Floyd Firestone

Floyd Alburn Firestone
Firestone in 1925
Born(1898-09-21)September 21, 1898
Marysville, Ohio, U.S.
DiedJanuary 6, 1986(1986-01-06) (aged 87)
Westchester, New York, U.S.
Scientific career
FieldsAcoustical Engineer
InstitutionsUniversity of Michigan

Floyd Alburn Firestone (1898–1986) was an acoustical physicist. In 1940 while a professor at the University of Michigan invented the first practical ultrasonic testing method and apparatus.[1] He was granted U.S. patent 2,280,226 for the invention in 1942. Manufactured by Sperry Corporation, the testing device was known variously as the Firestone-Sperry Reflectoscope, the Sperry Ultrasonic Reflectoscope, the Sperry Reflectoscope and sometimes also just as a Supersonic Reflectoscope, the name Firestone had coined for the instrument. The technology is not just used in quality control in factories to reject defective parts before shipment, but also revolutionized transportation safety. For example, ultrasonic testing is used for safety maintenance inspection of railroad cars, particularly axles and wheels, aircraft, particularly fuselages, and other transportation vessels for material fatigue.[2][3] Dr. Firestone's ultrasonic pulse echo technique for metal defect testing was also later applied in medical diagnosis, giving birth to the field of Echocardiography and to the field of Medical Ultrasonography, generally.[4][5][6] Dr. Firestone was the editor of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America from 1939 to 1957.[1] Among Firestone's many other inventions, were in a single year an “automatic device for the minute inspection of flaws”, “a new and useful improvement in hook-up of electrical apparatus”, and “[a] device for measuring noise”,[7] and, even, later a “musical typewriter”.[8]

He earned a B.S. from the Case School of Applied Science in 1921, and his Ph. D. from the University of Michigan in 1931.[9]

Floyd A. Firestone in January 1925, demonstrated an electrical apparatus for determining the loudness of noise from bearings or other sources, before to the Society of Automotive Engineers meeting.[10] The instrument was a modified audiometer consisted essentially by means of a Wente microphone combined with a sensitive electronic circuits and alternating current voltmeter;[11] therefore, this was the first time that a full electronic device was used to measure the noise level regardless the source type.

In 1933, Firestone proposed an alternative to the mechanical–electrical analogy of James Clerk Maxwell in which force is made the analogy of voltage (the impedance analogy). Firestone's analogy (later called the mobility analogy) makes force the analog of current. In this work he introduced the concept of "through" and "across" variables and demonstrated that there were analogies for these variables in other energy domains, making it possible to treat a complex system as a unified whole in analysis. Firestone's analogy became popular amongst mechanical filter designers because it has the property of preserving network topologies when transforming between the mechanical and electrical domains.[12][13]

He was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society[14] in January 1936.[15] He was a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and its president from 1943 to 1945.[14] In 1955 Floyd A. Firestone got the Gold Medal Award of the ASA.[16]

  1. ^ a b Beyer, R.T. (1999). Sounds of our times: 200 years of acoustics. New York, New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 246-247.
  2. ^ Fahr, A., Ph.D. (2014). Aeronautical Applications of Non-destructive Testing. Lancaster, Pennsylvania: DEStech Publications, Inc., p. 150
  3. ^ ICNDT
  4. ^ Singh, S; Goyal, A (2007). "The origin of echocardiography: a tribute to Inge Edler". Tex Heart Inst J. 34 (4): 431–8. PMC 2170493. PMID 18172524.
  5. ^ LeVine, H. III. (2010). Medical Imaging. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC., p. 62
  6. ^ Nicholson, M. & Fleming J. E. E. (2013). Imaging and Imaging the Fetus: The Development of Obstetrics Ultrasound, pp. 21–25. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  7. ^ Proceedings of the Board of Regents. (1929). Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan, p. 452
  8. ^ Staff (1948). "Machine types simplified music". Popular Science. 153 (2): 143.
  9. ^ 1955 Gold Medal Award to Dr. Floyd A. Firestone. Acoustical Society News. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 27, 975–976 (1955). https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1908102
  10. ^ Firestone, F. A. (1925) How Loud Is Loud? Firestone describes noise evaluator. The Journal of the Society of Automotive Engineers 1925-02: Vol 16 Iss 2, page 14. https://ia803403.us.archive.org/22/items/sim_society-of-automotive-engineers_1925-02_16_2/sim_society-of-automotive-engineers_1925-02_16_2.pdf
  11. ^ Rich, D. L. (1925) The measurement of noises. The Michigan Technic. Vol 38 Number 4, May 1925, p. 14
  12. ^ Bishop, Robert H., Mechatronics: An Introduction, CRC Press, 2005 ISBN 1420037242, p. 8-2.
  13. ^ Smith, Malcolm C., "Synthesis of mechanical networks: the inerter", IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 47, iss. 10, pp. 1648–1662, October 2002
  14. ^ a b Cattell, Jaques, ed. (1949). American Men of Science: A Biographical Dictionary. Lancaster, Pennsylvania: The Science Press. p. 779.
  15. ^ Anonymous (1936). "Minutes of the St. Louis Meeting, December 31, 1935-January 2, 1936". Physical Review. 49 (5). American Physical Society: 407–422. Bibcode:1936PhRv...49..407.. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.49.407.
  16. ^ 1955 Gold Medal Award to Dr. Floyd A. Firestone. Acoustical Society News.J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 27, 975–976 (1955) https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1908102