Chadwell O'Connor

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Chadwell O'Conner

Chadwell O'Connor (October 9, 1914 – September 5, 2007) was an American inventor and steam engine enthusiast. He is most remembered as the inventor of the fluid-damped camera head, an achievement for which he won an Academy Award in 1992.

1 Early Life and Education
2 Steam Enthusiast
3 The Fluid Head
4 External links
5 Notes
6 References

[edit] Early Life and Education

Chadwell O'Connor came from an distinguished family. His father, Johnson O'Connor was a well-known psychometrician and pioneer in the study of aptitude testing. His mother died when he was young and his father remarried the MIT-trained architect and artist Eleanor Manning. The family lived in Boston and O'Connor often accompanied his father to his work at the General Electric factory in Lynn, Massachusetts where he acquired an interest in engineering. O'Connor attended the Stevens Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering. Shortly after graduating, World War II broke out and O'Connor joined Douglas Aircraft where he was in charge of expediting aircraft production and repair, a vital part of the war effort.

[edit] Steam Enthusiast

Jupiter Reproduction

After the war, O'Connor joined Pasadena Power and Light as chief engineer. O'Conner had been interested in steam engines since he was a body and he applied this knowledge at the power company to improve power production and incineration. In 1974, he used this experience to develop the O'Connor Rotary Combustor that burned municipal garbage to create steam for power generation. The first pilot plant was built in Japan and in 1980 a production facility was built in Gallatin, Tennessee that burned 200 tons a day of municipal waste. This technology was spun out of O'Connor's company, O'Connor Engineering to a separate company that was later purchased by Westinghouse.^[1]

O'Connor had long been fascinated with steam locomotives which he recognized were a dying breed and began photographing them. He later became involved in the refurbishment and reproduction of classic steam locomotives. He and his company recreated the drawings and reproduced copies of the 119 and Jupiter locomotives that met for the driving of the Golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah. These reproductions were used in recreations of the event and are still operating at the Golden Spike National Historic Site.^[2] In later years, O'Connor maintained his own steam boat which he would fire up and tool around the harbor in Newport Beach, California.

[edit] The Fluid Head

It was O'Connor's fascination with photographing steam locomotives that led to his best known invention. As he tried photographing moving trains, he became annoyed by the jerkiness of the pictures. To solve this problem he developed a silicon-filled platform that interfaced between the tripod and the camera to allow smooth panning and tilting of the camera. He still viewed this as a hobby and shot more than 100,000 feet of film on the waning days of steam locomotives. One day in 1952 while filming near Glendale California another steam enthusiast tapped him on the shoulder and asked to look through the view finder. The man seemed to know his way around cameras so O'Connor gave him a look. The man was so impressed that he asked if O'Connor could make more for him. O'Connor agreed but said it would take time as he built them in his garage. The man said, "But I need it right away. Oh, by the way, my name is Walt Disney."^[3]

Disney was then shooting one of his first nature studies, The Living Desert, and needed a way to shoot moving animals smoothly. The O'Connor head was so successful that Disney immediately ordered 10 more.^[3] This film won the first Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 1953. O'Connor founded a part-time business in 1952 to make the heads and by 1969 it was so successful that he left the power company to work full time on camera heads and steam engines at O'Connor Engineering. O'Connor and Disney maintained a life-long friendship and business relationship. O'Connor designed the power systems for the steam launches and paddle wheelers at Disney World in Florida^[3].

In 1975 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented O'Connor with a Class II Scientific and Engineering Award and in 1992, they awarded him the Academy Award of Merit, the Oscar, for his work on the fluid head. In his lifetime, O'Connor received 29 US patents. Chadwell O'Connor died on September 5, 2007.