MIT's Entrepreneurial excellence comes from the achievements MIT graduates make after they leave MIT. The collective wide spectrum of experiences and opportunities our alumni have had gives them the necessary credentials to be inspiring role models and mentors for our current students.

Richard J. Testa
William A. Porter
Arthur D. Little
William R. Hewlett
Robert M. Metcalfe
Robert A. Swanson
Carroll L. Wilson
Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.
Amar G. Bose
William F. Rockwell, Sr.

Mr. Richard J. Testa (1939-2002)
Giant of the Venture Capital Community
Founding Partner of Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault, LLP

Richard J. Testa, founding partner of Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault, LLP and one of the pioneers of the venture capital industry, passed away on December 2nd, 2002, in his sleep at his Wayland home. Testa was 63 years old.

"Dick was a builder," said William Asher, managing partner of Testa, Hurwitz. "Early in his remarkable career he helped create the venture capital industry. He continued shaping the private equity world by founding Testa, Hurwitz, the country's leading venture capital law firm. Dick's vision and unassuming, direct manner will be missed by everyone, from colleagues to clients alike."

Testa was a legal pioneer in the VC and emerging technology communities, helping these nascent industries finance their endeavors on an unprecedented scale. As lead counsel for national and international venture capital firms, and for a large number of technology companies and other businesses financed by venture capitalists, Dick used the law to drive innovation.

Dick's mentor was General Georges Doriot, widely credited with founding the venture capital industry through his launching of American Research and Development (ARD), the first venture capital firm. Dick spearheaded deals with ARD that spawned dozens of successful companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation and Teradyne.

Dick founded Testa, Hurwitz in 1973 with the intent of creating the nation's pre-eminent private equity law firm. Twenty-nine years later, Testa, Hurwitz has the world's largest venture capital practice and one of the largest high-technology operating company practices in the United States. Two years ago, he presided over a complete leadership transition to a new generation of Testa, Hurwitz lawyers, leaving behind a legacy of continuity and stability.

"Dick was a man of few words and great vision," said Steve Hurwitz, co-founder and partner of Testa, Hurwitz. "Dick had a simple mantra that he repeated over and over again —all clients were to receive, and deserved to receive, the highest quality of legal work, on time and at reasonable cost. He believed what was best for the clients was best for the firm. Testa, Hurwitz the firm is truly a reflection of Dick Testa, the man."

Dick leaves behind his wife of 43 years, Janet, five children and fourteen grandchildren. Dick was a graduate of Assumption College in Worcester, MA and was honorary chairman of the school's Centennial Capital Campaign. He was also a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Funeral Arrangements and Memorial Fund

Tribute to Dick Testa
by Noubar Afeyan and Edward Kania

"We just learned that our dear friend and mentor Dick Testa died in his sleep last night. Dick helped us found Flagship Ventures three years ago following an intimate involvement with each of our careers for over a decade. In fact, the very name of our firm, Flagship Ventures, was conceived by him after we spent many months suggesting alternatives to him. What a gift to keep with us to cherish his memory every time we hear our firm's name.

We mourn this tragic loss of a relatively young man, and he will be deeply missed by many thousands of people whose lives and careers he has personally touched and helped. We hope to achieve in our lives even 10% of what Dick did both as a human being and as a leader of a field.

God bless his very, very large heart and soul."
- Noubar Afeyan and Ed Kania

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William A. Porter '67
Founder of Online Brokerages

As a Sloan Fellow, Porter earned a Master's degree from Sloan in 1967.

In Porter's first start-up company, Commercial Electronics Inc., he conceived and developed the first color low-light-level broadcast television camera. All broadcast cameras today have the capability Porter developed at Commercial Electronics, which was eventually acquired by Warner Communications. Since his first entrepreneurial foray, Porter has developed more than 20 products and services and holds 14 patents.

Porter sparked the digital trading revolution when, in 1982, he founded Trade Plus, a pre-Web electronic brokerage service bureau for stockbrokers. Here the world's first online trade took place on July 11, 1983. Frustrated by the hefty commissions charged by traditional stockbrokers, Porter saw the chance to use personal computers to let individuals participate directly in financial markets. Realizing he could compete with the major brokerage houses, Porter launched a subsidiary called E*Trade Securities, Inc. in 1993, to enable customers all over the world to make trades in real time. Today, with a market capitalization of $5.4 billion, more than one million active accounts and more than 80,000 transactions handled each business day, E*Trade Group, Inc., is the recognized leader in online investing.

In 2000, Porter also co-founded International Securities Exchange, the $90 million start-up that is competing with Wall Street's old floor broker system. ISE has become the first fully electronic options exchange in the U.S. and the world's first option marketplace combining electronic trading and auction market principles.

Believing in the power of entrepreneurship to leverage technological innovation, the William and Joan Porter recently made a $25 million gift to enhance the synergy between the Sloan School's strength in management and the entrepreneurial and technology prowess found throughout MIT.

"Bill Porter is an ideal example of what a Sloan education produces: an innovator, a builder, a successful entrepreneur," said MIT Sloan Dean Richard Schmalensee. "Beyond making possible new bricks and mortar, this gift from Bill and Joan represents an understanding of what it takes to transform and advance an organization, an organization they care about very deeply."

The Porters requested their gift be used to support the continued growth and expansion of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, specifically, and of the entrepreneurial spirit on campus, in general. "I think there are even greater opportunities for graduates with technology know-how to blend their talents with entrepreneurial vision and the ability to raise funds and make things happen," Porter said.

In 1996, the Porters established a full professorship in entrepreneurship at Sloan. Bill Porter also serves on the MIT Entrepreneurship Center's Outside Advisory Board and was a judge of the inaugural MIT Sloan Ecommerce Awards in May 1999. Porter holds an MS in management from Sloan, an MS in physics from Kansas State College and a BA in mathematics from Adams State College. The Porters have four children and 10 grandchildren.

Dr. Arthur Dehon Little (1863-1935)
Father of the Consulting Industry

As an undergraduate at MIT, Arthur D. Little majored in chemistry before the advent of chemical engineering and was the editor of the college newspaper, The Tech, an experience that prepared him for his role as a spokesperson for chemical engineering education, industrial research, and the American chemical industry.

The reluctance of American financiers to undertake ventures in this new technology opportunities that were instead seized by Europeans starting up plants in the United States prompted Dr. Little to mount a writing and speaking campaign directed at financial, political, and educational leaders to encourage the nascent American chemical industry.

In 1886 he and a coworker, Roger B. Griffin, set up the world's first consulting company, whose mission was to provide analytical chemistry and technical product improvement services to private industry. His idea was novel at the time that that systematic R&D, together with sage advice, might possibly be of use to industry. His consulting firm, named Arthur D. Little, Inc., has since grown into one of the world's foremost independent consulting and research organizations today.

Dr. Little has also taught papermaking at the Institute, served on the visiting committee for MIT's departments of chemistry and chemical engineering, and was a life member of the MIT Corporation.

William Redington Hewlett '36
Electronics Pioneer and Founder of Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett was born on May 20, 1913, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He attended Stanford University, and received a bachelor of arts degree in 1934. He also received a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1936. Additionally, he received the degree of Engineer from Stanford University in 1939.

Hewlett met David Packard during their undergraduate days at Stanford. The two engineering classmates became friends and formed a partnership known as Hewlett-Packard Company in 1939 the roots of Agilent. The first product was a resistance-capacitance audio oscillator based on a design developed by Hewlett when he was in graduate school. The company's first "plant" was a small garage in Palo Alto, California and the initial capital amounted to $538.

Hewlett was involved actively in management of the company until 1987, with the exception of the years he served as an Army officer during World War II. He was on the staff of the Army's Chief Signal Officer and then headed the electronics section of the New Development Division of the War Department Special Staff. During this latter tour of duty, he was on a special U.S. team that inspected Japanese industry immediately after the war.

In 1947, shortly after he returned to Palo Alto, Hewlett was named vice president of HP. He was elected executive vice president in 1957, president in 1964, and also was named chief executive officer in 1969.

Hewlett resigned as president in 1977 and retired as chief executive officer in 1978 in accordance with his previously announced plans for management succession within HP. He then served as chairman of HP's executive committee until 1983, when he became vice chairman of the HP board of directors. In 1987, he was named director emeritus.

Over the years, Hewlett contributed to the advancement of various organizations within the electronics industry. From 1950 to 1957 he was on the board of directors of the Institute of Radio Engineers, now the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and served as president of the Institute in 1954. He also played an important role in the development of the former Western Electronic Manufacturers Association, now called the American Electronics Association. In 1985, former President Reagan awarded him the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest scientific honor.

Hewlett had a keen interest in education and medicine. He was a trustee of Mills College in Oakland, California, from 1958 to 1968 and Stanford University from 1963 to 1974, and was a member of the San Francisco regional panel of the Commission on White House Fellows from 1969 to 1970.

He served as board president of the Palo Alto-Stanford Hospital Center (now Stanford Medial Center) from 1956 to 1958 and as a director from 1958-1962. He was a director of the Kaiser Foundation Hospital and Health Plan from 1972 to 1978, and the Drug Abuse Council in Washington, D.C., from 1972 to 1974.

Hewlett was an honorary trustee of the California Academy of Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also was trustee emeritus of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

From 1966 to 1994, he served as chairman of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which he established with his late wife Flora. In 1995, Hewlett supported the founding of the Public Policy Institute of California with an endowment of $70 million. The institute performs independent and objective analyses of major economic, social and political issues facing California. From 1998 to 2001, Hewlett was named a director emeritus of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, after having served as a director of the Institute for 12 years.

Hewlett held 13 honorary degrees from American colleges and universities: honorary doctor of law degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, Yale University, Mills College, Marquette University and Brown University; honorary doctor of science degrees from Polytechnic Institute of New York and Kenyon College; honorary doctor of engineering degrees from the University of Notre Dame, Dartmouth College and Utah State University; and an honorary doctor of humane letters from Johns Hopkins University.

He also held an honorary doctor of public policy degree from the Rand Graduate Institute; and an honorary doctor of humanities degree from Santa Clara University. Internationally, Hewlett held an honorary doctor of electronic science degree from the University of Bologna in Italy.

Hewlett had a wide range of outside interests and hobbies, most of them based on his love for the outdoors. He was a part-time botanist, and an accomplished mountain climber, skier, and fisherman. He also maintained various ranching and cattle-raising operations with the Packard family in California and Idaho.

Robert M. Metcalfe '68
Father of Ethernet and Founder of 3Com

Metcalfe was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969 with degrees in electrical engineering and management. His 1973 Harvard PhD dissertation was entitled Packet Communication. He was consulting associate professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, where he taught computer programming and networking from 1976 to 1983. He was a 1991-92 visiting fellow in the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, England.

Metcalfe is an inspirational renaissance man, with outstanding experience in a broad variety of fields:

While an engineer-scientist (1965-1979), Metcalfe helped build the early Internet. In 1973, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, he invented Ethernet, the international local-area networking standard on which he shares four patents.

While an entrepreneur-executive (1979-1990), Metcalfe founded 3Com Corporation, the billion-dollar networking company where at various times he was Chairman, CEO, division general manager, and vice president of engineering, marketing, and sales.

While a publisher-pundit (1990-2000), Metcalfe was CEO of IDG's InfoWorld Publishing Company (1992-1995). For eight years, he wrote an Internet column read weekly by 629,000 information technology professionals. He also wrote for American Spectator, Forbes, Technology Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired Magazine.

After these three careers, Metcalfe became a venture capitalist, and a general partner at Polaris Venture Partners in Waltham, Massachusetts. Polaris partners are early-stage investors in bio-, info-, and nano- technology companies. Metcalfe focuses on Boston-based infotech start-ups.

Currently, Metcalfe is a director of Avistar Communications (public), Camden Technology Conference (non-profit), EarthLink (public), Ember (Polaris-backed), IDG (private), IDC (private), Invisible Hand Networks (Polaris-backed), Kelmscott Rare Breeds (non-profit), MediaLabEurope (non-profit), MIT (non-profit), MIT's Technology Review Magazine (non-profit), Nanosys (Polaris-backed), and Narad Networks (Polaris-backed). Metcalfe serves on advisory boards of Avaki (Polaris-backed), San Francisco's Exploratorium (non-profit), Sockeye (Polaris-backed), and Yipes (private).

Metcalfe has given speeches, appeared on radio and television, and hosted his own weekly webcast. He has produced conferences including ACM97, ACM1, Agenda, Pop!Tech, and Vortex. His books include Packet Communication, Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing, and Internet Collapses.

Metcalfe received the Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1980 from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In 1988, he received the Alexander Graham Bell Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). In 1995, Metcalfe was elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1996, he received the IEEE's Medal of Honor. In 1997, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. And in 1999, he was elected fellow of the International Engineering Consortium.

After 22 years in Silicon Valley, Metcalfe now lives with his family on a farm in Maine and a townhouse in Boston.

Robert A. Swanson '70 (1947-1999)
Father of the Biotechnology Industry

Robert Arthur Swanson was born on November 29, 1947, and received his SB in chemistry and his SM in management from MIT in 1970. He was the first MIT graduate to complete his MBA in his 4th year of college, and upon graduation, he was honored with the Chemistry Award. Swanson's SM thesis, titled "A Model for New Product Attribute Selection," was supervised by marketing Professor Arnold E. Amstutz. Swanson was introduced to the spirit of high tech entrepreneurship at MIT by his mentor, Professor Richard S. Morse, through a course called "New Enterprises" which is still taught at MIT today.

Following graduation from MIT, Swanson was recruited by John Reed MIT '61, now chairman and CEO of Citicorp and Phil Smith, former president, Citicorp Venture Capital. In 1973, Swanson assumed responsibility for opening the San Francisco office of Citicorp Venture Capital Limited. In 1975, he left Citicorp to join the venture capital partnership of Kleiner & Perkins, now Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers.

Swanson gained world acclaim for starting the biotech revolution, which has impacted the lives of millions of people throughout the world. His life goal was to change the world for the better, and he did. In 1976, at age 29, he and UCSF scientist, Herbert W. Boyer, founded Genentech, the first and most successful biotechnology firm. In recent years, Swanson continued his passion for creating science by working with a wide range of of pioneering start-up companies, including serving as Chairman of Tularik, Inc.

Swanson served as CEO of Genentech from its founding in 1976 through 1990, and as Chairman of the the Board of Directors from 1990 - 1996. Under his guidance, Genentech was the first company to realize the therapeutic applications for recombinant DNA technology, and developed products such as human insulin, interferons, human growth hormone, and TPA. In 1998, new pharmaceuticals developed by Genentech scientists reached annual sales of more than $4 billion.

Prior to founding Genentech, Swanson was a venture capitalist with Citicorp Venture Capital Ltd. in New York and San Francisco. He joined the private venture capital firm and was a partner of Kleiner & Perkins in 1976, and then founded Genentech with a seed investment from that firm. Tom Perkins served as the first Chairman of Genentech. After retiring from Genentech, Swanson formed K&E Management, a private investment management firm.

Swanson was a loyal MIT alumnus serving as a trustee of the MIT Corporation as well as on the visiting Committees of MIT's School of Biology and the Sloan School of Management. In addition, he served as a member of the Board of Fellows of the Harvard Medical School and was appointed to the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

Swanson was also selected by Esquire Magazine as one whose life and work exemplifies America's highest qualities and values: courage, originality, ingenuity, vision, and selfless service. He was regarded as one of the best of a new generation. The Japanese press described him as "The Man Who Captured the Rainbow." He was clearly a man who captured the hearts of all who knew him.

Swanson's List of Significant Affiliations

Carroll L. Wilson '32
Humanitarian Entrepreneur

Carroll L. Wilson ('32) was a Professor of Management at the Sloan School and first Mitsui Professor in Problems of Contemporary Technology at MIT. Wilson devoted much of his career toward seeking solutions to important global problems through the application of scientific, engineering, economic, and political analysis to programs of action. The underlying goal of his work was the improvement of relations among countries and the strengthening of their institutions and people.

Wilson's early career encompassed a number of academic, government, and industrial positions including: Assistant to the President of MIT, Karl Taylor Compton; Vice President and Director of National Research Corporation; first General Manager of the Atomic Energy Commission; President of Climax Uranium Company; and Vice President and General Manager of Metals and Controls Corporation. Since 1959, as a member of the MIT faculty, he designed and directed many international programs including:

• The MIT Fellows in Africa Program 1961-1967
• The MIT Fellows in Latin America Program 1965-1967
• Study of Critical Environmentqal Problems (SCEP) 1970
• Study of Man's Impact on Climate (SMIC) 1971
• Workshop on Alternative Energy Strategies (WAES) 1974-1977
• World Coal Study (WOCOL) 1978-1980
• European Security Study (ESECS) 1981-1983

Wilson's broad-ranging interests are described in the following MIT Technology Review article.

Alfred Pritchard Sloan, Jr.
(Class of 1895)

Sloan's initial benefactor, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., was an innovator in his own right. As chairman of General Motors, Mr. Sloan invented the multidivisional firm, which came to be regarded as the best way to organize large corporations. A graduate of MIT in 1895, he drew on his wealth to invest in MIT and innovation. In 1950, his initial endowment of $5 million (and purchase of the first Sloan building) funded the founding of MIT's fifth school, the School of Industrial Management, later to be renamed MIT Sloan, today a world leader in innovation in management theory and practice.

Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. was born in New Haven, Connecticut, May 23, 1875, the first of five children of Alfred Pritchard Sloan, Sr., and Katherine Mead Sloan. His father, a machinist by training, was then a partner in a small company importing coffee and tea. In 1885 the family moved to Brooklyn, where it was particularly active in the Methodist Church. (Young Alfred's maternal grandfather was a Methodist minister.) Alfred, Jr., excelled as a student both in public schools and at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute where he completed the college-preparatory course. After some delay in being admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (which considered him too young when he first applied), he matriculated in 1892 and took a degree in electrical engineering in three years as the youngest member of his graduating class.

Mr. Sloan began his working career as a draftsman in a small machine shop, the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company of Newark, New Jersey. At his urging, Hyatt was soon producing new antifriction bearings for automobiles. In 1898 he married Irene Jackson of Roxbury, Massachusetts. The next year, at age 24, he became the president of Hyatt, where he supervised all aspects of the company's business. Hyatt bearings became a standard in the automobile industry, and the company grew rapidly under his leadership. In 1916 the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company, together with a number of other manufacturers of automobile accessories, merged with the United Motors Corporation, of which Mr. Sloan became President. Two years later that company became part of the General Motors Corporation (itself established in 1908 as the General Motors Company), and Mr. Sloan was named Vice President in Charge of Accessories and a member of the Executive Committee.

He was elected President of General Motors in 1923, succeeding Pierre S. du Pont, who said of him on occasion: "The greater part of the successful development of the Corporation's operations and the building of a strong manufacturing and sales organization is due to Mr. Sloan. His election to the presidency is a natural and well-merited recognition of his untiring and able efforts and successful achievement." Mr. Sloan had developed by then his system of disciplined, professional management that provided for decentralized operations with coordinated centralized policy control. Applying it to General Motors, he set the Corporation on its course of industrial leadership. The next 23 years, with Mr. Sloan as Chief Executive Officer, were years of enormous expansion for the Corporation and of a steady increase in its share of the automobile market.

In 1937 Mr. Sloan was elected Chairman of the Board of General Motors. He continued as Chief Executive Officer until 1946. When he resigned from the chairmanship in 1956, the General Motors Board said of him: "The Board of Directors has acceded to Mr. Sloan's wish to retire as Chairman. He has served the Corporation long and magnificently. His analysis and grasp of the problems of corporate management, his great vision and rare good judgment, laid the solid foundation which has made possible the growth and progress of General Motors over the years." Mr. Sloan was then named Honorary Chairman of the Board, a title he retained until his death on February 17, 1966. For many years he had devoted the largest share of his time and energy to philanthropic activities, both as a private donor to many causes and organizations and through the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which he established in 1934.

Mr. Sloan, as a realist as well as a humanist and philanthropist, looked upon the Foundation as an extension of his own life and work. Although he recognized the inevitability of change that might dictate a different course, he expected the Foundation would "continue as an operating facility indefinitely into the future...to represent my accomplishments in this life." His accomplishments during his lifetime were of the highest order, and in themselves provide the most dramatic and lasting tribute to his extraordinary talent. Through the Foundation, his accomplishments have been extended and expanded.

Dr. Amar Gopal Bose '51, '52, '56
Acoustical Engineering Pioneer and Founder of Bose Corporation

Amar Bose used his instincts and education to produce stereo speakers that are world-famous for giving high-end performance despite their modest size.

Bose was raised in Philadelphia in the 1930s, the son of a political dissident who had immigrated from Calcutta, India. The young Bose first became interested in technology at age thirteen, when he started repairing model trains, to supplement his family's income.

Later, Bose moved on to repairing transistors; so he entered MIT with a great deal of practical experience in electronics. After he graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering in the early 1950s, Bose embarked on a personal crusade to invent a stereo loudspeaker that would reproduce, in a domestic setting, the vivid sound that a member of the audience hears at a great concert hall. Bose's early patents won him great respect within the industry; but he needed capital in order to do further research and begin production. In time, Bose received financial support from MIT professor Y. W. Lee (who bet his life savings on the effort), and founded Bose Corporation (1964).

As a student at MIT, Bose had learned that 80% of the sound heard by a person in a concert hall is indirect i.e., bounced off the ceiling and walls, rather than direct from stage to ear. Bose capitalized on this notion by inventing the 901(R) Direct/Reflecting(R) speaker system (1968): one of the first stereo loudspeakers to utilize the space around them instead of reproducing sound as if in a vacuum.

Bose's 901(R) speakers remained an industry standard for 25 years. In the meanwhile, Bose developed the Auditioner(R) audio demonstrator, which takes the specifications of a given room, hall, or other space and demonstrates precisely how a given Bose speaker system will sound in that space even before it is built. Bose's sense of spatial acoustics also helped him conquer the car stereo market, with systems that transformed the on-the-road listening experience. Here as always, Bose proved that full, rich sound does not require big, bulky speakers; in fact, his products are also famous for their simple and elegant design.

Today, at age 68, Amar Bose has earned over two dozen patents, and he still works full time, directing company, whose products can be found in Olympics stadiums, Broadway theatres, the Sistine Chapel, and the Space Shuttle (where his noise cancellation system protects the astronauts from permanent hearing damage). Bose also teaches electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, and is a local celebrity in the fields of electronics and education. Today, his company, Bose Corporation, employs approximately 4,500 people and grosses $800 million per year.

Willard F. Rockwell, Sr. '08
Motor Transport Pioneer

Willard F. Rockwell, Sr. was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1888. He began his career as an engineer after graduating from MIT in 1908, and by 1918 he was the vice president in charge of Engineering and Manufacturing for the Torbensen Axle Company in Cleveland, Ohio.

During World War I, he was commissioned as a major in the Quartermaster Corps and helped to develop standard mobile equipment for the Army, particularly military truck axles and five-ton rear axle drives. He took over the small Wisconsin Parts Company in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1919, where he developed a substantial market for worm drive axles as truck production in the United States began booming. During the 1920s, he spent some of his firm's time and money to develop experimental models of truck and tank transmissions and drives for the Ordnance Corps since Congress had declined to do so. His firm was absorbed by the Timken-Detroit Axle Company, which made him Chairman of the Board in 1940 after he helped guide it through the Great Depression of the previous decade. By 1953, several of the firms he had previously led were amalgamated into the Rockwell Spring and Axle Company, renamed the Rockwell Standard Corporation in 1958.

During World War II, Rockwell Standard produced 80 percent of the axles employed in heavy-duty Army vehicles. The 2-1/2 ton general purpose truck with four wheel drive, which he helped to design, was later described as one of the six secret weapons which had won the war. During World War II, he was appointed assistant to the Chief of the Motor Transport Division of the Army and later Director of Production and Procurement in the U.S. Maritime Commission. He was also the honorary Chairman of the Board of Rockwell International. Mr. Rockwell died in 1978.