O'Connor Engineering Laboratories

Chad O'Connor redirects here.

Chadwell O'Connor (October 9, 1914 – September 5, 2007) was an American inventor and steam engine enthusiast. He is most remembered as the inventor of an improved fluid-damped camera head, for which he won Academy Awards in 1975 and 1992.

Chadwell O'Connor came from a distinguished family. His father, Johnson O'Connor was a well-known psychometrician and pioneer in the study of aptitude testing. His mother died when he was young and his father remarried the MIT-trained architect and educator Eleanor Manning. The family lived in Boston and O'Connor often accompanied his father to his work at the General Electric factory in Lynn, Massachusetts where he acquired an interest in engineering. O'Connor attended the Stevens Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering. Shortly after graduating, World War II broke out and O'Connor joined Douglas Aircraft where he was in charge of expediting aircraft production and repair, a vital part of the war effort.

After the war, O'Connor joined Pasadena Power and Light as chief engineer. O'Connor had been interested in steam engines since he was a boy and he applied this knowledge at the power company to improve power production and incineration. In 1974, he used this experience to develop the O'Connor Rotary Combustor that burned municipal garbage to create steam for power generation. The first pilot plant was built in Japan, and in 1980 a production facility was built in Gallatin, Tennessee, that burned 200 tons a day of municipal waste. This technology was spun out of O'Connor's company, O'Connor Engineering to a separate company that was later purchased by Westinghouse.

O'Connor had long been fascinated with steam locomotives which he recognized were a dying breed and began photographing them. He later became involved in the refurbishment and reproduction of classic steam locomotives. He and his company, O'Connor Engineering Laboratories, recreated the drawings and reproduced copies of the Union Pacific No. 119 and Central Pacific Jupiter locomotives that met for the driving of the Golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah. These reproductions are used in recreations of the event and have been operating at the Golden Spike National Historic Site since 10 May 1979. Disney animator and steam-engine-owner Ward Kimball painted the artwork on the No. 119. In later years, O'Connor maintained his own steam boat which he would fire up and tool around the harbor in Newport Beach, California.

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