Once the first jet airliners became reality, Arthur Adamson, BSME ’41, was thrust into the development of advanced jet engines at General Electric Corpo. Much of the frenzy centered on high-thrust jet engines – called turbofans – for commercial aircraft that would be larger than any ever built.  

 

The TF39 turbofan, designed by GE for large military transport planes, had demonstrated that bypass 6 turbofans could be built in large sizes and with very high fuel efficiency. They outperformed every jet engine of the day and provided the basis for GE’s new commercial transport engines.

 

“The TF39 engine could deliver the power and fuel efficiency needed for intercontinental transport of passengers and freight,” Adamson said from his home in Cincinnati, Ohio.  “But it required numerous modifications for commercial use. My job was to coordinate the technical teams as they applied the military’s know-how in engine design to commercial aircraft.”

 

Before anyone knew it, the industry had given birth to a new transport plane — the jumbo jet.

 

“It shrank the world from seven days to seven hours for a transatlantic crossing,” Adamson said.

 

GE’s first large commercial turbofan was used on the new McDonnell Douglas DC-10 turbofan jumbo jets; Boeing followed suit with its spacious 747s and Air Bus A300, the first twin-engine wide-body airliner in the world. Within a few years, intercontinental travel had skyrocketed and Adamson had earned his wings in the race to establish turbofans as the dominant engine type in commercial aviation. 

 

Engines and machinery had always been part of Adamson’s life, clear back to his boyhood on a farm in Coffeyville, Kansas. He said he never had a doubt that he would become a mechanical engineer.

 

“Farm boys always know a lot about machinery,” he said. “I liked airplanes in particular. The engines are more fun than anything else.”

 

It didn’t take long before Adamson succumbed to the call.  After high school, he spent two years at a junior college in Coffeyville before packing his bags in 1939 and heading for Los Angeles.  He moved in with his aunt and enrolled in USC’s mechanical engineering program, supporting himself with summer aircraft plant jobs and a part-time job in the engineering school’s mechanical engineering lab. Sydney Duncan became his favorite professor; Thomas “Pop” Taylor Eyre, then chair of the mechanical engineering department, was his inspiration.

 

He joined GE a month after graduation. There he spent his early years working on rocket and jet engine programs in Philadelphia, PA, then Schenectady, NY. While working, he enrolled in GE’s advanced technical training program, which allowed him to move into technical leadership positions.

 

In 1955, he moved to Evendale, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, to oversee rocket engine development. In 1959, while the country scrambled to catch up with Sputnik-era launch capabilities, Adamson became chief engineer of the Vanguard rocket engine program.  A successful launch powered the first manmade satellite into an Earth-orbiting trajectory on 24,000 pounds of thrust     

 

“His creative genius led to several aircraft engine programs,” said USC classmate and fellow GE engineer Robert Hoffman, a resident of Redwood City, CA. “One of them was the XV-5A lift fan for vertical launch, high-speed helicopters. That was a very rewarding program and a great vehicle to see take off.”

 

In Lynn, Ohio, Adamson moved on to the GE 12 small turboshaft demonstrator, which became the very successful T700/CT7 engine family and helped him win GE’s Steinmetz Award for “concepts in developing electric motors, guided missile autopilots, electronic controls, rocket propulsion systems and the CF6, T700 and CF34 jet engines.”  He also helped develop the TF 34 family of turbofan engines used in the Navy’s anti-submarine aircraft, the Warthog, and in regional commercial passenger jets. 

 

Through the years, Adamson acquired some of the most prestigious aviation industry awards around. He is the recipient of GE’s Perry T. Egbert, Jr. Memorial Award “for outstanding creativity in the development of the CF6-50 Commercial Jet Engine” and the Franklin Kolk SAE award for service to aviation.  You’ll also find him in GE’s Propulsion Hall of Fame and he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.