Hooven, Frederick J., 1905-1985

Biography

Frederick Johnson Hooven was born on March 5, 1905 in Dayton, Ohio. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1927. After his graduation from MIT, he joined the staff of General Motors (GM) and designed a brake shoe system that was installed on all GM vehicles for the next twenty-five years. In 1929 he joined Dayton Rubber Company, where from 1930 to 1931 he designed automobile suspension systems. He next worked in the field of aircraft performance for the U.S. Army Air Corps. In 1931 and 1932, Hooven designed a blind aircraft landing system for the American Loth Company and in 1932 he independently produced the first successful high-fidelity crystal phonograph pickup. From 1935 to 1937, Hooven worked for Bendix's Radio Products Division where he developed the first automatic steering system for an unmanned flight. Hooven held thirty-eight U.S. patents. His inventions included a bombing intervalometer (1944); an automobile ignition system; the shoran bombing computer (1948); the first heart-lung machine, which is still in use today in open-heart surgery (1952); the Harris intertype digital electronic phototypesetter (1955); and a front-end drive system for automobiles (1962). In 1975, he joined the faculty of the Thayer School fo Engineering as a part-time professor. Hooven died in 1985.

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