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Tecumseh Firm Lab In Operation

Tecumseh Firm Lab In Operation image
Parent Issue
Day
15
Month
October
Year
1964
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
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Tecumseh Firm Lab In Operation;

Tecumseh Products Company’s new Ann Arbor Research Laboratory has gone into operation in a $450,000 installation in Research Park with an initial employment of 14 persons.

Dr. Harold W. Katz, 41-year-old electrical engineer, is the lab’s director of research. He outlined objectives of his research unit and gave industry a tip on how it can bring to Ann Arbor needed scientists and engineers who were educated in the Midwest, but who are now elsewhere in the nation.

“Ann Arbor has an outstanding reputation in the nation as a research center and many professionals want to locate here because of the research climate and the city’s offerings,” Katz said.

He told of placing an ad for an engineer in an eastern newspaper and receiving 150 inquiries. “Of the persons I interviewed, all of them said they applied because the name Ann Arbor was in the ad,” Katz said.

“Industry should know of the strong appeal that Ann Arbor has. Professionals are very interested in coming to Ann Arbor to live and because of this the state ought to be able to gain back much trained talent some research work for that left Michigan.” he said.

Tecumseh Products’ 14,000-square-foot Research Park unit, which has just been completed, contains 10 offices and 14 laboratories, a library and conference room.

Departments of the laboratory are control and instrumentation, mechanical techniques, chemical and metallurgical, and solid state devices and materials.

Control and instrumentation is primarily an electronics department which is seeking ideas for , new controls. The mechanical techniques unit studies mechanical systems Tecumseh Products now produces. These include a variety of residential and commercial refrigeration units and small gasoline-powered engines.

The chemical and metallurgical unit works with materials the company uses in manufacturing as well as seeking new, better materials.

Tecumseh Products’ new Research Laboratory was conceived, Dr. Katz said, after the concern purchased Ohio Semi-Conductors, Inc., in I960 and made it a division at the time interest developed in solid-state refrigeration.

Ohio Semi-Conductors was dissolved this year and some of its research workers transferred to Ann Arbor. They include Dr. Arthur E. Middleton of Columbus, Ohio, who headed the research group at Ohio Semi-Conductors and who is now associate director of the local Research Laboratory, which has divisional status.

The laboratory is expected to be in full operation by late next spring, when up to 30 persons are expected to be working at the laboratory, including 20 engineers and scientists, Dr. Katz said.

Tecumseh Products has strong ties with the U-M and is contracting with the U-M to do some research for the firm.

U-M President Harlan Hatch is a member of Tecumseh Products board of directors and earlier cited as the person primarily responsible for getting the firm to locate its Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor.

Katz, who lives at 2141 Medford, went with Tecumseh Products last June after having been manager of electron devices for 12 years at General Electric Company’s Electronics Laborary in Syracuse. N.Y.

His associates at the laboratory include, besides Middleton, Dr. Lyman W. Orr, Theodore E. Luke and Raymond F. Kennedy, all electrical engineers; Joe W. Thorpster, a physicist; Dr. Otto K. Riegger, a metallurgist, and Eugene W. Lewis, Phillip E. Chase, Derek A. Finch and Morton Jackson, all mechanical engineers.