Steinmetz, it was but natural that he should have been attracted to an engineering career. My own acquaintance with our med­alist began shortly after he enrolled in engineering at Ohio Northern University. He came into my office to dis­cuss his program of study, to ask questions—and to be asked questions. I no longer remember the date or many of the details of this conversa­tion, but I do recall that the bushy-haired, earnest-eyed youngster made a very defi­nite impression upon me. In part, this may have been be­cause students from east of the Hudson were rare in small midwestern colleges in those days. Also, Hoosick Falls was the headquarters of a farm implement manufacturer whose name was almost as well known in the rural mid-dlewest as was that of Cyrus McCormick. The fact that the young man knew some­thing of watches and clocks may have had something to do with it too, as I was interested in timepieces as a hobby.

In college, McEachron was a distinguished student, persistent in the pursuit of facts and in accomplishing tasks. He had an enormous bump of curiosity and was always hunting—and finding— the reasons for things. He took an active part in the affairs of the Institute Student Branch and played in the college band.

Graduating in both electrical and mechanical engineering in 1913, he shortly thereafter entered the employment of the General Electric Company at its Pittsfield, Mass., plant. Because of his ability and his interest in dielectric phenomena, he was soon made foreman of tests in the then newly organized high-voltage laboratory. His work there so interested him that it influenced his life career in a major way.

Karl B. M c E a c h r o n

Feeling the need of a better understanding of the funda­mentals of electrical engineering and desiring to acquire greater ability " to think and talk while on his feet," he returned to Ohio Northern University in September 1914 as an instructor. Here an incident occurred which is worth relating as a typical illustration of his resourcefulness and persistence. Because certain experimental results did not seem to agree with theory, Dr. McEachron finally de­cided that there must be something wrong with the wave­form of the alternator used in the experiment. But how to determine this waveform? The ubiquitous cathode-ray oscilloscope of today was unknown. Electromagnetic oscillographs were few and far between and not within the financial means of a small college. McEachron, starting

at scratch, built an oscillo­graph and then found the answer to his query.

In 1918 he joined the staff of Purdue University as a research worker in the Pur­due High-Voltage Laboratory and as a part-time teacher. He distinguished himself in both fields. His research work was mostly along the lines of atmospheric nitrogen fixation by the high-voltage discharge method, ozone production, and the photography of di­electric fields. This work was distinctive because of Dr. McEachron's originality and resourcefulness.

He received the Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering at Purdue Uni­versity in 1920 and returned to the General Electric Com­pany in 1922 as head of the Development and Research Section of the Lightning Ar­rester Engineering Division at Pittsfield. In 1933 he became Engineer of the High-Volt-

1940 was appointed Designing this position until 1945 when

he was made Assistant Works Engineer of Power Trans­formers. Since September 1949, he has been Manager of Engineering for the Transformer and Allied Products Divi­sion of the company.

age Laboratory, and in Engineer. He occupied

Dr.

T E C H N I C A L A C H I E V E M E N T S

McEachron's outstanding achievements naturally have been in the high-voltage power field. Taking up where Franklin, and later Steinmetz, left off, he, figuratively speaking, "has tracked lightning to its lair" and measured it. He has made many improvements in the way of measuring high-voltage discharges from both high-power sources and impulse generators. He and his associates adapted the high-voltage Dufour oscillograph to the

MARCH 1950 Edison Medalist 201

measurement of microsecond discharges, making the first oscillogram of a short-time impulse discharge in 1924. The use of the oscillograph in itself was not particularly new, but the ability to time the discharge so that it would appear on the screen with the necessary control and all the rest that went with it, was the first long step towards solving the mystery of what lightning is and what to do about it.

Later this equipment was so developed that it could be taken into the field to measure actual transmission line surges caused by lightning. Dr. McEachron thus did what Franklin was unable to do, namely, he obtained quantita­tive data on lightning discharges. He has been ever alert to learn everything possible about nature's lightning and has acquired a vast amount of data relative to it. His work along this line in connection with the study of strokes to the tower of the Empire State Building is well known because of its popular interest. Not so well known, how­ever, is the fact that for years every thunderstorm, whether during the day or at night, found Dr. McEachron in his lookout tower at Pittsfield with his cameras trained on the skies.

Using the artificial lightning generator, Dr. McEachron has been able to study the lightning stroke under controlled conditions and has solved many of the mysteries surrounding the erratic behavior of such discharges.

Being a very practical sort of an individual, it was only natural that Dr. McEachron should work equally hard on methods for mitigating lightning damage. He invented Thyrite, a material particularly well adapted for use in lightning arresters. Based on this invention, a number of new or improved types of arresters have been developed.

Studies of grounding methods and of the component insulations of high-voltage devices have also come under Dr. McEachron's scrutiny and have been studied from the standpoint of performance under surge conditions.

He has done much also in the way of formulating methods of protecting transmission lines and other struc­tures from lightning damage.

H O N O R S

In 1931, Dr. McEachron received the Coffin Award of his company for his invention of Thyrite. His achieve­ments were recognized by the Franklin Institute in 1935 when it awarded him the Edward Longstreth medal. In 1938, he received the honorary doctorate degree from Ohio Northern University, and in 1941 a similar degree from Purdue University.

P R O F E S S I O N A L A C T I V I T I E S

Dr. McEachron's professional activities started in college days with his activity in the local AIEE Student Branch. They have been continuous since then. He became an Associate of the Institute in 1914 and a Fellow in 1937. He has served as Chairman of the Pittsfield Section, as Vice-President of District 1, and as a Director of the Institute.

He has also been an active and valued member of many Institute committees.

Among other activities, he is a member of the Massa­chusetts Board of Registration of Professional Engineers.

From 1937 to 1945, Dr. McEachron was a member of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Sub­committee on Lightning Hazards to Aircraft. During World War I I , he served the United States as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Lightning Protection of the Army's Safety and Security Division.

Dr. McEachron's first published papers were in the form of "Bulletins" of the Purdue Engineering Experiment Station. Since then he has published some 60 papers covering his researches and contributions to the engineering arts. These have appeared in the Institute publications, Journal of the Franklin Institute, and in other well-known technical journals.

As a speaker, Dr. McEachron has been much in demand by the AIEE Sections. He has an unusual ability to make technical things interesting to laymen and has filled numerous speaking engagements with nonelectrical organi­zations.

Somewhere along the line, Dr. McEachron developed the Socratic habit of questioning. When he approaches a new problem, or a new aspect of an old one, he has the inquisitiveness of Franklin. He asks himself and his colleagues all sorts of questions bearing on the " w h y " or " h o w " and then proceeds to hunt the answers. I judge that this habit has been in no small way an aid in his many successful solutions of difficult problems.

Because I have known Dr. McEachron and of his work for so many years, it is indeed a pleasure to express my admiration of his achievements, my personal esteem for him both as an engineer and as a man, and to greet him as the Edison Medalist for 1949.

Industry Solves the Lightning Protection

Problem K A R L B. M c E A C H R O N

F E L L O W A I E E

I DEEPLY A P P R E C I A T E the honor which the In­stitute has conferred on me in awarding me the Edison

Medal for 1949. I accept this award on the basis that it is given not only for whatever personal accomplishment I have been able to make in the field of lightning and of lightning protection; but also in recognition of the con­tribution of the many other persons associated with me both outside and within my own company. Some indica­tion of their contribution will be apparent from a brief resume of what has happened in this field in the last 27 years.

E A R L Y P R O T E C T I O N M E T H O D S

From the time wires were first put on insulators on poles to carry electricity, either for communication or power, lightning has been a source of interruption to service. In

Karl B. McEachron is Manager of Engineering, Transformer and Allied Products Division, General Electric Company, Pittsfield, Mass.

202 Edison Medalist ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING