User:His Manliness/sandbox

=Söderberg Electrode= The Söderberg electrode is a continuously-cast, self-baking carbon electrode for use in electric arc furnaces, invented by Carl Wilhelm Söderberg (link to Norwegian Wikipedia page) in Kristiania, Norway, in 1918. Söderberg was an engineer in a smelter at Det Norske Aktieselskab for Elektro-kemisk Industri (The Norwegian Company for Electrochemical Industry), known since 1969 by its acronym Elkem A/S. , The advantage of the Söderberg electrode over pre-baked electrodes is that the former is endless, making smelting an efficient  continuous process, while the latter is a discrete unit, making smelting a less efficient  batch process. A furnace equipped with Söderberg electrodes does not need to be powered down to replace spent pre-baked electrodes.

The Söderberg electrode is baked in the furnace where it is used, by radiant and conducted heat from the furnace or by resistance to electric current supplied to the steel electrode die that is also conducted by the carbon slurry as it passes through the die. The carbon slurry comes from fine-ground coke or coal bound with tar or  pitch. The heat from the furnace or current "bakes" the viscous slurry into a rigid solid rod by evaporating the volatile components in the binder and partially sintering the carbon-rich particles. The carbon goes into the top of the die (or mantle in Söderberg' patent) as a slurry and comes out the bottom as a rod, where it can be fed continuously into the pool of molten metal.

Söderberg (1876-1955) was actually a Swede rather than a Norwegian, whose parents relocated to Norway when Carl was a small child. Söderberg developed his electrode at the Kristiansand research factory Elkem purchased from Germany chemical manufacturer BASF in 1917 at the southern tip of Norway. Pechiney in France successfully adapted Söderberg electrodes to the Hall-Heroult process for smelting aluminum in the early 1930s. Alcan and Reynolds Metals Co. used Pechiney's modification, while competitor Alcoa used pre-baked electrodes, even though Alcoa owned a stake in Elkem in the 1920s.

=CoorsTek Subsidiaries=

Sons of Joe Coors Sr.

 * Joseph Coors Jr. (1942-2016) began college at the University of North Carolina, but transferred to North Carolina State University, where he earned a B.Sc. in mathematics in 1964. His marriage at age 19 to Gail Fambrough, and avoidance of Cornell University, caused a schism in the family, and he was not offered employment at any of the Coors companies upon graduation from NCSU.  Joe Jr. worked as a stockbroker in Denver until 1967, when he joined Frontier Airlines as a programmer in data processing.  He left Frontier in 1969 to work for a school district in San Diego as a systems analyst.  In 1972, he chose to return home and reconcile with his father.  The reconciliation came slowly, but Joe Jr. was hired by Coors Porcelain Co. in the data processing department.  He was transferred to the  Wilbanks subsidiary in Oregon in 1977, where he became president in 1980.  Although his relationship with his father remained icy, Joe Jr. returned to Golden in 1984 to replace a retiring VP and be groomed to succeed the ailing Derald Whiting as president of Porcelain.  Joe Jr. was appointed to the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) Board of Trustees by Gov. Roy Romer in the 1990s.  Long after his 2000 retirement from CoorsTek, Joe Jr. ran for Congress as a Republican in Colorado's 7th congressional district against his longtime neighbor, Democratic incumbent Ed Perlmutter in 2012.  Perlmutter was re-elected, but remained friends with Coors until Joe's death from a stroke in 2016.   Joe Jr. and Gail's children are daughters Heidi and Darden, and sons Brad and Doug, and they had nine grandchildren in 2016.


 * Jeffrey Holland Coors (b. 1945), developer of Coors Light beer, was named president of Adolph Coors Co. in 1985 and later as president of 1993 Coors spin-off ACX Technologies, Inc. Jeff became the chairman and president of ACX subsidiary Graphic Packaging Corp. in 1997.  He retired as vice-chairman from GPC in 2007, and resigned from its Board of Directors in 2016.  Jeff and wife Lis Lennert Coors' children include son Timothy.


 * Peter Hanson Coors (b. 1946) earned a B.Sc. in industrial engineering at Cornell University in 1969 and an M.B.A. at the  University of Denver in 1970.  He was hired by Adolph Coors Co. in 1971, and was named President of the Brewing Division in 1985, reporting to his brother Jeff.  Pete was named Chairman of both Adolph Coors Company and its largest subsidiary, Coors Brewing Company, in 2002.  He has also served as vice-chairman of Molson Coors Brewing Company and chairman of MillerCoors.   Pete and wife Marilyn's six children include daughter Christien Coors Ficeli and son Peter J. Coors.


 * William Grover Coors (b. 1951) is chief scientist and a member of the Board of Directors at CoorsTek Membrane Sciences AS in Oslo, Norway. He earned a bachelor's degree at Stanford University and a Ph.D. in materials science at CSM in 2001.  Like his older brother Joe Jr., Grover became estranged from his father circa 1971, but reconciled two years later when he needed income.  In addition to CoorsTek, Grover has been an executive at Adolph Coors Co. in Washington, DC, and  Microlithics Corp. in Golden.  Grover's wife is Sylvia.


 * John Kistler Coors (b. 1956) began his career as a quality control technician at the Coors brewery when he was 17. His goal was to work his way up through the brewery, where he led the customer satisfaction division in 1988.  He earned a B.Sc. in chemical engineering at Mines in 1977—the first of 14 Coors family members to graduate from CSM—an M.Sc. at the University of Texas in biochemistry, and a Ph.D. in brewing science at the Technical University of Munich in 1986.  The 1992 ACX spin-off sent John, then 36, to a small operation in ACX.  In 1996, he was assigned to manage the $17M investment in Golden Genesis, which was sold for $30M to Kyocera in 1999.  John was appointed president of Coors Ceramics Co. in 1998 and chairman (succeeding Joe Jr.) in 2000 when the company was renamed CoorsTek.  John and wife Sharna's children include son Jonathan.

Joe Sr. and Holly had 28 grandchildren, and 24 great grandchildren at the time of Holly's death in 2009. Grandchildren Heidi, Brad, Doug, Timothy, Michael and Jonathan are all employees of CoorsTek.

Coors Packaging Company merger
Adolph Coors Company needed paper labels that would adhere reliably to the cold glass bottles of its unpasteurized beer in the 1960s. Coors acquired its vendor, the Columbine Glass and Paper Packaging Company in Boulder, CO, and formed the Paper Packaging Division of Coors Container Co., Demand for the labels and paperboard six-pack containers increased to the point that the division was incorporated as Coors Packaging Company in 1974, with headquarters in Golden, CO. Coors pioneered Composipac™ laminated paperboard packaging, with the graphics printed in reverse on the inside of the transparent film component of the laminate, that could withstand the effects of condensation on cold bottles or cans. , Coors increased its capacity with the purchase of a folding carton plant in Lawrenceburg, TN, in the mid-1980s. Coors Packaging merged with a four-plant competitor, Graphic Packaging Corp. (GPC) of suburban Philadelphia, PA, in 1988 and adopted GPC's name, executive staff and headquarters but remained a Coors subsidiary. GPC's assets at the time of the merger included factories in Franklin, OH, Kalamazoo, MI, Malvern, PA and Newnan, GA.

Adolph Coors Co. created a publicly traded holding company spin-off in 1992 for its non-brewing subsidiaries, ACX Technologies Inc.  GPC,  Coors Ceramics Co. and others became the key components of ACX, chaired by William Coors, entirely independent of the Coors brewery. GPC acquired Richmond, VA-based competitor Gravure Packaging Inc. in 1996, and Montreal-based Filpac Inc. for $C20M in 1998. ACX was dissolved in 2000 as both GPC and CoorsTek went public. The original Boulder plant closed in 2001, but GPC opened a plant in Golden, CO in 1998 that employed 250 workers at its peak to supply the Coors brewery. Jeffrey H. Coors, developer of Coors Light beer, an executive at the brewery and president of ACX, became the chairman and president of GPC in 1997, succeeding David Hoffmann. The new Golden plant in the Coors Technology Center became the GPC corporate headquarters until 2003. GPC went into a debt crisis shortly after it acquired the folding carton division of Fort James Corporation in 1999 for $830M, but was rescued by a loan from The Grover C. Coors Trust.

GPC (NYSE: GPK) merged with Riverwood International Corp. in 2003, but moved its headquarters to Riverwood's in suburban Atlanta, GA and kept Riverwood's Steve Humphrey as president. David Scheible became president and chairman in 2007, and replaced 80% of GPC management within two years as the stock price fell to $1. Jeff Coors retired as vice-chairman from GPC in 2007, and resigned along with Scheible from its Board of Directors in 2016. Overcapacity in the packaging industry forced GPC to close or sell 21 of its less profitable operations in 2008-14, including closure of the Golden plant in 2010. The Coors family sold the last of its holdings in GPC in 2014. Scheible was succeeded by Michael Doss as president and Philip Martens as chairman.

Coors Ceramics U.K., Ltd.
Coors Porcelain opened its first foreign subsidiary, Coors Ceramics U.K. Ltd. (CCUK), in the Southﬁeld Industrial Estate in Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland, in 1981. A key function of the site was to act as the sales and marketing facility for the European market. CCUK grew when Porcelain acquired Royal Worcester Industrial Ceramics Ltd. in Wales in 1984. Former CoorsTek President Derek C. Johnson began his Coors career as an electrical engineer at CCUK in 1984. CCUK was reorganized in 1988 as Coors Ceramics Electronics Ltd. (CCEL), with product lines mostly similar to those of the Coors plant in Grand Junction, namely roll-compacted, laser-drilled, thick-film 96% alumina substrates for hybrid circuits. CCEL added 99.6% alumina thin-film substrates in 1991. CCEL, with 51 employees managed by Ken Henderson, received the prestigious Queen’s Award for Export Achievement in 1992, for its record exports of lasered ceramic substrates. CCEL acquired neighboring property in late 1992 and tripled its manufacturing operations to 30000 sqft.

VZS/Seagoe Advanced Ceramics Ltd. made ceramics products in Glenrothes, including stand-off insulators, switch gears, circuit breakers, ball valves, pump shafts and bearings, trays and boiler ferrules. Its products were used in semiconductor, defense, chemical, laser, electrical, textile, and paper applications. Seagoe began as George Wade & Sons Ltd. in Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. In December 1994, W. Laurie Hoskisson led the management buyout of VZS Technical Ceramics Ltd. from the Cookson Group and was appointed Managing Director. Hoskisson helped negotiate the merger of VZS Technical Ceramics of Glenrothes with Seagoe Advanced Ceramics of Craigavon, Northern Ireland, in January 1998. The Irish factory closed in 2002. CCEL acquired its 4000-m2 neighbor and competitor, managed by Hoskisson, from Beauford plc in 2006. Hoskisson worked for CCUK beginning in 1981 as Production Manager, before he was hired by VZS. In 2017, the 70-employee plant, managed by Mark Cameron, signed a contract to manufacture ceramic components for Teledyne e2v's radiotherapy machines.

R.I. Ceramic Company
Francis "Frank" Maginnis (1925-2018) left the University of Oklahoma Physics Dept. machine shop to start Research Instrument Co. in Norman, OK, in 1958 to produce components for oil-field pumps. , Maginnis incorporated a related company under the name Industrial Ceramics Inc., with additional principals Chas. Hollingsworth and J. Patten. In 1966, Maginnis developed a way of making alumina pump plungers for the oil and gas industries, replacing steel and other metals that corroded too easily. Sales grew over the next eight years at a rate of 70-80% per year. The company was acquired by Coors Porcelain in 1975, primarily for the product line of ceramic plungers used in reciprocating pumps in secondary oil recovery processes, and ceramic ball valves. Coors renamed the company R.I. Ceramic Co. in 1978. The acquisition gave Coors product lines that would have cost ~ten times as much to develop, and an inventory of products to address buyers' immediate needs. In Golden before the acquisition, the delivery time on ceramic pumps was months, whereas with R.I. it was closer to a week. Woodie Howe was promoted from the metallizing department supervisor in Golden to president of R.I. in 1980. R.I. had about 40 employees in the mid-1980s. Former CoorsTek Chief Operating Officer J. Mark Chenoweth began his Coors career as a machinist at R.I. in 1986. The 1996 acquisition of HB Company's newer operation in Oklahoma City led to closure of the plant in Norman and its relocation to the state capital.

Ceramatec, Inc.
Ceramatec was founded in Salt Lake City in 1976 by Professors Anil V. Virkar, Ronald S. Gordon and a group of engineers from the faculty of the University of Utah, to develop liquid-core, sodium-sulfur batteries for automotive applications. Gordon was the first president. The battery uses a beta-alumina solid electrolyte (BASE) ceramic membrane to separate the sulfur anode and sodium cathode. Donald L. Heath, a former Coors Porcelain employee, became president in 1985. David W. Richerson, author of Modern Ceramic Engineering (2nd Ed., Marcel Dekker Inc., 1992), was hired in 1985 and became the VP for applied technology until 1992. Ceramatec was owned by Elkem Metals Co. from 1984 until the late 1990s. Ashok V. Joshi, an expert in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), was hired as president in 2000, and won the Utah Governor's Medal for Science and Technology in 2003. CoorsTek acquired the 165-employee operation in 2008 to be one of its R&D centers, with Joshi continuing as president and Doug Coors (son of Joe Jr.) as manager of R&D. A new subsidiary, CoorsTek Membrane Sciences, was launched in 2015 to commercialize BASE, SOFC and other ion-separating technologies developed by Ceramatec, under the direction of Per Christian Vestre.

CoorsTek Medical LLC
A growing demand for ceramic implantable medical devices led CoorsTek to open C5 Medical Werks in western Colorado in 2005 next to CoorsTek's laser-drilled substrate factory that opened in 1973. CoorsTek acquired Fort Worth-based IMDS in 2013, and merged the two to create 400-employee CoorsTek Medical LLC, under the direction of Jonathan Coors, son of John. CoorsTek Medical has operations in Chandler, AZ, Vandalia, OH, Molalla, OR, Logan, UT and Providence, UT, in addition to Texas and Colorado. Products include artificial joints, components for medical machines and implantable screws, rods and plates. The 88,000-ft2 former IMDS Vandalia site in suburban Dayton is the largest CoorsTek Medical location with 200 employees. The 12-employee, 9000-ft2 Chandler site in suburban Phoenix, begun by IMDS in 2006, is primarily a prototype design and construction operation.

Wilbanks International, Inc.
William H. Wilbanks (1927-2006), Tom Stuart and Frank Ernson founded Wilbanks Inc. in 1963 in Hillsboro, OR, to manufacture ceramic components for the pulp and paper industries. The components included suction box covers, foil sections, forming tables and cleaning cones. The plant was originally located at 26900 S. W. Tualatin Valley Hwy. in Hillsboro, before moving to its present site in the Hawthorn Farm Industrial Park on 53rd Ave. Coors Porcelain acquired 40-employee Wilbanks in 1973, and modified its new subsidiary's name to Wilbanks International, Inc. Bill Wilbanks remained as president, while Coors employees G.G. Grimes and Shepard Sweeney were named VP & GM and secretary-treasurer, respectively. Coors president R.D. Whiting became the chairman of the executive committee. Joe Coors Jr. was a quality engineer at Wilbanks 1973-84 and served as president 1980-84. Bill Wilbanks, a ceramic engineer at Tektronix in Portland before he started his namesake firm, managed the 170-employee Coban plant in Brazil in the mid-1980s until his retirement from Coors. CoorsTek sold its paper machine drainage elements operations in Hillsboro to the Coldwater Group in 2017. Coldwater moved the equipment to its Atlanta facility.

Alumina Ceramics, Inc.
Robert L. Johnson founded Alumina Ceramics, Inc. (ACI) in Benton, AR, in 1971. Johnson had been a ceramic engineer and project director at the Alumina Research Division of Reynolds Metals Co. in nearby Bauxite, AR. One of ACI's first products was Saphrox 99.7% Al2O3 grinding media. Ken Holiman became president in 1974, and the specialty became seal rings. Most of Porcelain's special seal business eventually moved to ACI. Coors bought the factory in 1976 or '79. In 2019, CoorsTek invested $26M and added 50,000 ft2 to the 180,000 ft2, 200-employee Arkansas operation, in anticipation of growth in its aerospace and defense markets.

Coors Technical Ceramics Company
Coors built a $1-2M, 2800-3700 m2 factory in Oak Ridge, TN, in early 1990, known as Coors Technical Ceramics Company (CTCC). The 40-employee Oak Ridge plant was considered an extension of Coors' Norman, OK, subsidiary (originally R.I. Ceramic Company), with William A. "Woodie" Howe managing both operations and reporting to John Jenkins, VP and GM of Coors Ceramics Structural Division. Some unspecified Y-12 product lines from Cercom in Vista, CA, were moved to Oak Ridge, along with key employees from Norman. The Tennessee location was chosen to take advantage of the technology transfer programs at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s High Temperature Materials Lab. Howe, a Coors employee since 1962, was promoted to VP of the Structural Products Group in 1996, which included CTCC operations in Tennessee, Oklahoma, California and Texas, and ACI in Arkansas. Later in 1996, CTCC acquired HB Company Inc., a manufacturer of petrochemical pump components, giving CTCC additional facilities in Oklahoma City, Odessa, TX, and Red Deer, AB, Canada.

Coors Biomedical Company
Coors Biomedical Co., a 35-employee Porcelain subsidiary founded in 1980 in nearby Lakewood, CO under the direction of Jim Stephan, developed a low-shrinkage, high-alumina porcelain for dental restorations in the early 1980s, that could be fitted and fabricated in the dentist’s office. The product, sold under the name Cerestore™, raised some concerns among dentists for its wear on opposing teeth and its accuracy of fit. Coors Biomedical was also developing synthetic bone-grafting technologies. The technology became the property of Johnson & Johnson after Coors Biomedical closed in the late 1980s.

Ceramic technology and company growth after WW2 (addenda)
The Clear Creek Valley Plant (CCVP), opened in 1970, is adjacent to Coors Brewing Company's Engineering Center and Can Plant east of the brewery in Golden. CoorsTek leases the property from Coors Brewing. CCVP's products include tape-cast electronic substrates, multi-layer packages and metallized alumina. CCVP's equipment includes ball mills and tunnel kilns. CCVP had 392 employees in 1986, while the main site had 751.

The 150000 sqft Grand Junction plant in western Colorado opened in 1975 to produce roll-compacted, laser-drilled, thick-film 96% alumina substrates for hybrid circuits. The site was chosen for its lower energy and labor costs than Golden, a direct rail link from Golden, and a contract to make substrates for IBM. The GJ plant had 282 employees in 1986, the largest site outside of Golden. Fiber-optic ferrules, micro-extrusions and other product lines were added in 1996. GJ had 150 employees in three shifts, seven days per week, under the direction of Timothy Coors in 2015. Tim Coors had earlier stints with Graphic Packaging Corp., and CoorsTek Robertsfors in Sweden. C5 Medical Werks, now part of CoorsTek Medical, opened in 2005 on adjacent property to produce ceramic implants.

Oregon Graduate Center
The Oregon Graduate Center for Study and Research (OGC) was incorporated on 2 April 1963 as a university at the behest of Gov. Mark O. Hatfield, Tektronix co-founder Howard Vollum and the City Club of Portland, with the help of $2M grant from the Tektronix Foundation. Retired physician Samuel L. Diack of the Oregon Medical Research Foundation was named the first chairman of OGC's board of trustees, and Vollum was a board member. Diack is also noted as a founder of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Physicist Donald L. Benedict of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) was hired as the first president of OGC in 1966. The original campus, a former Martin Marietta building, was located in Beaverton next to Tek's then-headquarters on Barnes Road near the north end of Oregon Route 217. Hatfield was unsuccessful in his attempt to get $1.5M in seed funding for OGC from the state legislature. Financial support was an ongoing problem for OGC, as demonstrated by the brief terms of several of its presidents. Funding in the late 1960s was received from Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company, and sought from the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare and the National Institutes of Health. Other early backers and board members included Douglas Strain of Electro Scientific Industries, John Gray of Omark Industries Inc. and Ira Keller of Western Kraft Corporation.

The first six faculty--all chemists--and staff were hired in 1966, and the first students were admitted in 1969. Carl Miller, a structural engineer, was the first staff member hired, and laser expert Richard Kerr was the second. OGC moved to a newly developed 74-acre site at 20000 NW Walker Road in Beaverton in August 1969, which was intended to be its permanent campus, adjacent to the Oregon National Primate Research Center. The new site had been the Donovan family's wheat farm. The initial programs were in chemistry, physics and mathematics, without any departmental divisions. OGC had no undergraduates, dormitories, sororities, fraternities, student-athletes, mascots, Latin motto, homecoming parade or social science departments, ever. The first research project was a study of the propagation of laser beams through the atmosphere by J.R. Kerr.

Benedict's vision for OGC was based on the European model of research for a civilian-based economy, rather than a wartime economy as was common in the United States. Benedict liked the Oxford University tutorial system in the United Kingdom and the Technische Hochschule network in West Germany. Benedict had been in charge of SRI's European operations before he was hired by OGC. .

The first master's degree was awarded to Terry D. Lee in organic chemistry in 1971 and the first doctor of philosophy to Paul M. Perry in applied physics in 1973. All programs were accredited by the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges. In 1979, OGC had 23 faculty and 33 students. By 1988, OGC had 48 faculty members, all untenured, and 150 students. The purpose of OGC was to provide training, research and graduate credentials pertinent to Silicon Forest and other local industries, without the bureaucracy and politics of a conventional university, somewhat similar to Rockefeller University.

A report by a committee of the Portland City Club asked, "Why does Portland lag so far behind in the great surge of science-based industry?" in 1963. At the time, metropolitan Portland had about 800,000 residents and its employment mainstays were timber and agriculture. The committee's answer to its question was, "Portland is the largest metropolitan area in the West without a full university." Portland State College, Reed College, Lewis & Clark College, the University of Portland and other halls of academe in northwestern Oregon were primarily undergraduate schools. PSC was also under pressure to become a university and a research institution, which it did in 1969. The Portland interests were competing with the University of Oregon (U of O) in Eugene and Oregon State University (OSU) in Corvallis for research funding.

Tektronix ("Tek"), the largest private employer in Oregon from the 1960s through the 1980s, was quoted, "...the creation of a graduate center 'an absolute necessity' for its operations because 'we find it extremely difficult to attract competent people to our plant, and we find those who have acquired with us a degree of scientific competence often leave us for the specific reason that they do not find here further help or stimulation to their scientific development. Tektronix stated that it would have to establish research and development facilities elsewhere near universities if a graduate training and research center was not founded in Portland." Tek encouraged employees to pursue advanced degrees and sometimes provided financial support. Tek started an in-house continuing education program in the late 1950s that rivaled the local community colleges in size.

Original board of directors
The original board of trustees of OGC was Harry Alpert (U of O), Henry Cabell, Vernon Cheldelin (OSU), Arno H. Denecke, S.L. Diack (chairman), Walter P. Dyke (Linfield College, Field Emission Corp.), Gerald W. Frank (Governor's Advisory Committee), educator James T. Marr, Harold M. Phillips, Donald E. Pickering (OHSU), G. Herbert Smith (Willamette University), Willard B. Spalding (dean of PSC), Richard H. Sullivan (president of Reed College), metallurgist R.H. "Rudy" Thielemann, C. H. Vollum and Harry White.

Presidential eras
E. Robert de Luccia, a Pacific Power & Light Co. excutive and board member became interim president in 1969, following Benedict's dismissal. OGC had to borrow money to meet the payroll and pay contractors for new buildings. Mergers with Lewis & Clark College and PSU and a takeover by Tek were proposed, and most OGC employees were looking for other jobs. De Luccia left OGC for a job in the Nixon administration in Southeast Asia in June 1971, and the original OGC facility on Barnes Road was sold for $350k that year.

Arthur F. Scott (1898-1982), a provost of OGC and former chemistry professor and president (1942-5) at Reed College, was appointed acting president in 1971-1972. Negotiations with PSU failed to produce a merger, a request for $1.5M in operating funds from the state legislature was denied, and OGC was on the brink of extinction during this time. The chemistry building at Reed is named for Scott.

Western Kraft Corp. founder Ira Keller (1899-1978) was appointed president in 1972. His business approach kept OGC afloat, and brought full accreditation in 1973. Applied physics professor Lynwood W. Swanson and partners incorporated FEI Company in 1973, although Swanson remained at OGC until 1987. The National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Weyerhauser Co. all made generous grants to OGC during Keller's tenure. Keller retired as president in 1977 and became chairman of the board of trustees upon Diack's retirement. The Keller Fountain Park in downtown Portland was named in honor of Ira Keller for his philanthropy and civic involvement, and Keller Auditorium for his son Richard. Western Kraft began as a joint venture between the Willamette Valley Lumber Co. and Santiam Lumber Co. in 1954, and merged with Willamette Industries Inc. in 1973.

J. Richard Kerr, a professor of electrical engineering at PSC and OGC and later the executive vice-president of OGC, was promoted to president in 1977. Kerr, a laser expert, was hired by OGC as a researcher in 1966. He resigned in 1979 amid more financial crises and controversy with the faculty over cutbacks. After OGC, he was an executive at Flight Dynamics Inc. and FLIR Systems Inc., and founded Max-Viz Inc. in Portland.

F. Paul Carlson was hired by OGC as the vice-president for development in 1977 in the midst of a financial crisis, and became acting president in 1979. OGC purchased 100 acres of land adjacent to its 77-acre campus in 1980, and Carlson was elected president of the Center. The additional land became the Science Park in 1982, a site for start-up companies. Planar Systems, a Tek spin-off began developing flat-panel displays there in 1984. Ground was broken for the Samuel L. Diack Memorial Library in 1979, and the building was completed in 1980, named in honor of the first chairman. Carlson became president of OGC Corp. and chairman of the OGC board of trustees in 1985. A campus quarterly magazine, Visions, was begun in the spring of 1985, with Norman R. Eder as its managing editor and Georgiana Johnsrud as editor. Prolific author Lawrence E. Murr was the vice-president for academic affairs during Carlson's term.

Stephen J. Kahne, an electrical engineer and dean of engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, served as president of OGC in 1985-6. He later worked for Embry Riddle Aeronautical University.

James J. Huntzicker was hired by OGC as a professor of atmospheric chemistry in 1974. He served as acting president from 1986 to 1988. Huntzicker stayed on as a professor at OGC, and joined OHSU in 2001 when OGI merged with OHSU. He became Head of the Department of Management in Science & Technology in 2004, which became the Division of Management in the OHSU School of Medicine. As head of the Division of Management he co-led the development of the OHSU-PSU MBA in Healthcare Management in the School of Medicine. He is a former chairman of the board of directors for Saturday Academy.

Dwight A. Sangrey, a professor of civil engineering at Cornell University and Carnegie Mellon University and dean of engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was hired by OGC as president in 1988, "with a mandate to increase significantly the size of OGC's faculty and student body." FEI Company moved into Science Park circa 1990, but relocated to its present headquarters in Hillsboro in 1992. Sangrey left in 1994, and was hired as an administrator by Pacific University in 2009.

Paul E. Bragdon, a lawyer and president of Reed College 1971-88, was hired to succeed Sangrey in 1994 and rescue OGI from a $2M deficit. Bragdon had been a member of the OGI board of trustees. He retired in 1998, but served as an interim president of Lewis & Clark College in 2004-5. He was awarded an honorary D.Sc. by OHSU in 2004.

The last president, Edward W. Thompson came to OGI in 1998 from HRL Laboratories, formerly Hughes Research Labs, where he led a team of 40 researchers developing technology for defense contracting, telecommunications and space. Thompson became the dean of the OGI School of Science and Engineering and a vice-president of OHSU after the merger in 2001.

Oregon Graduate Institute
The name of OGC was changed in 1989 to the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science & Technology (OGI). By 1995, OGI had grown to 153 full-time and adjunct faculty members and 1100 students in full-time, part-time and continuing education enrollment, in six departments. Edward H. Cooley (1922-2000), founder and retired chairman of Precision Castparts Corporation, was the chairman of the board of trustees. The board also included executives from ESCO Corporation, Planar Systems Inc., Tektronix, Intel Corp. and Electro Scientific Industries Inc.

OGI's most popular degree in 2001 was management in science and technology. At the doctorate level, the most popular degree was in computer science and engineering. The least popular degrees were in biochemistry/ molecular biology and materials science and engineering.

Non-degree programs offered by OGI included Saturday Academy, an Applied Mathematics Certificate, the Solid State Devices Consortium, and short courses under the Center for Professional Development umbrella. OGC was a partner in the Oregon Center for Advanced Technology Education, OCATE ("Owe-Kate"), created by Gov. Victor Atiyeh in 1985 in conjuction with PSU, OSU and U of O.

Vollum, upon his death in 1986, bequeathed $14.8M to OGC, which became OGC's first endowment. Vollum was awarded OGC's first honorary doctor of science degree in 1984. OGI quickly became very competitive with other Oregon universities in research and graduate degrees in STEM fields. In 1995, OGI confered 77 masters degrees and 26 doctorates, compared to 218 and 26 for the U of O, OSU and Portland State University (PSU) combined.

Merger with OHSU
OGI considered mergers with OSU and PSU in the late 1990s, but the 90-mile distance of OSU in Corvallis and the large-public-university nature of both OSU and PSU were deterents. The OGI board squelched a proposed merger with OSU in 2000. OGI merged with the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) in July 2001, with OGI becoming the OGI School of Science and Engineering, one of four Schools within OHSU. OGI president Ed Thompson became the dean of the school. The enlarged OHSU was slightly renamed the Oregon Health & Science University. Although OHSU is the state medical school, it became a public corporation in 1995, which was closer to OGI's business model than OSU or PSU. The Materials Science and Engineering department moved to downtown Portland and became part of PSU's mechanical engineering department in 2001. Fragments of other departments also moved to PSU. The OHSU-OGI merger was funded in part by a $4M grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, an organization started by Vollum's partner at Tektronix, Jack Murdock. The award was earmarked to help launch a new biomedical engineering program at OGI SS&E.

Presidents

 * Donald L. Benedict, physicist, 1966-1969
 * E. Robert de Luccia, 1969-1971
 * Arthur F. Scott, chemist, 1971-1972
 * Ira Keller, 1972-1977
 * J. Richard Kerr, electrical engineer, 1977-1979
 * F. Paul Carlson, 1979-1985
 * Stephen J. Kahne, electrical engineer, 1985-1986
 * James J. Huntzicker, chemist, 1986-1988
 * Dwight A. Sangrey, civil engineer, 1988-1994
 * Paul E. Bragdon, lawyer, 1994-1998
 * Edward W. Thompson, 1998-2001

Legacy of OGI
OHSU sold the 40-acre OGI School of Science and Engineering campus at 20000 NW Walker Road in Hillsboro in 2007 for $44.4M, but also signed a 7-year lease for the property. The campus had 15 buildings totaling 286,000 ft^2. OHSU vacated the property in 2014, and it was sold again in 2015 for $15.1M. The OGI name was quietly discontinued along with its campus of 45 years. The OGI degree programs in biochemistry, molecular biology, computer science and engineering, electrical engineering, and environmental science and engineering were moved under the School of Medicine at OHSU at its Portland complex. The rest went to PSU or were discontinued. Science Park was renamed AmberGlen Business Center. The Samuel L. Diack Memorial Library closed in June 2013.

Companies that have roots at OGI include Cascade Microtech Inc. in 1983, Integra Telecom Inc. in 1984, and electron microscope maker FEI Company.

First M.Sc. graduate Terry Lee earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Oregon in 1977, and returned to OGC as a post-doctoral fellow in mass spectrometry. He was hired by the Beckmann Research Institute in California in 1982. Paul Perry became a computer services manager at Western Geophysical Exploration Production in Texas.

Scholarly books by OGC/OGI faculty and alumni

 * J.A. Cooper & Dorothy Malek, eds., Proceedings of the 1981 International Conference on Residential Solid Fuels: Environmental Impacts and Solutions, Oregon Graduate Center, 1982.
 * L.E. Murr, What Every Engineer Should Know about Material and Component Failure, Failure Analysis and Litigation, Marcel Dekker, 1986, ISBN 978-0824777326.
 * L.E. Murr, Electron and Ion Microscopy and Microanalysis: Principles and Applications, Second Edition, CRC Press, 1991, ISBN 978-0824785567.
 * L.E. Murr, Handbook of Materials Structures, Properties, Processing and Performance, 2015 Edition, Springer; 2014, ISBN 978-3319018140.
 * L.E. Murr, Interfacial Phenomena in Metals and Alloys, Addison-Wesley, 1975, ISBN 978-0201048858.

Inverse error function: Solving erf(z) for its argument
Problems involving physical phenomena modeled by the error function, such as Fick's second law, typically yield the value of erf(z) from experimental measurements and require the engineer to solve for the  argument, z. For example, the carburization of steel can be approximated by
 * $$C(x, t) = C_s - (C_s - C_0) erf \left (\frac{x}{2\sqrt{Dt}} \right ) $$

where C = the concentration of carbon at any length x from the steel surface after time t, Cs = the concentration of carbon at the steel surface, C0 = the original concentration of carbon in the steel, and D =  diffusion coefficient of carbon in steel. To solve for x or t, i.e., the inverse of the error function, the argument can be determined by…
 * Searching online for an inverse error function calculator.
 * Reading an approximate value from a normal (Gaussian) distribution table. First, calculate the value of the normal distribution, $$\Phi(x) = \tfrac{1}{2} (1 + erf(z))$$.  Second, find the value of x in the table corresponding most closely to Φ(x).  Third, calculate $$z =\tfrac{x}{\sqrt{2}}$$.  In the example below, if erf(z) = 0.5832, then $$\Phi(x) = 0.5 (1 + 0.5832) = 0.7916$$.  From the table, x = 0.81 when Φ(x) = 0.7910.  Finally, $$z \approx \tfrac{0.81}{\sqrt{2}} = 0.573$$.
 * Writing a program that numerically integrates the error function by adding up the areas of a series of very small trapezoids until the area matches the value of erf(z).
 * Using a solver function in a spreadsheet or mathematical software such as Matlab. This can be done in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with the Solver add-in function.  First, create a two-row table similar to the one illustrated below.  Suppose $$erf (x/(2 \sqrt{Dt})) $$ evaluates to 0.5832, as shown.  Second, estimate the value of the argument from the plot above or a table of values in some textbooks, and enter it in Cell B2, about 0.55 in this example.  Its erf(z) value will be calculated automatically in Cell C2.  Third, calculate the argument iteratively with Solver by minimizing the square of the difference between the actual and estimated values in Cell D2.  If Solver has not already been installed, click File → Options → Add-Ins → Solver Add-In.  Click Data → Solver → Solver Parameters: Set Objective: $D$2 → To: $$\odot$$ Min → By Changing Variable Cells: $B$2 → Select a Solving Method: GRG Nonlinear → Solve.  Cell D2 is best formatted in scientific notation.  The value of Cell B2 will be changed to the value that minimizes Cell D2, as long as the initial estimate in B2 is close.  In this case, the argument  converges to 0.5742.  That is, erf(0.5742) = 0.5832.

=Niobium=

Niobium Alloy Development
C-103 alloy was developed in the early 1960s jointly by the Wah Chang Corporation and Boeing Co. DuPont, Union Carbide Corp., General Electric Co. and several other companies were developing Nb-base alloys simultaneously, largely driven by the Cold War and Space Race. The sensitivity of Nb to oxygen requires processing in vacuum or  inert atmosphere, which significantly increases the cost and difficulty of production. Vacuum arc remelting (VAR) and electron beam melting (EBM), novelty processes at the time, enabled the development of reactive metals such as Nb. The project that yielded C-103 began in 1959 with as many as 256 Nb alloys in the "C-series" (possibly from columbium) that could be melted as buttons and rolled into sheet. Wah Chang had an inventory of Hf, separated from nuclear-grade Zr, that it wanted to put to commercial use. The 103rd experimental composition of the C-series alloys, Nb-10Hf-1Ti, had the best combination of formability and high-temperature properties. Wah Chang fabricated the first 500-lb heat of C-103 in 1961 using EBM and VAR, ingot to sheet. The intended applications included turbine engine components and liquid metal heat exchangers. Competing Nb alloys from that era included FS85 (Nb-10W-28Ta-1Zr) from Fansteel Metallurgical Corp., Cb129Y (Nb-10W-10Hf-0.2Y) from Wah Chang and Boeing, Cb752 (Nb-10W-2.5Zr) from Union Carbide, and Nb1Zr from Superior Tube Co.