The Vorkosigan Companion - Lillian Stewart Carl [68]
Dad was an inventor with a very wide range of interest. He held nineteen patents covering a wide range of disciplines. Some of these ideas have become very important in the lives of the modern world. He holds the basic patent on xeroradiography, the application of the Xerox (halide) patents to X-ray rather than visible light like today's copy machines. This has evolved into the medical imaging equipment used to detect breast cancer. He also holds the basic patents on the first television X-ray system, a device that he made possible by the introduction of a low-density beryllium window in place of glass that would block the weak X-ray signals, and precursor to the X-ray machines used in real-time medical imaging and luggage inspection at airports. Every time you go to a dentist using the new direct film-to-digital system, you are touched by his work.
For a time throughout the 1950s, Dad was the "TV Weatherman" to most of Central Ohio. This was truly during the infancy of television. Ours at the time was a six-inch black-and-white Hallicrafters with a row of channel-selector buttons across the bottom. Dad had taken a weather course at Caltech from Irving Krick—one of the key people in the decision to go into Normandy on June 6, 1944—so he came to the program with more real background than the weather readers of today. Like most else he did, he used the five-minute show to teach everyone in Ohio about weather. The shows always started with the same somewhat startled "Well, hi there."
People Whose Names May Have Been the Inspiration
For those who studied Welding Engineering at Ohio State University in the early 1960s, the names of at least some of the Falling Free characters are familiar.
Leo's family name may have come from Professor Karl Graf, who became chairman of the Welding Engineering Department a few years after McCauley left.
The real-life name source for "Leo" may have been the first black student in Welding Engineering, Leo Wilcox, who was a few years ahead of me. We all met him in the mid-1950s at the annual Welding Engineering Department picnics.
"Claire" may have been inspired by Clarence Jackson, a family friend as well as a professor in the Welding Engineering Department. Clarence specialized in submerged arc welding and had learned the trade the hard way. Getting him on the staff proved to be a real exercise for the silver-tongued McCauley, since the university looked down its collective nose at anyone who had not actually graduated from college, and to have such a person as a professor, even in the mostly forgotten Welding Engineering Department, was a real leap of faith for the school.
Another professor was Bill Green. I don't think he got mention by name, but maybe Silver was just a better and certainly sexier sounding substitute name.
Doctor Minchenko may have been based on Hildegard Min chenko, who was a researcher of Russian origin who worked on a sonic power project that Dad had developed and obtained funding for. For the few of us at the school at the time, this project was remembered because the frequency chosen for the 10-hp high-energy transducers was 10 kHz, right in the middle of the range of human hearing. Many a class discussion was given by yelling over the incessant screaming of the horns operating just outside the lecture room door.
Finally: Lois
Lois and