USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1916-1955 > Part 37
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produce 15,000,000-volt bolts that jump 50 feet through the air. One of the two generators can be moved outside the build- ing for making tests on outdoor lines and equipment.
During the 1920s, facilities were steadily expanded. A new auditorium was added to the rear of Building 16, then the fire station, almost on the spot occupied twenty years earlier by the indoor rink of the Pittsfield Curling Club. A new building was erected for kiln-drying, impregnating, and storing wood for in- sulation. The Columbus Avenue Plant, used since 1917 for drawing and covering wire, became the new quarters of the Heating Device Department, under Charles C. Abbott. Addi- tions were made to the test facilities for large transformers, and a new works laboratory building was completed.
In 1921, a new plant was built on Ceramic Avenue (now Plastics Avenue) for the manufacture of porcelains for bush- ings, cutouts, and similar uses. This was a complete operation, from the mixing and puddling of clay slip to the final glazing in kilns. It continued only a few years, for it was found to be more economical to purchase the porcelains from GE plants else- where.
By 1920, the evening class program for employees, started in 1913, had been expanded to include large classes in mechanics, principles of electricity, transformers, motors, electrical ma- chinery, English, arithmetic, elementary and advanced algebra and geometry, elementary calculus, bookkeeping, typewriting, drawing, and stenography.
Later that year, the company established a plan for employees wishing to build homes, taking second mortgages up to 30 per cent of the total cost. As 60 per cent was readily obtainable from commercial banks at the time, the employee had to ad- vance only 10 per cent of the total, usually about the price of the lot. Many local employees made use of this plan.
In 1922, GE established the Charles A. Coffin Foundation, which makes awards to employees for outstanding contributions to company progress in particular and to electrical science and. technology in general.
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One of the first pension plans in industry was established by General Electric in 1912. A major advance in such plans oc- curred in 1927 when GE established a separate trust fund to guarantee pensions. Up to this time, there had been no funding of industrial pension plans. In 1928, another forward step was taken with a system allowing employees to increase their reg- ular pension by adding some of their own savings, known as additional pension.
As early as 1920, employees had group life insurance cov- erage at no cost to them, with coverage varying from $150 to $1,500. In 1925, this plan was greatly amplified by what was called additional group life insurance, giving as much as $2,000 more coverage to employees. Since then, the insurance plan has undergone constant study and improvements until, in 1955, the principal of an employees' life insurance policy was equal to twice that person's annual earnings.
One of the outstanding scientists at the local plant during the 1920s and for some years before was Giuseppe Faccioli. Born in Italy, the son of an army colonel, educated at the Milan Insti- tute of Technology, Faccioli worked as a design engineer in his homeland for three years.
Coming to this country, he was employed first by the New York Edison Company and then by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, installing lights in the subway. He soon met Stanley. The latter had heard of Faccioli's remarkable mathe- matical abilities and asked him to solve an alternating current problem, which involved some pioneering in mathematics. Care- fully calculating the problem in different ways, Faccioli checked the result exactly and later found his work verified by an ex- periment which so impressed Stanley that in 1905 Faccioli came to Pittsfield to work for the Stanley Company.
In 1908, Faccioli became chief engineer at the local works. His interest, knowledge, and enthusiasm in many fields, par- ticularly in that of high voltage, provided the inspiration that sparked much local research.
Faccioli was one of the prophets who foresaw the atomic age. In 1924, in an issue of "G.E. Current News," he predicted that,
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within a generation or two, science would successfully accom- plish the transmutation of matter. Intense energy, he pointed out, was required to change the structure of a substance. Re- viewing basic atomic theory, he concluded:
"To tear down, or break down, the atomic structure, and then to rebuild it in such a way that it becomes an atom of a different substance-that is the problem of transmutation of matter ... But I believe it will be. I believe it will actually be done . . . It has become a possibility, even though a remote possibility."
Because of his death in January 1934, Faccioli did not live to see this done, but the possibility of accomplishment was not as remote as he assumed. Significantly, it was the Pittsfield works which, in the 1930s, produced the huge coils and mag- netic cores for the cyclotrons that aided scientists in smashing the atom.
The manufacture of plastics has been an important part of the work of the Morningside plant since 1909 when carbon rods were being molded for use in arc lamps. Other molded products were used as insulation in transformers at that time.
Natural products were used to make molded parts until the value of synthetic phenolic resins was brought into focus by Augustus McK. Gifford at the local plant about 1918. Realizing the importance of plastics to the growing electrical industry, General Electric was among the first to make significant con- tributions to the development of synthetic materials. Introduc- tion of Banbury equipment in the production of phenolic mold- ing compounds, vacuum dehydration of liquid varnish and molding resins, roller mill grinding of resins, and many other important developments were perfected and put into use.
At this time, the first polyester resins (called Glyptals*) were discovered in Pittsfield and developed as insulating materials. They found wide use in alkyd coating materials for electrical equipment, in paints and varnishes, and in enamels such as those which coat trains, automobiles, electric refrigerators, washing machines, and other appliances.
*Trade-mark of GE Co.
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During the 1920s, production of molded parts continued to grow. Production was particularly large in the late 1920s when molded bases for radio tubes were introduced. These bases were manufactured by the millions in Pittsfield because they met the demands of tube manufacturers for a base that would provide an inexpensive method for tube replacement.
Like business elsewhere, Plastics and General Electric's other divisions were struck hard during the depression of 1930. Lay- offs became increasingly serious across the country, and Pitts- field was no exception. In the fall of 1931, to lessen hardships as much as possible during the winter ahead, General Electric adopted a company-wide plan to prevent any lack-of-work lay- offs without compensation from November 1, 1931 to April 1, 1932. During this period, all persons on the payroll on Novem- ber 1 received not less than half their full-time earnings for the period, but in no case more than an average of $15 a week unless it was actually earned.
As early as 1915, employees had formed a Mutual Benefit Association to aid its members in cases of disability caused by sickness or accidents, and with payment of benefits in case of death. The Association grew and improved. Reorganized in 1934, it continued until the need for it was removed by im- provements in the company's insurance plan. In 1936 there was instituted a plan of adjusting wages according to changes in the cost of living index, and where surveys indicated the need for action to keep GE pay rates equal to or higher than those paid in the community for comparable work requiring the same skill and efficiency. The employees established a Credit Union in 1934.
In 1926, Cummings C. Chesney was elected national president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. In 1928 he was named by the General Electric Company as vice president in charge of manufacturing, being succeeded as plant manager by Edward A. Wagner. At the same time Faccioli was made associate manager, and Frank W. Peek, Jr., an expert in high- voltage theory and experiments, was made chief engineer. Ches- ney retired in 1931 after serving the plant more than forty
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years, ever since its founding in 1890 as the Stanley Company. He remained active in business and community affairs in Pitts- field until his death in 1947.
Other major changes occurred in the top management of the plant in the early 1930s. Wagner retired in 1932 and was fol- lowed by Louis E. Underwood as plant manager. Peek was un- fortunately killed in a car-train collision in 1933 and Frederick F. Brand was made engineering manager of the apparatus plant and laboratories.
In spite of the depression, expansion of the plant continued. A new tank shop, a structure of modern glass window design, was opened with unprecedented ceremony. The shop had so many windows that a moving platform was arranged around the outside of the building for the convenience of window washers. The Works hospital was renovated and enlarged.
The decade brought two important developments in trans- formers. For years, the only liquid available for insulating and cooling transformers was mineral oil, which served its purpose well. But reliable as transformers were, failure would occa- sionally result in a disastrous fire. National codes prohibited the installation of large transformers indoors unless they were surrounded by fireproof vaults. A non-flammable insulating liquid would offer substantial installation economies. At the same time, there was a demand for a new liquid impregnant for capacitors, equipment which offered great savings both to power companies and to industry.
By the combined efforts of Gifford, head of the Works lab- oratory, and of many physicists and engineers, headed by Frank M. Clark, a new liquid was synthesized for the purpose. Literal- ly tailored from molecules (trichlor benzene and penta-chlor diphenyl), the new liquid was given the GE trade name of Pyranol (no-fire). It was the progenitor of many similar liquids known throughout the electrical industry by the generic name of askarel.
The qualities of Pyranol were such that they enabled the size of capacitors to be reduced by two thirds, which greatly lowered cost, and for the first time made economically practic-
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able the widespread use of these equipments. Capacitors have the unusual property of enabling more power to be transmitted over the same circuit. They not only improve operating condi- tions, but substantially reduce power costs.
Another development of national import occurred in 1937 with the perfection of the wound-core or Spirakore* transform- er. John C. Granfield invented this new core, using a cold- rolled silicon steel developed by the Allegheny Steel Company, a logical extension of Kelly's work forty years earlier. This core made it possible to build small pole-type transformers of high- er efficiency yet with less size and weight, and at substantial savings to buyers. The steel was soon improved by the joint work of Weston Morrill of the Pittsfield laboratory with en- gineers of Allegheny Steel and applied throughout the entire range of transformer design. This development has saved elec- tric power companies of the country hundreds of millions of dollars.
World War II brought a flood of power transformer orders to Pittsfield as electric utility companies expanded to meet the increasing demands for power from industries all over the country. At the same time, new kinds of equipment began to come off the production lines, including 6000-HP motors for the propulsion of tankers. These motors were made on part of the transformer assembly floor, the first time any rotating equip- ment had been built there for nearly forty years. Tubes for the first bazookas were made in the tube rolling building across from the "Foundry Gate," near Silver Lake.
Other equipment was designed, built, and shipped under top secret restrictions. Not till the first bomb exploded over Hiro- shima did Pittsfield employees learn that some of them had worked on rectifier equipment to power the tremendous pro- duction lines for the atomic materials plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, that made the bomb possible. Other important con- tributions of Pittsfield workers were the radar power supplies for battleships; also for fighter planes in sizes so small that they would fit behind the pilot's head.
*Trade-mark of GE Co.
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The war period brought few changes in commercial trans- formers and allied products. Designers were too busy with war work. But new ways were found to cool large power transform- ers more effectively and make them "work harder," thus re- leasing more of such critical materials as copper for the war effort. A new material, Lectrofilm*, was synthesized at the Pitts- field Laboratory from materials readily available in this coun- try. It took the place of mica, which was difficult to obtain from India and other faraway places, and was used in capacitors for radio communication equipment. Capacitors tinier than match- sticks were developed for use in proximity fuses.
War needs led to the construction of two Naval Ordnance plants on the west side of Plastics Avenue. Building began in November 1940. By the following August, under Wilbur L. Young as manufacturing engineer and Burton S. Francis as superintendent, the first plant was in full operation. Eight months later, in the spring of 1942, it shipped its first gunfire control equipment for installation on the U.S.S. Fletcher, a de- stroyer. Throughout the war, the plant supplied the Navy with gunfire control systems for installation on destroyers, cruisers, carriers, and battleships.
A second Naval Ordnance plant was completed in August 1943. It first produced heavy 5,000-horsepower motors to pro- pel destroyer-escorts. Later in the war, production was shifted to making small fractional horsepower motors, many of which went into B-29 Superforts and other planes.
The war brought a great boom to local Plastics operations. In 1937, under G. Harry Shill as manager, operations had been moved from Building 36 off East Street to the former porcelain plant on what had been Ceramic and now became Plastics Ave- nue. During the war, Plastics produced large quantities of fuses for trench mortar shells, loop antenna housings for the Air Force, and stern tube bearings for submarines.
The loop antenna housings previously used by the Air Force gave trouble through corrosion and the buildup of electrical charge which sent off sparks, causing radios to function im- properly and making the aircraft a better target for attack.
*Trade-mark of GE Co.
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After much study and many tests, Plastics technicians corrected the defects by developing an ammonia-free resin that prevented corrosion and by using a graphite filler to correct the sparking condition.
Plastics also developed new and better stern tube, rudder, and roller mill bearings. During the war, difficulty was ex- perienced with the rubber bearings then used in submarines. They squeaked at critical times when listening enemy vessels could hear them on their sound detectors. The use of plastics proved to be the answer to the stern tube problem of subma- rines. U.S.S. Dahlgren, a destroyer, was the first ship to be equipped with plastic rudder bearings. Plastic bearings have also proved useful in the roller mills of the steel industry be- cause they last longer than the metal bearings formerly used.
In 1941, William H. Milton, Jr., became manager of the Plastics plant. Plastics was merged with the newly formed Chemical Department in 1945, with Dr. Zay Jeffries as vice president and general manager. A noted metallurgist, Dr. Jef- fries was soon awarded the Clamer Medal for high achieve- ments in his field.
In 1940, with the passage of this country's first peacetime Selective Service Act, the General Electric Company had given its employees entering the armed forces a month's pay, a year's leave of absence, and allowed them a period of forty days to apply for reemployment. During the war, 2,973 of those in the plant were called to serve in the armed forces; 46 of these were later listed as dead or missing. Those remaining behind to keep the plant operating did their fair share, and more, in support of war bond, Red Cross, and other emergency drives.
As the war drew to a close, the General Electric Company an- nounced that employment at the Pittsfield works would be sta- bilized at about 10,200. This was double the 1936-40 average of 5,100. Employment at the Morningside plant has fluctuated around the 10,000-11,000 level.
Allan B. Hendricks, Jr., a pioneer in transformer design, the man who directed the building of the first million-volt units for the High Voltage Laboratory, retired in 1944 after 43 years of
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service. The next year, Louis E. Underwood retired as general manager of the plant and was succeeded by Robert Paxton.
The post-war years brought steady expansion in all phases of GE operations in Pittsfield. The first Naval Ordnance plant continued operations, which were rapidly stepped up after the outbreak of the Korean War. That war reactivated the second Naval Ordnance plant, which since World War II had been used for shipping purposes and power transformer winding operations. The plant was refitted to make torpedoes for sub- marines and other warships. Increasing defense orders necessi- tated the building of a third Naval Ordnance plant, which was completed early in 1952.
In 1951, Walter B. Booth was named general manager of the Pittsfield Ordnance Operation, which in 1952 became the Naval Ordnance Department of the Aeronauticand Ordnance Systems Division. It later (1956) became a section of the Missile and Ordnance Systems Department.
Products now being manufactured or developed in the Ordnance plants include missile and gunfire control system directors, drives, and related components; underwater ordnance equipment; radar antennas for both ship and land installations of the Army, Navy, and Air Force and other projects of highest priority for our nation's defense program. Unusual products are water-activated batteries, which are used as power sources in the propulsion system of torpedoes.
Other facilities at the Morningside works were improved and enlarged. In 1947, a new plant was completed off Plastics Ave- nue for the manufacture of magnesium oxide, an insulating material that withstands high temperatures. This enabled the company to double its capacity for producing this essential ma- terial which is used inside the heating elements on electric ranges and similar apparatus.
A new $2,000,000 High Voltage Laboratory was completed in 1949. This year also marked the retirement of Augustus McK. Gifford, the head of the Works Laboratory. During his long service, the staff of this laboratory, one of the oldest in the electrical industry, expanded from two persons to a group
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of 330 scientists studying and experimenting in chemistry, physics, and metallurgy.
In 1950, larger quarters were provided for the laboratory and manufacturing units of Plastics. A new pilot plant was erected for the development of phenolic materials used in mak- ing plastic products.
Molded products made in Pittsfield have ranged from horn buttons and various parts for automobiles to flying bazookas installed in Thunderbolt and other fighter planes. The bazookas were made with a special paper impregnated with resin, devel- oped by the joint work of the laboratories of Plastics and the Byron Weston Company in neighboring Dalton.
Included in the long list of plastic products developed, en- gineered, and produced in Pittsfield are such things as clothes pins for indoor lines, radio and television cabinets, polyester resins (used in boat hulls, swimming pools, orthopedic braces and casts, flying saucer sleds for children), record holders, lug- gage, stenotype housings, shoe heels, dishes, lipstick and other cosmetic containers, shoe stitching machine parts, bobbins for the textile industry, dry shaver cases, wheels for hospital beds and other furniture, autobridge boards, adding machine hous- ings, cameras, cigarette cases, pen and pencil sets, telephones, and a multitude of household items. In short, Plastics has pio- neered a great many products in common use today in every household and in wide areas of industry.
General Electric's irradiated polyethylene, a discovery made by the Research Laboratory at Schenectady, was subjected to intensive product and process development during 1953 and 1954 in Pittsfield. The new material, called "Irrathene," has superior properties resulting from bombardment of polyethy- lene with high energy cathode rays from million-volt electron generators. It has made possible the building of smaller elec- trical equipment with improved operating characteristics and may create radically new heat-resistant and sterilizable trans- parent containers for foods, drugs, and pharmaceutical prod- ucts. This is one of the first industrial uses of electron irradia- tion.
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The atom was put to work in the Pittsfield plant in 1954, when it was used as a tracer in molding compounds. This is the first peacetime use of the atom in the plastics molding industry. The problem of mold erosion, which had long plagued the in- dustry, was solved by radioactive tracer techniques originated and developed here. The new radioactive measurement process has made possible a four-fold improvement in some grades of thermosetting molding materials. It is said to detect and meas- ure one part of metal in 20 million parts of plastics, thereby determining the amount of erosion caused in large metal molds by plastic molding compounds.
Also in 1954, a technical service foundry for experimental work was set up to produce shells and pour castings. Designed to offer consulting services to foundries, the unit includes sand- mixing and shell molding equipment, induction furnaces capa- ble of melting all types of metal, pouring facilities to reproduce precise castings in the customer's own metal, and sand-blasting equipment for cleaning and finishing castings.
Shell molding is the modern method of casting smooth-sur- faced metal parts to close tolerances and is being adopted by many of the nation's leading foundries. Phenolic resin, made at Pittsfield, is used to bind sand in a thin mold called a shell mold, into which molten metal is poured. The method used in conventional foundry practice involves the pouring of the molten metal into heavy sand molds where the two halves are made by ramming clay-bonded sand against a wooden pattern. Such molds are less expensive. But the finished product cannot be held to the close tolerances that are possible through the use of the shell mold.
Local GE scientists and engineers have also made notable advances in producing the insulating material known as sili- cones. They have made numerous contributions to silicone rub- bers, pastes for tapes and gasket compounds, as well as sealing caps and sleeves. The chemical field appears unlimited as lab- oratory technicians make new discoveries in fields never dreamed possible when the Plastics Division was first formed in Pittsfield.
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In 1948, Harold F. Smiddy became general manager of the Chemical Department. In 1951, he was succeeded by Robert L. Gibson, formerly head of the Plastics Division. Gibson was subsequently made a company vice president in charge of its Chemical and Metallurgical Division with headquarters in Pittsfield.
The post-war period brought some major advances in trans- former development. In 1953, a technique was developed for designing transformers in miniature electro-magnetic models of only a fraction the size and cost of the actual transformer. By testing these models before building the full-sized unit, the behavior of the transformer can be determined with extreme accuracy. For his work in this field, Dr. Pier A. Abetti gained international recognition.
The next year, Dr. Abetti successfully worked out the tech- nique of making preliminary transformer designs by using elec- tronic computers, or "electric brains," which make millions of calculations in a period of hours or days, giving more accurate results than can be had by hand or slide rule in months or years.
Late in 1954, with utility executives from all over the coun- try attending, the local plant dedicated an outstanding structure, the world's largest sound laboratory, a $1,500,000 building "dedicated to the search for quieter power transformers." This new anechoic chamber is one of the largest and most com- plete ever built for the purpose of studying sound and its prop- erties, and is being used to learn how to improve the sound characteristics of transformers.
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