Behind The Scenes at nth Solutions: The Secret Weapon

(Blogger’s note: n^th Solutions boasts a crop of resourceful, skilled personnel.  Here’s a glimpse of one of our many talented staffers.)

He sits with magnifiers perched on his head, tweezers clutched in his hand, working on minuscule electronics.  He’s quiet except for the occasional journey to the kitchen for military-grade coffee – that is, coffee that could stand without a cup.

His name is Jim, and he’s n^th’s secret weapon.

Jim grew up in rural northeastern Pennsylvania, near Stroudsburg.  A family friend who taught at MIT suggested Jim study engineering.  Off he went to Drexel University, and worked for Westinghouse in South Philadelphia as part of his co-op program.

His first brush with the military came when he was drafted in 1952, the year before he graduated.  So he signed up for the Air Force.

“I spent three whole days in the military,” he says, smiling.  He failed the physical exam due to football injuries and was discharged.  But there would be time enough for Jim’s work with the U.S. military.

After college Westinghouse offered him a job and transferred him to Kansas City, KS, where he met his wife, Julie.  Little did she know that she was in for a life of intrigue.

What was he working on? The afterburner section of the jet engine was his specialty when he was at Westinghouse.  Around the time Westinghouse was getting out of the jet engine industry, they sent him to North American Aviation in Columbus, Ohio. His project?  The F-4 Phantom.  The engineers were having problems with thermal aspects of the engine, so Jim served in an advisory role and taught the machinists.  “Have you ever gotten to ride in a Phantom?” he asks, interrupting his own story. “I have – I knew the test pilots really well, and I got to ride in the Phantom.”

Jim soon left Westinghouse for General Electric, where he became a third-level manager, and worked on more hush-hush projects.

“I used to get calls in the middle of the night,” he said. “Julie got used to it – I’d be on the phone and she’d make me coffee.  But it really bothered me that I’d have to go somewhere and I couldn’t tell her where I was…” Jim pauses, takes a breath. “I’ve worked in the missile fields in North Dakota…Montana…at Cape Canaveral…”

He worked on Minuteman 3 missiles, bio-satellites and what he blithely describes as “military stuff,” with a small chuckle.  “Remember when we were sending monkeys and men into space?  A lot of that was moving missiles around.  We were fooling people.”

But he did work on the space program, though he remains coy about his role.  “I was involved in solving problems, especially as it pertained to materials. We were behind other countries – especially the Soviet Union – in procuring and using materials in space.”

But over the years, he’s changed his mind about countries using missiles. “It didn’t bother me at first – but it bothered me toward the end,” he says.  “It scares me that we have the power to annihilate – really.  Back during the Cold War, we didn’t have much of a choice.  You had to have the power so that people wouldn’t mess with us.  Now, it’s different.  With this Iran thing, we could make it so there wouldn’t be an Iran. Do we want to do that? Do they know that we could? I hope they do.”