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Energy Conversion Devices:
an interview with Stan Ovshinsky We want clean energy. Although we argue about what “clean” means, the underlying value is widely shared. So electric cars, hydrogen fuel cells (think of them as batteries run on hydrogen), and solar power figure widely into our future direction in clean energy conversion. We need energy and where we get it is crucial to our survival. Oil has a limited life span. Nuclear energy is too risky from a by-product point of view. Nuclear waste is almost impossible to deal with effectively and nuclear reactors can be designed to breed nuclear weapons materials that can work in smart, dirty, or dumb bombs. We need clean, readily available, affordable energy. Imagine the change in our environment where the exhaust from your engine actually puts out cleaner air than the air that went in? This is the new energy reality, its called the “Hydrogen Economy.” And somehow, to be practical, idealism has to meet the harsh realism of big money. That is another area of Ovshinsky’s genius. He has developed strategic partnerships with companies such as Texaco, General Electric, the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom), and Intel, to mention a few. He also got Robert Stempel, retired CEO of General Motors, to head his company. My talk with Stan Ovshinsky ranged far and wide. He thinks globally and he thinks from the subatomic to the political. I can only hope this interview will make you curious enough to find out more about the work of this remarkable man. Bill Bruzy: You grew up in the industrial town of Akron, Ohio, the son of an immigrant, and started your working life as a toolmaker in a machine shop? Stan Ovshinsky: Yes, my father asked me what trade I was going to learn. He started working when he was around 10 years old. I was probably 11, and I said I’ll become a toolmaker and that’s what I became. In that process, I found that I could change things very dramatically in machines and in means of handling and cutting materials. My first inventions were in the machine tool industry. BB: You dad had a quite an influence on you. He was a metal dealer? SO: They say that because they’re trying to be nice to me (laughter), but he was an exceptional person and the greatest influence on my life. He had been a laborer when he came over from Europe. He worked in factories during the First World War. He went out and started picking up old scrap. He was too dignified to yell, “Rags and iron!” or whatever they did. So he built a one-person business. He was a very liberal fellow, and felt you shouldn’t hire labor ... should do it all yourself. I used to help him and it was hard physical labor. We weren’t well off but made a living during the deep Depression. We got along. BB: You’re a first generation American, as am I, how do you think that experience shaped your ambition? SO: What they — your father, my father — did was sacrifice a kind of life they might have had in a more decent society where they came from to do the hard work of the world. We benefited. What we do with that benefit is very important. For me, I just felt that, growing up in the Depression, I wanted to change the world. I also loved science, I loved everything, wrote poetry, did everything you could imagine. BB: But you had two cultures, the Old Country, and the New, to deal with. SO: There were not two cultures to me. There is one culture of civilization that I got myself involved in. My driving force was my own creativity that I discovered. But I wanted to put it to use to build new industries where people could have jobs and a better life. I think we’ve made a dent in that. BB: So after building a machine shop? SO: Iris and I got together and formed Energy Conversion Devices on January 1, 1960 in a storefront in Detroit. We decided to only work on that side of technology that could solve serious |
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