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 Today is the birthday of Paul Kollsman, a German-born aeronautical engineer who invented the first barometric altimeter, a cockpit instrument that measures air pressure in order to determine an aircraft's height above sea level. The "Kollsman window", as the device is often called, sped the growth of commercial aviation by allowing pilots to fly "by the gauge" in poor-visibility conditions.
Paul Kollsman was born in Freudenstadt, Germany on February 22, 1900. He studied mechanical engineering in Stuttgart and Munich, but left the war-torn Weimar Republic for the United States in 1923. According to one biographer, Kollsman once planned to sell a radical automobile engine design to American motorists. However, after a brief stint as a truck driver's assistant, the German émigré shifted gears and began work as a mechanic for the Pioneer Instrument Co., a Bendix subsidiary located in Queens, New York. Although the work was sometimes uninspiring, Kollsman learned how to build accelerometers, magnetic compasses, engine gauges, and other avionics instruments.
In 1928, Kollsman struck out on his own, starting the Kollsman Instrument Co. with just $500 (USD). Kollsman's first invention, the barometric altimeter, was also his most important. Although 25 years had passed since the Wright Brothers' historic flight at Kittyhawk, North Carolina, pilots still used crude altimeters that worked only by the light of day and in fair-weather conditions. Kollsman's invention revolutionized aviation by enabling pilots to "fly blind", using only cockpit instruments. Whether at night or in foul weather, the "Kollsman window" allowed pilots to see the atmospheric pressure in inches of mercury and adjust the altimeter to reflect changes in air temperature and pressure. Accurate within 20 feet, the Kollsman altimeter also provided more reliable measurements than the Sperry gyroscope, a flight instrument which gauged altitude within several hundred feet.
Paul Kollsman introduced his barometric altimeter during a demonstration at Mitchell Field on Long Island, New York in September 1929. Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle, the Army flier who would later lead the first carrier-based bomber attack on Japan during World War II, completed a 15-mile flight guided entirely by instruments. A subsequent contract with the United States Navy provided the Kollsman Instrument Co. with its first commercial success. Soon, factories in Elmhurst, New York and Glendale, California churned out flight instruments while Kollsman himself pursued patents for new products. During World War II, the Kollsman Instrument Co. built avionics instruments for Allied airplanes, including Royal Air Force (RAF) gliders used in an attempted attack on a heavy-water plant in Norway. During the 1960s and 1970s, Kollsman Inc. provided mission-critical components to NASA for the Apollo missions.
A member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Paul Kollsman earned over 200 patents and won a Guggenheim Medal for his notable advancement in aeronautics. The avionics company that he founded, Kollsman, Inc., still builds flight instruments for commercial airplanes, military aircraft, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Paul Kollsman died in 1982 at the age of 82 in Los Angeles, California.
Resources:
http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/kollsman.html
http://www.kollsman.com/company/index.asp
http://www.invent.org/images/images_hof/induction/docs/Kollsman.doc
http://appel.nasa.gov/askoce/node
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jdoolitt.htm
http://www.assaultglidertrust.co.uk/html/kollsman_sensitive_altimeter.html
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