Harold A. McMaster (July 20, 1916 – August 25, 2003) was an inventor with over 100 patents and

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

who founded four companies. Fortune Magazine called him "The Glass Genius".HAROLD A. MCMASTER, 1916-2003: Inventor became philanthropist
, obituary, Article published August 26, 2003, Toledo Blade He also worked on developing commercial-scale solar cell technology and developed a new type of engine, the "McMaster Rotary Engine." McMaster was an inventor early on. His father gave him a set of tools at age 6. By 8, he had built a set of farm machinery, by 10, a threshing machine that husked corn, and by 12 he was making car motors. Following his graduation from

Ohio State The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best public ...

with a combined master's degree in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

, mathematics, and

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...

in 1939, McMaster worked as the first research

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

ever employed by the

Libbey Owens Ford The Libbey-Owens-Ford Company (LOF) was a producer of flat glass for the automotive and building products industries both for original equipment manufacturers and for replacement use. The company's headquarters and main factories were located in T ...

Glass in

Toledo, Ohio Toledo ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Lucas County, Ohio, United States. A major Midwestern United States port city, Toledo is the fourth-most populous city in the state of Ohio, after Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, and according ...

.The Founding Family
McMaster School for Advancing Humanity He received his first patent during World War 2 (WWII) for a

periscope A periscope is an instrument for observation over, around or through an object, obstacle or condition that prevents direct line-of-sight observation from an observer's current position. In its simplest form, it consists of an outer case with ...

used by

fighter pilots A fighter pilot is a military aviator trained to engage in air-to-air combat, air-to-ground combat and sometimes electronic warfare while in the cockpit of a fighter aircraft. Fighter pilots undergo specialized training in aerial warfare and d ...

to see behind them.Harold McMaster

Permaglass

In 1948, he started his own company, Permaglass, in

Genoa, Ohio Genoa is a village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically rangi ...

. Permaglass produced curved and tempered glass for the consumer and automotive markets. Within 3 months, he was producing glass for appliances, and for display cases; within 3 years, Permaglass was a leading manufacturer of glass plates for television sets. As the auto and electronics industries boomed in the 1950s, Permaglass was very successful. McMaster merged Permaglass into

Guardian Industries Guardian Industries is a privately held industrial manufacturer of glass, automotive and building products based in Auburn Hills, Michigan. The company manufactures float glass, fabricated glass products, fiberglass insulation and building materia ...

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

in 1969, creating the third-largest glass company in the world, and left the company in 1971.

Glasstech

In 1971, with partners Norman Nitschke and Frank Larimer, McMaster started another glass company, Glasstech, which he sold in 1987 for $100 million.Executive summary of Edward O. Welles
, "Going for BROKE," Inc., vol. 20, no. 8, pp. 66–78, June 1998. Glasstech was not an overnight success; in fact, they filed for bankruptcy protection more than once. However, McMaster, was "recognized as the world's leading authority on tempering glass, that is, compressing glass to add tensile strength" "Department of Physics Distinguished Alumni Award," in Ohio State University Department o
Physics Magazine
Sept. 24, 2003 and Glasstech essentially created the market for tempered glass, receiving not only the sticker price, but also a royalty on glass produced, for machines that produce 80% of the world’s automotive glass.

Solar cells

Inspired by a vacation in sunny

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

, McMaster began another company, Glasstech Solar, in 1984, to produce cost-effective

solar array A photovoltaic system, also PV system or solar power system, is an electric power system designed to supply usable solar power by means of photovoltaics. It consists of an arrangement of several components, including solar panels to absorb and ...

s. His insight was that the essential cost element of large area solar arrays was glass, and he could treat the actual solar cell as simply a different kind of coating on glass. After doing little except absorbing $12 million cash, McMaster gave up on the

amorphous silicon Amorphous silicon (a-Si) is the non-crystalline form of silicon used for solar cells and thin-film transistors in LCDs. Used as semiconductor material for a-Si solar cells, or thin-film silicon solar cells, it is deposited in thin films ont ...

research, offered to pay back the 57 investors who followed him into solar cells. He then raised yet another $15 million to create Solar Cells Inc. in Toledo OH to work on a different thin-film technology,

cadmium telluride photovoltaics Cadmium telluride (CdTe) photovoltaics is a photovoltaic (PV) technology based on the use of cadmium telluride in a thin semiconductor layer designed to absorb and convert sunlight into electricity. Cadmium telluride PV is the only thin film ...

. By 1997, Solar Cells had a prototype production machine. In 1995, he brought in a new president, and bought still more stock in the company to fund research, although the company had yet to pay a dividend. According to Ken Zweibel, former head of the Thin Film Partnership program at the

Department of Energy A Ministry of Energy or Department of Energy is a government department in some countries that typically oversees the production of fuel and electricity; in the United States, however, it manages nuclear weapons development and conducts energy-re ...

National Renewable Energy Laboratory The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US specializes in the research and development of renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy systems integration, and sustainable transportation. NREL is a federally funded research an ...

, SCI was clearly the industry leader in thin-film photovoltaic technology. In 1999, True North Partners, LLC purchased controlling interest and renamed the company

First Solar First Solar, Inc. is an American manufacturer of solar panels, and a provider of utility-scale PV power plants and supporting services that include finance, construction, maintenance and end-of-life panel recycling. First Solar uses rigid thi ...

LLC. According to his obituary in the local paper, the

Toledo Blade ''The Blade'', also known as the ''Toledo Blade'', is a newspaper in Toledo, Ohio published daily online and printed Thursday and Sunday by Block Communications. The newspaper was first published on December 19, 1835. Overview The first issue ...

, "Some believe he will be remembered as the "father" of commercial-scale solar energy, having practically handed the needed technology to society on a platter in the 1990s."

McMaster rotary engine

Since the 1940s, McMaster was sketching and tinkering with models, continuously reworking various designs for what has since become the McMaster Rotary Engine (MRE), Patent US2002043238, 'Wobble engine'. His son Ronald started working on the project in the 1970s, and brother Robert joined in after the sale of Solar Cells Inc. in 1999. The engine is shaped like a drum with the same circumference as a basketball, and is claimed to: * Weigh only one-tenth as much as a current six-cylinder engine * Have only two moving parts other than a ball valve; eight parts total * function under water or deep in space Unlike the

Wankel Wankel may refer to: * Wankel engine, a type of internal combustion engine using an eccentric rotary design instead of reciprocating pistons * Wankel AG, a German company that produces Wankel engines for ultralight aircraft and racing cars People ...

rotary, which has a heavy rotor, the MRE rotor is light wobble plate, promising greater efficiency. In addition to the two-cycle basketball model, work is continuing on a two-cycle engine about the size of a coffee-can that could be built into wheel hubs,The Engine
and a four-cycle gasoline version, as well as an engine based on a two-part fuel system utilizing gaseous hydrogen and oxygen US2002043238

Philanthropy

The Harold and Helen McMaster Foundation was founded in 1988, and has made contributions to libraries, colleges, universities, museums, and hospitals in Northwest

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

and Southeast

Awards

* Doctor of Science (honorary),

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

* Doctor of Science (honorary),

Defiance College Defiance College is a private college located in Defiance, Ohio and affiliated with the United Church of Christ. The campus includes eighteen buildings and access to the Thoreau Wildlife Sanctuary. History The college began as Defiance Female ...

* Pilgrim Award,

* Ohio State University Department of Physics Distinguished Alumni Award * Ohio Department of Development Entrepreneur of the Year Award, 1998 * National Glass Industry's Phoenix Award * Engineering and Science Hall of Fame,

Dayton Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Da ...

* Ohio Science and Technology Hall of Fame, Columbus.

Family

Harold McMaster was born on a

tenant farm A tenant farmer is a person (farmer or farmworker) who resides on land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management, ...

near Deshler, Ohio. He met his wife, the former Helen Clark, while both were students at

in the 1930s. In addition to his widow, he was survived by their four children: Ronald McMaster, Jeanine Dunn, Nancy Cobie, and Alan McMaster. Harold McMaster died in 2003.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McMaster, Harold Defiance College alumni Ohio State University Graduate School alumni 20th-century American physicists People from Deshler, Ohio 1916 births 2003 deaths 20th-century American philanthropists