Our Innovations
Our Innovations
Although Ken Gorman had no formal Engineering Degree he was an inventor at heart. You could say he was self taught. He would often be heard to say “They Made it Wrong” when he encountered a product he thought could be improved.
Regarding our claim to fame in the Toroid Coil Winding area, Ken is the one who invented the Belt Head for Toroid Winding Machines. The Belt Head was quickly copied by all of our competitors as it was a leap forward in winding heavier wire from a shuttle.
Ken Gorman: Company founder
Although he could have licensed the new Patented invention to his competitors, when he first became aware of it being copied by a Company from Germany he decided he didn’t want to bother with litigation and just let it be used by others.
So when you are using a Belt Head on a toroid winder from someone else keep in mind where it came from. You can see the original Patents he had for his Standard Winding Head and the Belt Head.
Toroid Winding Head – Patent Image
| Toroid Winding Head https://www.google.com/patents/US3459384 |
Belt Head – Patent Image
One of his little known inventions separate from our Coil Winding Machines was the Check Pointer. Before the age of calculators you still needed a way to compute times and distances when flying between Airports.
Ken was an avid General Aviation pilot and had multiple airplanes. The Check Pointer was based on an Egg Timer with dials and graphs on it. It could calculate time and distance. It easily mounted on the steering wheel of a plane. We sold hundreds of these in the 60’s and 70’s. We were still filling orders for these up into the mid 90’s.
