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Engineer's legacy casts positive light on engineering
March 26, 2008

Rest in peace, James E. Batz. Thank you for the great work you performed as an engineer, and for being a role model for engineers today and in the future.

Those were the words that crossed my mind when reading Mr. Batz's obituary today in the Chicago Tribune. The headline, "Engineer was an innovator" caught my eye for obvious reasons, so I read the sizable send-off to a man of apparently remarkable character and experience.

"He was one of those kinds of guys that did all those things that no one knew about but needed to be done," his son said.

Mr. Batz was born and raised in Chicago, and entered the Navy during WW II as a stepping stone to obtaining a college education. During his two-year stint, he became a communications expert and, afterwards, obtained a two-year degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) . He then worked for Bell and Howell in Buffalo, where he got married and eventually moved back to Chicago to join the IIT Research Institute, where he worked as an engineer until he retired after 35 years at the age of 65. He was 81.
 
Mr. Batz's wife described him as a person who was "...very complicated. He was very silent. He appreciated people and things....He liked to talk technology. He was very kind." In regards to a prestegious award Mr. Batz won for an invention, "It was quite an honor, but even then he didn't want any fuss. He just wanted to do what he did and that was solve problems and to invent things. That was his life. He loved it."

A lot of his work was secret -- military communications such as wirelessly linking radios in the battlefield. Two of his inventions struck me as what his son described as ""The kind of stuff that we think is normal every day stuff now but was all so new then." One was his invention that precisely detects the location of a gas leak. The other was that he was the lead engineer that developed a microwave link to gas meters so meter readers don't have to enter people's homes.

Oh, and he also worked on nuclear testing in Nevada with the Dept. of Energy, the Saturn project through NASA, and the emergency broadcast alert system through Civil Defense, according to his son.

In addition to his wife, Doris, Mr. Batz had four daughters, three sons, and 11 grandchildren.

I don't think Mr. Batz thought much about leaving a legacy as he lived, but he did, and in so doing, gives us pause for introspection...what legacy are we now living?

So -- a toast to Mr. Batz, a good man and remarkable engineer; and a toast to his family.

Posted by Michael Ivanovich on March 26, 2008 | Comments (0)