Edited and Designed by Ian M. Shumard Revised 1st Edition 2012
Š 2012 by Shubox Design www.yourphillydesign.com
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Charles C. Shumard
This book is dedicated to the American Dream, and that it may still live in the heart of this once great land of opportunity.
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INVENTOR
Charles C. Shumard
Ancestry
8
Childhood
10
Adolescence
14
College Years
16
Early Career
20
RCA years
24
Rocky Run & Sarnoff Labs
30
RCA Astro
34
Retirement
36
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Charles C. Shumard
◊ Radium, the first radioactive element, was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie. ◊ Spanish-American War over Cuba, began April 22nd and lasted 112 Days. ◊ 1st telephone message from a submerged submarine, by Simon Lake ◊ 1st automobile sold ◊ 1st Auto Insurance policy sold by Travelers Insurance Co. ◊ China leased Hong Kong’s new territories to Britain for 99 years. ◊ 1st amusement pier opened in Atlantic City, NJ ◊ City of New York was established. ◊ Delivered milk cost 13 cents a half gallon. 7
Ancestry Mother’s Family (The Beeks)
Charlie’s maternal great-great-great
grandfather, Christopher Beeks, was a British soldier who came to America in 1776 to fight against the colonists during the Revolutionary War. After being taken prisoner, he became so sympathetic toward the cause of the rebels that he turned turncoat and remained in America after the war. Nothing more was known except that he and his wife, Catherine, had a son, Samuel C. Beeks. Samuel was born in 1800 and fought in the War of 1812.
Samuel C. Beeks bore a son,
Matthew L. Beeks, in 1828. Matthew
The Beeks Family Circa 1895
and Mary Beeks had a son, Francis Asbury Beeks on March 7, 1850. Francis eventually married Hannah Madora Fuller. Francis and Hannah bore four daughters: Lilly Maud (B. 9-21-1877); Mary Ethel (B. 11-27-1878); Rhoda Verna (B. 11-5-1880); and Eleta Althear (B. 2-1-1882). Mary Ethel Beeks was Charlie’s mother who married William Harvey Francis Shumard.
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Charles C. Shumard Father’s Family (The Shumards) Charlie’s paternal great-great-great grandfather, Bartholomew Shumard, was born on January 20, 1769 in Monmouth, County, New Jersey. His son, Thomas Potter Shumard was born January 26th, 1805. He in turn had a son Ephraim Henry Shumard, born October 28th, 1852 in Cambridge, Ohio. Ephraim had an only son, William Harvey Francis Shumard, and who went on to marry Mary Ethel Beeks and give birth to their only child, Charles Clio
W. Harvey and Mary Ethel Wedding Photo 1897
Shumard. Charlie was born November 4, 1898, near Ridgeway, Missouri. He referred to his birthplace as the “poorhouse.” His mother, Mary Ethel, and his father, William Harvey, were visiting with Mary’s parents at the Harrison County Farm, where her father was the superintendent. Dr. W.H. Wiley assisted Charlie’s grandmother, Madora Fuller Beeks, in the actual birth. Also in attendance were his maternal aunts,Verna Beeks Hunt and Althear Beeks Stanley. His Aunt Verna later vouched
Charles 6 months old 1898
for his birth date years later when Charlie needed an authenticated birth certificate for employment.
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Childhood and Early Memories
As an only child, Charlie’s father had a farm that was four miles from
Brooklyn, Missouri, and ten miles from Ridgeway and the town of Bethany. He walked four miles to school each day. He used to walk to the one-room schoolhouse with his first cousin, Beulah, who lived with “Grandma Beeks,” less than 100 yards away. He recalled walking back and forth across the rocks of “the big creek” along the way to school.
Sometimes Charlie would take the long way to school by riding his horse,
also named “Charlie.” That means of transportation did not last very long, for he said it was too much trouble to tend to his horse outside the schoolhouse all day long. He recalled several other children that would walk to school. He specifically remembered his friend, Virgil, who would walk with his father everyday. Much later during a visit home, Charlie noted Virgil’s tombstones at the local cemetery and that his friend and father both died at the age of 50.
When his parents moved to Bethany at the age of nine, he had a dog that
his father “gave the dog to someone else, and that made me very sad.” He was very attached to his dog, “Rover.” Charlie recalled his father as a “strict
Charlie (right) with cousin, George Burgin 1900
disciplinarian with a strong temper. I got a few lickin’s I thought I didn’t deserve. He never beat me or anything, but he use to paddle my rear.”
Grandpa Beeks gave Charlie’s father the farm, in which he farmed for 3-4
years. On the family farm, his father had a big “threshing machine.”
During harvest, Charlie would help carry water from either a spring or the two wells, to the men who were working
on the farm. His mother, Mary Ethel, would prepare and serve the food. Charlie recalled one time, where his father “slid into a pitchfork and ran it right into his arm, leaving a life-long scar.”
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Charles C. Shumard Harvey, Charles’s father, went to school and even taught. But Harvey eventually worked as a “clerk” and then an “assessor.” Harvey drove a truck delivering gasoline all over the territory. Charlie remembered going for long rides on his dad’s Ford delivery truck. He also recalled that his father always “had some kind of car all the time.” That was rare for this time period. The Apperson Jack Rabbit was one car that Harvey let him drive out in the country. Charlie recalled, “I was too small to reach the pedals.” Eventually, his father bought a feed store, where he worked for a long time. Charlie described his father as a “hard worker.” Charlie had very limited memories of his mother, but he did
Steam Threshing Engine circa 1910
recall that she was always sick. He said, “She would get nauseated, and very ill.” His father would come home from the Odd Fellows Lodge meeting in Brooklyn, Missouri, “where the schoolhouse was, with smoke smell on him, and that would make her sick.” The Independent Order of the Odd Fellows was founded during the 18th century in England. It is a fraternity of men and women that share common beliefs and core values of friendship, love, and truth in its community. In 1819, Thomas Wildey founded the first American lodge in Baltimore, Maryland. Today the fellowship has spread to 26 different countries worldwide. Other recollections that Charlie had as a child was that he attended Sunday school at the local Methodist Church, and that he and his friends would talk about baseball afterwards. “We had our own local team and went to nearby towns to watch them play.” He also noted that his father was a singer in the choir, and that he had a very “good bass voice.”
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The extended family seldom had any family gatherings,
mainly because people had to travel by horse and wagon for quite some distance. They would sometimes visit the Burgins, the family of his Aunt Etta Burgin (his father’s sister who had four children), and Charlie recalled enjoying those visits. The Buntins and Edsons, families of his paternal great aunts, would also be there for those visits. In a family picture, taken by Harvey Shumard, the group was standing beside the water pump. Charlie explained that was a typical spot for a group photo in those days. He explained for a family to have running water was a sign of wealth.
Charlie knew both sides of his grandparents for a long time.
He remembered that Grandpa Beeks, his mother’s father, “fooled around with a candy-making sugar machine. He had inherited quite a bit of land, but he had no ambition and eventually nothing was left of it.” Eventually he “fell off the roof and became an invalid,” and his Aunt Althear took care of him. Aunt Althear, a younger sister of Mary Ethel, had married Reuben Stanley. Rueben Stanley was the owner of a thriving lumberyard in Bethany, and in which at different times had businesses in New Hampton and King City,
Original Apperson “Jack Rabbit” Advertisement
Missouri. Rueben eventually became the caregiver for much of the Beeks family. His Grandpa Shumard was “a hustler, and made quite a bit of money and never required help from anybody. He had a little
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Charles C. Shumard farm, grew his own tobacco; he smoked his own tobacco in his pipe and it smelled terrible!” He recalled his Grandpa as short and overweight, but that he was a hard worker. He remembered that “he use to work all day and go out at night.” Grandpa Shumard was also a member of the Odd Fellows Lodge. His Grandma Shumard, who had trouble hearing, “never seemed to be very loving, but she was very good to me.” Later, when Charles was fourteen, his mother developed “tumor trouble. The operation was a success but infection set in and killed her.” His mother was only thirty-three when she passed away. After his mother died, he said he had “no real home of my own until my father remarried. And that was not real homey either.” Harvey married his second wife, Nannie Beatrice, a schoolteacher, about two years after his mother died. Charlie remembered her as having “quite a temper; her black eyes would sparkle
Shumard-Buntin Family Portrait 1903
when she got angry.” During the time his father was married to Nannie, Charles slept outside in a tent. One cold night, he took a light out to the tent to keep warm and “set the bed and clothing on fire. The smoldering just missed becoming a full-blown blaze!” During Charlie’s high school years, he worked very hard to save money, and he held several jobs to keep busy. He had one job driving a lawyer to work in his car, and also drove a delivery truck for his father. He remembered being paid
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Adolescence and Early Adulthood $5 per week. He also worked in a drugstore as a “soda jerk.” One time when he was working the machine, it stopped. “I was tinkering with it trying to get it to work, when it started up. My finger was caught between the gear and chain and squeezed it off. It was so numb it didn’t hurt.” Charlie also picked cherries on a farm, and delivered the St. Louis Dispatch and Grit Magazine. The last summer before college, he and his first cousin, George Burgin, saw an ad in the newspaper for a jobopening for “core makers,” He explained that “cores were made for castings. You would make forms for holes that
Shumard-Burgin Family Portrait 1903
are the size of the mold you want.” He said, “our passage was paid for to South Milwaukee,” where the summer job would be. George had become homesick by the time they reached
Milwaukee, and went back home. Charlie stayed and made enough money to pay for his entire first year of college.
Around time the he was to leave for college, his father was re-married to a widow by the name of Esther Guyman.
She had two children, Harold and Leah Guyman. Charlie recalled Esther as a “good woman.” All the time he was in college, he would send his laundry home, and she would always send it back carefully done. His father never helped him through college, for Harvey said he would “have to make his own way, otherwise he would be showing favoritism,” as
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College Years his wife had two children that he would have to help too. Charlie said, “I don’t remember him giving me anything. He lent me his car-one trip around in those four years.” There were not very many cars in 1917, but his father always owned one.
Charles began his college studies in 1917 at the University of Missouri. He
chose a state school because one could “attend for almost nothing, about $15 a semester, and room and board were very cheap.” He liked physics and thought he would like engineering, and Missouri was appealing because it had a School of Engineering.
Campus life was very similar then as it is now, with the exception of
automobiles. Almost no automobiles were evident. He remembered when his father drove down one weekend, and how excited he was to drive around campus.
During the first year he lived in a private home in Columbia, “with one of
the boys from home.” His second year he stayed in a different private home, in a “basement room that was pretty nice.” And in exchange, he took care of the
Portrait with parents 1908
furnace. He also took care of another home’s furnace up the street. His third year, he stayed in Lanthrop Hall over the cafeteria, which had two floors for young men.
Again Charles stayed busy working his way through college. During his second summer, he worked in Davenport,
Iowa. There he piled lumber for a lumber company. During his third summer, he worked in East St. Louis, at an aluminum company that was part of Alcoa (owned by the Mellons.) There he made aluminum tanks, pipes, and valves.
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He joined the SATC (Student Army Training Corps) in 1918. “They paid all your expenses (which helped his second
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Charles C. Shumard year), and when it was over they gave you a bonus and the clothes that I was issued.” He also picked apples, tended furnaces as stated before, worked at the school cafeteria, a store, and also in the Bursar’s Office. Charlie somehow also found the time to learn to play the mandolin while at MU. Charlie was so busy working his way through college that he did not have much of a social life, although he did remember a few women that he dated. He did recall two of his good friends that had died from the Bubonic Plague, a disease that was rampant at that time. He founded the Harrison County Club on campus in 1921, as was the Club’s president. Ruth Woodward was the Vice President, who he later went on to marry and bear three children. Charlie first met Ruth Woodward at a Harrison County Club function on campus in 1921. They were both seeing different people at the time. They saw more of each other when he would go home over weekends to Bethany and she to Cainsville to see her widowed father and sister, Olive Woodward. Ruth’s father, Ralph Ouray Woodward, born in 1842, was twice divorced by the time he met Ruth’s mother. Her mother, Christina Pontius, was eighteen and he was forty-two. Ralph Woodward was old enough to be her mother’s grandfather. Ralph, the son of a Baptist minister, had ridden the Pony Express and fought in the Civil War for the North. Ruth’s mother, Christina, died of heart disease at the age of forty-when she was only nine years old. Charlie would visit Ruth in Cainsville, where “her father always sat and read the Bible.” There wasn’t “much to do on a date in those days,” so he would drive her around in his father’s car. He recalled, “driving up and
University of Missouri-Columbia 17
down a washboard series of hills.� During one visit, one of many tornadoes that frequented in that area had born down. He stayed out of the storm cellar until the very last minute. When he surfaced, the tornado had missed the Woodward farm but had taken down a neighbor’s barn.
In 1921, Charles graduated from the
University of Missouri with a Bachelors of Science in Engineering. Ruth Woodward earned a B.S. in Education. He graduated in the upper third of the engineering class, while Ruth graduated in the upper ten percent. He often teased Ruth that she majored in French and Spanish and that was why she had higher marks!
After graduation, their courtship continued
mostly by letters because Charlie had gone to Chicago for employment, and Ruth had accepted a teaching position at what was then known
After the marriage of Ralph Woodward and Christina Pontius (Ralph, age 42, top row middle; Christina, age 18, top row right) 1885
as North Texas Agricultural College near Fort Worth, Texas. She traveled once or twice to Chicago to visit Charlie, and they once met up in New Orleans around Christmas in 1923, the year before they married.
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Charles C. Shumard
◊ Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize. ◊ Boehing began manufacturing aircraft and left the furniture business. ◊ Franklin D. Roosevelt contracted Polio. ◊ Chicago White Sox Baseball team was accused of throwing the World Series. ◊ Iowa became the first state to impose a cigarette tax. ◊ Ellis Island quarantined on May 18th due to Typhus Outbreak. ◊ A Buick Touring Car Model D sold for $650.00 ◊ A Cadillac Victoria sold for $4540.00 19
Early Career
Immediately after graduation from The University of Missouri, Charlie went to Chicago to work for Consolidated
Edison Company as a junior engineer for two years. He said he learned a lot those two years, and he worked “everywhere; above ground, underground,” and ended up in the Street Department.
In 1924 he took a job with AT&T in New York City, in which he had been contracted by WEAF, a major New York
radio station. Owned by AT&T, 600 AM WEAF, was started in 1922, and it became NBC’s flagship station in 1926. In 1928, the station was purchased by The Radio Corporation of America (A theme all too common throughout the history of telecommunications.)
His job was to measure the station’s electrical field strength throughout the New York/New Jersey area. Charlie remembered while in Newark, New Jersey, during the Democratic National Convention, he listened to the announcement of “Alabama casts 24 votes for Underwood,” a phrase which became nationally famous for its mocking of the divisiveness of the Democratic Party and the convention’s historically lengthy 100 ballots.
Charlie was almost 26, and Ruth, almost 25, were married
in the study of the minister of the First Baptist Church in Cainsville, Missouri on September 8, 1924. It was a small ceremony. Bonnabel Burrows, a childhood friend of Ruth Woodward, was her maid-ofhonor. Harvey Shumard and Ralph Woodward were the only other attendants.
WEAF, owned by AT&T, was on of several radio stations acquired by RCA in 1928 to form the National Brodcasting Company
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Following their marriage in Cainsville, they travelled the
country in a touring sedan. They travelled to Niagara Falls with stops in Des Moines, Chicago, Cleveland and Pennsylvania. Ending their wedding trip in Atlanta, Georgia, they had parked their
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Charles C. Shumard touring car with the roof down outside a restaurant while they ate. It was parked in front of a window where they could keep an eye on it. During dinner, there was a fire next door to the restaurant. When they came outside, nearly all of their luggage had been stolen. Among the items taken were Ruth’s wedding dress, Charlie’s Commonwealth Edison stock worth $800, jewelry, and a pocket camera with all of their pictures from the honeymoon trip. A fireman had witnessed two men grab the luggage and run, but had done nothing to help stop the theft. Although they were devastated, Charlie was able to have the bonds replaced. The camera and all of their pictures were never recovered. Charlie and Ruth’s first residence was in Atlanta, and Charlie received an offer to teach at The Georgia School of Technology, which is now known as Georgia Institute of Technology. They thought they would like living in Atlanta, so he accepted $1800 to teach one class in radio. Charlie earned his master’s degree while teaching at Georgia Tech, a feat uncommon for men in those days. He helped to get the school’s radio station up and running. The bankrupt station had been recently donated to the school, so Charlie set up the studio, brought in a piano, and held a contest to find a radio announcer. He was also instrumental in changing the
Charles and Ruth’s Wedding Picture 1924
call letters from WBBF to the current WGST in 1925, and its
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Georgia School of Technology Campus, Early 1900’s broadcast frequency from 740 kHz to 1110 kHz (AM.) WGST News Radio is currently licensed by a Clearchannel Communications subsidiary and the station simulcasts on 640 AM and 92.3 FM.
By the summer of 1925, Charlie and his wife were expecting their first child. Around the same time, he was chosen
by the head of the engineering department to attend a two-week conference at a Plate Glass Plant in Pittsburgh, PA, which was sponsored by Westinghouse. While attending the conference, he was offered a summer position by Westinghouse in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Charlie and Ruth had their first child on April 17, 1926. Born at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, their baby girl
was named Ethel Shumard after Charlie’s mother, Mary Ethel. Harvey Shumard traveled all the way from Bethany to Atlanta. Charlie recalled saying “you get to see your grandpa now!” Harvey passed away in July 1927 in Bethany, Missouri.
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Charles C. Shumard In 1927, Charlie was offered a job with RCA in Yonkers, New York. He went immediately to New York, where he rented an apartment in the Bronx. By August, Ruth and their daughter drove up from Atlanta to New York, and they bought their first house in Yonkers. Their second child, Charles Chadburne Shumard, was born at Yonkers Hospital on September 15, 1928. For a while, they enjoyed living in Yonkers. Charlie rode the train to work and walked through Van Cortlandt Park to get to work each day. He felt “it would have been ideal to stay that way,� as he enjoyed their home, friends, and employment.
First Home in Yonkers, NY 1928 23
During World War I, the United States government seized control of all patents relating to long distance radio communications and allocated them to the military. When the war ended, the government still controlled this radio technology. To end the government monopoly over long distance communication, the government wanted a publically-owned national radio corporation. On October 19, 1919, with patents monopolized by the U.S. Army and Navy, General Electric Corporation acquired the assets of The American Marconi Telegraph Company and various patents owned by Westinghouse and the United Fruit Company. GE formed a publically-owned radio company, the Radio Corporation of America. The main companies, General Electric, RCA, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, and AT&T, all collaborated to build a national radio system, but RCA was the major company in front of it all. In 1928, RCA formed the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) through acquiring and merging the major radio networks such as WEAF, WCAP, WJZ and WRC. In 1929, RCA purchased the Victor Talking Telegraph Company, and formed the RCA-Victor subsidiary. By 1930, the United States Justice Department ordered General Electric and Westinghouse to end their financial interests in RCA under federal anti-trust laws. RCA, under David Sarnoff, became one of the world’s largest companies and pioneered countless technological achievements such as television, early computers, electron microscope, VHS videocassettes, and even the first TIROS weather satellite. In 1986, General Electric bought RCA and disbanded the company. Today, the only remnants of the onetime American icon is the licensed trademark seen on consumer electronics.
Early RCA Years
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Charles C. Shumard
In 1929, Westinghouse, General Electric, and RCA consolidated and purchased The Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey. Following the reorganization, the New York employees were transferred to RCA at Camden, New Jersey. A year later, the United States Department of Justice brought anti-trust charges against the three-legged company, and therefore forced Westinghouse and GE to sever ties with RCA. Charlie recalled when he was transferred with the other employees; he sold his house in Yonkers to a man who paid with three $1000 bills. When they transferred to RCA in Camden, they purchased a home for $13,500 in Moorestown, New Jersey, from a couple who had just built the home. RCA agreed to take care of the financing of the home. Charlie had a new job, a new house, and they were expecting another child. One of the first of Charlie’s fourteen U.S. Patents was a communication system for trains. The radio antenna system allowed for a caboose to communicate with the engine. He recalled travelling to Denver to “try it out on a high speed train.” He also developed a radio distribution system for apartment and
Charles C. Shumard 1926
hotel buildings, for which he had three patents. He compared the radio system to today’s cable television distribution systems and that there was one central transmitter and several small receivers.
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Then came Black Thursday on October 29th, 1929, and Charlie was laid off from RCA. Ruth was pregnant with their third child, and they had a brand new house with a mortgage. The bank which held the mortgage agreed to give them an interest-only payment arrangement, and so they managed to keep the house in Moorestown. However, he was forced to sell his Ford Model “T” car, a vehicle that the whole family loved. Ruth gave birth to their third child, Charlotte, on June 5, 1930, at Burlington County Hospital, in Mount Holly, New Jersey. Charlotte was “Daddy’s little cutie,” and was remembered to frequently carry her around on his hip. After less than a year, RCA re-hired Charlie to work in Harrison, New Jersey. It was a cathode ray tube manufacturing plant, a main component used in televisions. He rented out the Moorestown home to George Burgin and his family while they lived in Northern New Jersey, which was for about ten years. Charlie charged $75 a month rent for the Moorestown home. George Burgin was a Vice President at RCA, and his son, Jack, eventually went to school with Charlie’s daughter, Ethel. Charlie worked on television development for RCA
1939 Esquire Magazine Ad introducing Television 26
during that time at the Harrison location. His area of work was on “switching systems and cathode ray tubes.” They lived
I remember one time
“
when our parents drove us over to Brooklyn to a warehouse where Dad purchased a large radio console he planned to use as a cabinet for a TV chassis. He placed a 5” cathode ray tube in it with a 2” magnifier, and suddenly, we were watching TV! This was 1936. We would invite all the neighbors over. Mother would cover the windows with blankets to darken the room, and we would watch Charlie Chaplin, sports events, parades, and be the hit of the neighborhood!”
in three different homes throughout West Orange, New Jersey, during the time Charlie worked at the Harrison tube plant. His daughter, Ethel, recalled “I remember one time when our parents drove us over to Brooklyn to a warehouse where Dad purchased a large radio console he planned to use as a cabinet for a TV chassis. He placed a 5” cathode ray tube in it with a 2” magnifier, and suddenly, we were watching TV! This was 1936. We would invite all the neighbors over. Mother would cover the windows with blankets to darken the room, and we would watch Charlie Chaplin, sports events, parades, and be the hit of the neighborhood! The problem was that, since the chassis was in various stages of development, we never knew when Dad would have it all apart, strung across the ping pong table (which he also made) in the family room. So we were unable to watch TV or play ping pong!” Charlie developed the first two-way wireless communication system. Although he strongly claimed he did not invent the “Walkie-talkie,” he did claim to pioneer the early technology. It was called a “Taletenna,” and it was worn on one’s sleeve. Charlie
RCA Victor Model 630TS was the first best-selling TV in the early 1940’s
recalled “We tried it out one time when we went to New York City. David Sarnoff, who was right in the room, talked into it to someone else in the building. It didn’t work good between the steel beams and that sort of thing, so we never sold it. It had drawbacks-it
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Charles C. Shumard didn’t have a crystal control, so you worked on one frequency. You tuned it to each other. Now, there is a frequency control, and both units have the same frequency and you communicate in that frequency.” In 1940, the Galvin Company (later on became Motorola) mass produced over 50,000 units of the fully developed Walkie talkie, Model SCR300, for the military during World War II. Overall, five different groups or individuals have claimed to have invented the twoway transceiver. Between 1941 and 1945, Galvin made over 130,000 units known as “Handie Talkies.” In 1939, Charlie was transferred back to Camden to work on wireless communication systems as he did prior to his time in television development. During the war,
Motorola SCR-536 as Featured in Mechanix Illustrated, May 1945
Charlie worked with a group of engineers to develop long distance wireless communications. After the war, Charlie developed an AC to DC power converter. He recalled “I got it working so good that the tube wouldn’t stand up, so they (RCA) couldn’t makes tubes to stand up (to the converter system). But the system worked, so it wasn’t my fault (that the tubes failed).”
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Rocky Run and Sarnoff Labs In 1941, RCA opened the David Sarnoff Research Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. This research lab was responsible for the historical development of color television, the electron microscope, early analog computer development, CMOS (Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) circuit technology, and other technologies. Charles was transferred to Princeton in 1946, and worked there among other engineers like Dr. Vladimir Zworykin. Dr. Zworykin, like Charles, was an inventor, engineer, and technological pioneer. Several years later, Ethel’s first cousin, Jean St. Clair, an archivist for National Academy of Sciences, attempted several times to have Charles inducted into the society. Charles was beat out by Dr. Zworykin due to his credit of inventing the electron microscope. However, Charles was listed for many years in “Who’s Who in Engineering,” and he still ended up with fourteen patents to his credit. In 1947, Ethel and Chad were already off to college and Charlotte in high school, and Charlie took on a major renovation project by purchasing a farm property on 45 acres of land for $7750 on Lindbergh Ave in Hopewell Township. The farmhouse dated back to the Revolutionary War, and the property had a total of 13 buildings: two large barns, a smokehouse, milk house, corn crib, a pig shed, and a blacksmith shed. Chad, an Architectural Engineering student at the University of Pennsylvania, took one look at it and said “This is impossible!”
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Rocky Run, Hopewell, NJ 1947
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Charles C. Shumard
Rocky Run Farm during the 1980’s Nevertheless, Charlie set out to renovate the entire property. He hired help to help clear the land, knock down unusable structures, and he sold off most of the old farming equipment as scrap iron for a total of $750. He modernized the two large barns, renovated the farmhouse, and transformed the old abandoned farm into a serene, parklike property that was to be enjoyed for many years to follow. Thousands of rocks surfaced on the land throughout years, and the nickname “Rocky Run” became the name for their home. Charlie also dammed the brook running through the property and created a large pond in which the family would swim. The damn had a 12 foot spillway, and there was a plaque installed marking the year if was completed by C.C. Shumard, which is still there today. Charlie worked at the RCA Sarnoff Laboratory on analog computers, where he said “we got an award on that, and part of my work was working to combine vacuum tubes and circuits to make low frequency filters.” He also built various power supplies for one “analog computer that used 2400 amperes at 6 volts.
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We had an awful lot of tubes in that analog computer; they were all 6 volt tubes, but they had to survive. So I had to develop and design a rectifier power supply. We used two big cables about 2 inches in diameter to carry that current so it would lose (minimal) voltage in going from the power supply to the computer.”
Charlie was referring to the RCA “Typhoon” analog
computer that was put into service in 1951. The computer took three years of research and development in the RCA Sarnoff Labs, and Charlie was one of the main engineers that developed the Typhoon. The Typhoon contained 4,000 vacuum tubes and was one of the largest analog computers ever built. Analog computers were used for solving complex equations, and the Typhoon had been
The RCA Typhoon Analog Computer was put into service in 1951. It contained 4,000 vacuum tubes.
intended for the investigation of complex problems, such as the evaluation of the performances of ships, planes and submarines, and up to the design of complete guided
missile systems. It took a staff of nine engineers and six technicians to operate the Typhoon. To enter a math problem, the information was entered on 100 dials and 6,000 plug-in connections on the programming switchboards. The outputs of the computer were two very large plotter units, 18 recording voltmeters, and a trajectory indicator.
Ethel, one of Charlie’s daughters, recalled, “I remember one summer he worked on a complex calculus problem,
using stacks of tablet paper. When he was finished, he fed it into the computer. Dad (Charlie) declared with pride that both answers came out the same!”
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RCA Astro
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first
artificial satellite into the Earth’s orbit. This event took the United States by surprised, and thus it launched what become known as the “Sputnik Crisis.” The U.S. first reaction was the formation of Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958. The agency is known today as “DARPA” (for Defense,) and its mission is to keep the U.S. military more technologically advanced than its enemies. Then on July 29, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, establishing NASA, and gave the space agency a $100 million budget.
Also in 1958, RCA built its Astro Electronics Division in East
Windsor, New Jersey. RCA had several ongoing classified contracts with the U.S. military during and since World War II, and the Astro Electronics Division would be on the forefront of the “Space Race” efforts during the Cold War.
The TIROS I Project began in 1958 under the management of
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA,) and RCA Astro’s large team of engineers began to build the nation’s first satellite. TIROS, an acronym for Television Infrared Observation Satellite, would eventually spend 78 days in orbit and successfully sent 22,952 images back to earth.
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Diagram for the TIROS I Weather Satellite
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Charles C. Shumard The project had several teams to design and build different components of the satellite, and Charlie was in charge of designing and building the heating and system of the TIROS I. He was also directly involved with putting all of the major components together and assembling the TIROS I. TIROS I was launched by NASA and partners on April 1, 1960 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the United States. The satellite weighed 270 pounds and was 19 inches tall and with a 42 inch diameter. There were two cameras and two magnetic tape recorders. It had onboard nickel cadmium batteries that were charged by 9,200 solar cells. The batteries lasted 78 days, which was 15 less than what was
RCA TIROS I Engineer Team, Groups G, H, and I. The TIROS I team consisted of 11 groups of Lead Engineers and 10 Management Personnel. Charlie is seated in 1st row, 2nd from right.
anticipated. Nonetheless, TIROS I was largely successful, and RCA Astro went on to build and develop space technology for 40 years.
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Retirement Charlie retired in 1961 after 34 years of working for RCA. He endured a career that spanned great technological achievements in America, from radio to television, and from computers to the first weather satellite. Although he did register 14 patents to his credit, there were many more technological contributions Charlie made that have gone unaccounted for by RCA. When his wife, Ruth, retired from teaching in 1963, they took time and travelled around the world. A well-deserved expedition, they travelled through most of Europe including; England, Germany, France, and Russia. They then visited Hong Kong, Bali, Thailand, and Japan. Charlie especially remembered being asked for his autograph in Japan! Returning home, they travelled to Hawaii, California, Texas, Arizona, and then Ohio. Ruth had passed away from heart disease on August 11, 1974, and left Charlie completely devastated. Still living at Rocky Run, Charlie had asked one of his grandchildren, Wesley, to stay with
Thanksgiving Day at Rocky Run 1960
him. Wesley agreed, and the two lived together for a year; the arrangement helped heal the pain of Charlie’s loss. Charlie began to circulate and attend local social functions. He attended functions held by the National Retired Teachers Association (to which Ruth belonged), and wherein he met Rebecca Scott Schmidt, a widow of five years. Rebecca, known as Becky, and Charlie were wed on October 26, 1975, with no witnesses present. Charles sold his beloved and memory-rich home at Rocky Run, and he and Becky moved into a 5 room apartment in Princeton. He still drove a car well into his 90’s, and he was always an avid reader. In his late age, he survived his only son, a grandson, and
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Charles C. Shumard his beloved wife. While he had grieved over those traumatic events, he refused to become consumed by the past. One of his greatest character traits was the ability to focus on the positive events and people in his life. Charlie considered himself most fortunate to had been born and live through nearly a century of phenomenal development and achievement. Charles C. Shumard was 98 years old when he past away in 1997. He lived to see horse-and-buggies become gas-powered automobiles, he saw radio waves reach from coast to coast, televisions go from black-and-white to
Charles C. Shumard’s 85th Birthday Party in Hopewell, New Jersey. 1983
color, and he saw computers that once took up an entire room shrink down to fit on a desktop. We could only hope to witness such great achievements in our own lives, and his accomplishments should show us great inspiration.
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