Document KJZJZ4wJ3EM82k8jM0jNB6Nm0

In this issue: Thoughts on education . . . page 4 Insulation meetings . . . pages 20 and 28 Man of many interests . . . page 24 More tables of properties . . . page 33 Hot wires . . . page 36 SC-ELEC-02921 Men in Insulation Donald W. Kiichin, Senior Scientist Simplex Wire $ Cable Co., Cambridge, Mass. This regular monthly feature is devoted to a leader in the insulation field--his work, background, accom plishments, traits, and goals. These articles are well deserved recognition of the significant contributions these men have made to the industry. It is also hoped that these biographical sketches will provide encouragement to other men concerned with insula tion. When Donald W. Kitchin was in grammar school, he used to get up at four in the morning to spade gardens and dig ditches for five cents an hour in order to buy motors, batteries, and books on electricity. When he was in high school, he arose at the same time in order to milk 12 cows before going to school--and he spent a good part of the night learning code by listening to a Cape Cod sta tion which sent out wireless news to ships. 24 /nsulation, April, lOSit Though he no longer gets up at 4:00 a.m., Kitchin still packs a tre mendous amount of activity into each day. He starts off with a brisk walk and then spends most of his working day at Simplex Wire & Cable Co., Cambridge. Mass., where he is senior scientist. The title, both descriptive and honorary, was awarded to him several years ago in recognition of his more than 30 years of technical and scientific work for the company. Kitchin aiso man ages to get in another walk at noon and tries for a daily swimming ses sion at a pool near the Simplex plant. For relaxation, the same day might find him reading in any one of eight languages; preparing a paper or do ing committee work for one of sev eral technical societies; practising Bach or Beethoven on the piano; lis tening to music on an FM or hi-fi set; studying Functions of a Real Variable or the Lebesque Integral; taking part in church, scouting, or other community projects; working on alumni or fraternity affairs for Massachusetts Institute of Technol ogy; or turning the Kitchin house hold unside down in any one of his many "tinkering" type projects. This zeal for living and quest for knowledge has enabled Kitchin to crowd a lot of life and learning into his 61 years. But in the typical fash ion of the person who leads a full, rich life, he finds that there isn't enough time to do all of the things that he would like to do. In his opti mistic. good natured manner, how ever. he has a suggested solution for the problem of time in another life. "We should have something like Riemann surfaces," he suggests, "so that a lot of activities could go on at the same time." When Kitchin looks hack over his 32 vears with Simplex, he concludes that it has "generally been fun."' It has also been full of rewarding ex periences and successful achieve ment. Everett Morss, president of Simplex, summed up Kitchin's asso ciation with the company in this way when he announced his appointment as senior scientist in 1955: "His re search has brought much credit to Simplex in many scientific fields and his brilliant pioneering has helped to keep Simplex a leading and re spected member of the wire and cable industry." Kitchin is extremely grateful to Simplex for its liberality in giving him free choice in research project selection and methods. His first re search study dealt with the cause and mechanism of "X-wax" forma tion in oil-paper cables. Using high vacuum techniques, he was able to show that the cause was corona in minute voids--even when it seemed impossible that voids could exist in the material. Other early studies were on impregnation of cables and degassing of the oils. Most of Kitchin's work has been summarized in papers presented at technical society meetings. Early in his career, Kitchin heard a paper at an American Chemical Society meet ing on the X-ray diagram of stretched rubber. It suggested to him that polar molecules might be ori ented by an electric field and their motion in a viscous medium might contribute to power factor. (He learned about the Debye theory only later.l Kitchin's work on the subject was one of the earliest applications of dipole theorv to ordinary insulat ing materials. The work also pro vided the subject for Kitchin's "maiden" paper before the 1929 AIEE midwinter meeting. The praise and encouragement he was given for this work by Drs. V. Karapetoff and J. B. Whitehead made it one of the proudest moments in Kitchin's life. (The paper also received honorable mention in theory and research, which was then equivalent to second national prize, i Another paper in 1932 interpreted the dielectric be havior of vulcanized rubber by the dipole mechanism. Shortly after the 1929 A] EE meet ing. Kitchin was invited to join what wa? then the Insulation Committee of the National Research Council. Since then, he says, the council s Confer ence on Electrical Insulation has been the technical group in which he feels most at home. He has held the office; of secretary, vice-chairman, and chairman. He has seen the con ference grow from about 40 members to more than 300 and is impressed bv the ability of the younger men in the group. He feels that the annual meet ing is one of the high spots of his vear because of the range and varietv of papers presented. He also enjoys the informal atmosphere which en courages the presentation of results "hot out of the laboratory.'" Kitchin has been the author or co-author of 11 papers presented at the confer ence. Five were on microbial attack on buried rubber insulation, while the others were on power factor of rubber, a new way of jointing rubber cables, the effect of soft films on d-c breakdown of polyethylene, cutting of rubber by atomic oxygen, the studv of corona spaces, and treeing breakdown in polvethvlene. Kitchin's work on microbiological studies of insulation has been sum marized in technical journals and has been presented before technical meet ings such as the Gordon Conference and other interested groups. Early in World War II. Kitchin be came active in the development of methods for jointing various types of cable--especially submarine commu nication cables. As a result of his work, he can take pride in having made what he calls a "modest contri bution" to the Havana cable, the Air Force and Alaska cables, and the Trans-Atlantic and Trans-Pacific ca bles. Kitchin's first years were spent in Lawrence. Mass., where he was bom on May 4. 1896. After early grades in grammar school, he attended South Lancaster Academy, which was run by Seventh Day Adventists. He recalls that like a chameleon, he temporarily became a "Sabbathkeeper." but that conversion did not last even though he has alwavs re spected the sect for their sincerity of belief. The country around Lancaster "as ideal for elementarv skiing and Kitchin, like the other youngsters of the area, put in his apprenticeship on barrel-staves before graduating to fancier skiing equipment. He was also interested in electricity and used most of the money he earned doing odd jobs to buy motors, batteries, and books on electricity. After the academy, Kitchin at tended Methuen ('Mass, i High School. At the time, his family owned a 50-acre farm with cows, chickens, horses, and other animals and Kitchin became proficient at milk ing, plowing, and other farm chores. He enjoyed the rugged, outdoor life but also continued his interest in electricity by building all the equip ment for an amateur radio except the phones. This was the time of rotary spark gaps, silicon detectors, and loose couplers, and Kitchin was pretty proud of his 100-foot mast and antenna with spreaders. With the rig, he was able to pick up the Key West and Panama Canal naval radio sta tions. Kitchin was also interested in Tesla coils and shamed the timid by having his little sister pick off an 18inch spark with a pair of scissors. When a hurricane blew down the mast, Kitchin dropped radio and took up the study of piano. Although it seems incredible now that he thinks back, he remembers practicing 10 hours on the day after the radio mast fell. With such enthusiastically pro longed practice sessions and a selfclaimed exceptional lack of talent, Kitchin considers it fortunate for his family that he left to attend Phillips .Midover Academy soon afterwards. While at Andover. Kitchin planned to eat malted milk tablets instead of supper and use the time to practice the piano. He soberly reflects that it was rather Lucky for his own health and for music that he never carried out this plan. Instead, he turned his energy to the more quiet pursuit of studying foreign language;--a hobby which has fascinated him ever since. For eign languages interested him . so much that he used the alloted evening studv periods at Andover to read French and German novels, and then would have to get up earlier than the rest of the boys to do his required studving. He took an ice cold shower accompanied bv a lot of chest pummeling in order to get himself into shape for the early morning studies --but this habit was discontinued when a deputation of fellow students protested. Kitchin graduated in 1915 after two years at Andover. He received two prizes in German, had the high est general average in his class, and was voted '"greasy grind" by his classmates. To prevent the impres sion that he was a terrific scholar, however. Kitchin point; out that he "took most of the tough subjects in his junior vear and a lot of foreign language courses during the last year at Andover." It was during his vears at Andover that Kitchin met his wile-to-be. Evelvn. Though it was love at first sight for him. he says she was used to older `'mature" college boys, so for quite a while iooked on him as just a nice kid, a practice he claims she has continued to some degree. By the time Kitchin entered MIT in the fall of 1915, they were engaged, despite the advice from the older, "wiser" bovs who said it was silly and wouldn't last. Kitchin's comment on the matter is: "Now 42 years, three sons, and seven grandchildren later, we are still in love, so you can t aiwavs predict correctly about these things." Near the end of his sophomore year in 1917. when Kitchin was 21 years old--he enlisted in the Signal Corps and got married. He spent 13 months of his two-year hitch in France, but makes no claims to hero ism. "We had radio stations near the front Lines at Metz, and 1 saw balloons and planes shot down, but did not get into direct combat," he says. During the last four months of his tour of duty in France, Kitchin attended the University of Besancon and lived with a French family. He enjoyed Insulation, April, 1958 25 Kuchin. (on the right) and 0. S. Pratt, a co-worker and co-author of recent papers, are shown in the Simplex lab inspecting equipment for studying heid-free cutting of insulation bv products of electrical dis charge, such as atomic oxygen. the period particularly because of his ability to speak French fluently. After coming home. Kitchin re turned to MIT, where he received his BS in chemistrv in 1921. By then, the Kitchins had two sons, so there was no other choice but to find a job. Between 1921 and 1925. he worked for the Fixed .Nitrogen Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry of MIT. and at Arthur D. Little. Inc. While with the Fixed Ni trogen Laboratory, he became inter ested in glass blowing, which helped him a great deal later on in high vac uum work since he was able to make his own Langmuir pumps and Mc Leod gauges. During this period. Kitchin developed an automatic train for studying catalysts hv continuous gas analysis and was extremely in terested and quite proud of the work. Kitchin has always pursued his hobbies with as much enthusiasm as he devotes to his work. He has always liked to walk and one year kept track of mileage wdtb a pedometer. He clocked 2600 miles excluding walk ing at work and at home, but credits the pedometer with motivating more than the usual strolling. About 30 years ago, he learned to swim the crawl and has been almost fanatically devoted to swimming ever since. "When I get too decrepit to swim much,-' he says. "I hope I can coach kids.-' He has ample opportunity to practice his coaching technique on youngsters spending the summer on Bustins Island in Casco Bay, Maine, where the Kitchins have a summer place. He finds that the youngsters learn rapidly and it isn't long before they really are "minnows"'--a term his wife affectionately uses to de scribe the group of youngsters that are usually waiting for swimmins les sons from Kitchin. Kitchin himself swims three times a day durins: vaca tions and week-ends at Casco Bav-- including 600 yards before breakfast. He recalls that 20 years ago he swam the three miles around Bustins Island in 1 hour and 27 minutes. During the winter, he trains at the MIT pool i about a 15-minute walk from Sim plex) to keep in shape for summer swimming. Some years ago, Kitchin kept up ocean swimming at a Boston beach through November and then swam for a color movie on December 31st. On the same day. a man who fell into nearby Lynn harbor died from exposure that night in a hos pital. That was enough for Kitchins wife, whom he refers to as Mama. "She put a permanent veto on that sort of thing, he says, "and nowa days. I practice moderation--but not to excess." Though she occasionally lays down the law--as in the case of ocean swimming in mid-winter--Mama is an angel, according to Kitchin. and would have to be to put up with him. Though there are manv instances, Kitchin recalls one that was typical of her patience: "I have built mv own radios and amplifiers ever since broadcasting started," he said. "Much of the work was done on the `kitchin' table and you have to be married to an angel to get awav with much of this. I once made a 12-foot exponential horn by making a plaster cast around a properly shaped bag filled with sawdust. I reinforced the piaster with burlap and chicken wire, but the first time I pulled the bag out, the whole works collapsed because I hadn t mixed the piaster correctly. Instead of throwing me out of the kitchen. Mama insisted I start over and finish it after all she'd been through the first time." At another time. Kitchin became interested in playing the organ. When someone complained about his early morning practising on a studio organ in a supposedly emptv busi ness block, he bought a used parior organ for 310. One of his sons fixed it up with a blower from an oil burner instead of the foot bellows, but it was pitched too high for ac companiment by another son who played the flute. Kitchen's decision to retune the organ to A435 was another ordeal which must have taxed his wifes patience. "It was quite an operation." he recalls. "In order to tune the reeds. I had to file the ends to raise pitch or file in near the support to lower it." I made a beat oscillator with a neon tube on the output and ran a stroboscope disc with a synchronous motor. Then I beat the oscillator against the 435 cps reed. With vernier control on the oscillator. 1 could approach each pitch by filing in very small steps and do a precision job. It was easv and fun once I got the hang of filing the reeds properly, but at first the whistle of the oscillator and the steadv tone nearly drove Mama wild." Just before LP records were put on the market. Kitchin started to re cord from the radio on home-made blanks. He bought 350 old 16-inch transcriptions for 10 cents a piece, steamed the lacquer off the alumi num. redissolved and filtered it. and recoated them 13 at a time in a cab inet with filtered air. He recorded the Philharmonic and other symphony orchestras for about six \ears and savs that some of the records are quite good. He has given up the prac tice however, and now buvs LP rec ords and listens to FM. Kitchin has 26 institution. Uprit, 1958 also continued hi? interest in the piano- hut claims that the results are definite!) not for the ears of the pub lic. He feels that studs and practice on the piano adds a lot to his deeper enjoyment of hearing a real artist, however, since it gives him a better idea of what is involved. The studv of languages continues to interest Kitehin. He has read quite a bit in French. German. Latin, Greek, and Russian, and is now read ing Dante in Italian. He hopes to get around to finishing Plato's Republic and the works of Thucydides and then read Don Quixote and The Brothers Karamazov as well as severa! other novels, but lack of time and a renewed interest in calculus have kept him from spending all the time that he'd like on reading. kitehin also participates in a lot of activities which he considers sociallv useful as well as enjovahle. He has been an examiner in signalling for the Boy Scouts, a cubmaster. and even taught Sunday school for a while. He admits that he is no great theologian, but that he enjoved teaching the classes. He is presently a fraternity chapter visitor at MIT and on the visiting committee to the Department of Mathematics there. He had been on similar visiting com mittees to the Modern Language De partment and the then-unbuilt Hay den Library. Kitehin is also active in fund-raising and alumni work for MIT. He has been secretary and chairman of the Men's Club of his church and he and his wife have twice been co-chairmen of the College Club's Evening Study Group. In addition to his work for the Conference or. Electrical insulation and the AIEE. Kitehin belongs to the American Chemical Societv. the New lork Academy of Sciences, and the Cum Laude Society, Though he has been living his life as fully as he can. Kitehin always has a lot of plans for any spare moments that may come up in the future. In fact, even his idea of a future life is crowded with activity. "If there is a future life." he says. "I hope that there are interesting problems and always something new to be found around the next corner." NEW ENGLAND MICA COMMUTATOR MICA INSULATION AND f-24 High Heat MitJ Plate is complete^ inor game, nas high reflective value and is resistant lo SS0 * centigrade. OUR insulation. Available in large sheets or stamped to specifications. Class 6 and Class H Sfittt, roll and tate lerms Fortwed Slot lirwrs Tell ui Your area of interest and we will send generous samples for testing -- ort send drawings for quotation and learn how you can have better insulation at tower cost. MicaNEW ENGLAND CO., INC. WALTHAM 54, MASSACHUSETTS Print In$. 15 on Reader Service Card Insolation, April. 27