Name Charles Taylor | ||
Charles F. Taylor (1916–1997) was an American engineer and inventor. He spent two years of undergraduate study at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
During the Second World War, Taylor worked on VG recorders at Hathaway Instrument Company in Denver. Previously, he had worked at International Harvester. In the 1950s and 60's he worked at Coors Porcelain Company in Golden, Colorado. For Coors, he developed a ceramic ball press. As this was a device that their competitors Champion Spark Plug had tried and failed for years to develop, it was an invaluable machine for Coors Porcelain. The extremely hard ceramic balls created by the press are still used today in industrial grinding, and particularly in the production of white pigment for paint, which metal balls would mark or stain.
In the late 1960s, Taylor left Coors to work at Morse Chain (which became a division of Borg Warner) in Denver, where he stayed until the mid 1970s. Here, he worked on drive trains and transmissions, and even developed two patents for automatic transmissions in 1971 and 1973.
Taylor's hobby from 1939 on was the development of several working prototypes of a one-wheeled vehicle. Two of these prototypes are shown being driven by him in a home movie available on the external linked website. The vehicle was patented by him in 1964.
Charles Taylor died in 1997. He was survived by his widow Ruth Taylor, daughters Mary Urry (née Taylor), Betsy McGee, and son Charles Glenn.