In memoriam: Charles H. Kaman

The founder of Kaman Aircraft and Ovation Guitar Company, Charles H. Kaman, died yesterday at the age of 91. He was a seminal figure in the helicopter industry, and ‘cross-pollinated’ the knowledge and experience he acquired there into the manufacture of world-class musical instruments.

Kaman’s corporate obituary for its founder informs us:

Mr. Kaman was a 26-year-old engineer in 1945 when he founded Kaman Aircraft Company in the garage of his mother’s West Hartford, Connecticut home with $2,000 invested by two friends. He started the company to demonstrate a new rotor concept he devised to make helicopters more stable and easier to fly. Over the next half-century, Mr. Kaman built the company into a worldwide leader in the aviation industry. Kaman Aircraft, now Kaman Corporation, has become a billion-dollar company.

A pioneer in rotary-winged flight and one of Connecticut’s great inventors and innovators, Kaman’s helicopters achieved many breakthroughs, including the first gas turbine-powered helicopter, the first twin-turbine-powered helicopter, the first remotely controlled helicopter and the first all-composite rotor blade. Over the years his helicopters set numerous records for performance and altitude.

While building a worldwide reputation as a successful inventor and entrepreneur, Mr. Kaman also became admired for his humanitarian efforts in connection with his work for the vision-impaired. With his late wife, Roberta, he founded Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation, a groundbreaking business which breeds and trains guide dogs for the blind at its Bloomfield, CT headquarters.

Mr. Kaman was a leader who created a culture of accomplishment in his businesses, and who also created an environment where people knew they could be at their best in working for and with him. A visionary for his talents in diversifying business, Mr. Kaman explored numerous other opportunities through Kaman Corporation, from laser optics and space systems to industrial services and distribution. In the 1960s, Mr. Kaman – an accomplished guitar player who once turned down an offer to play with Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra to pursue his career in helicopters – formed Kaman Music. He used his knowledge of vibration and composite materials gained from building helicopters to design the popular, round-backed Ovation Guitar, a major innovation in the 20th century music business.

There’s more at the link.

Under Mr. Kaman’s leadership, Kaman Aircraft developed such legendary helicopters as the SH-2 Seasprite:

and the K-MAX, designed to handle underslung cargo loads, with its intermeshing rotors. It’s used all over the world, specializing in cargo handing in inaccessible terrain.

The K-Max was recently in the news when an unmanned version was developed for the US Marine Corps, to conduct resupply missions in a hostile environment. Here’s a video report from Lockheed Martin about the testing of this project.

Mr. Kaman wasn’t content to work only in the aerospace industry. He set up Ovation Guitars to use what he’d learned there, and apply it to musical instruments. The company states on its Web site:

Through intense research and development, Kamans engineers made discoveries about the physics of vibration and acoustics- critical factors in the design and fabrication of helicopter rotor blades, missile nose cones, and other aerospace components exposed to high vibrational stress. After achieving many aviation firsts and setting world records with his helicopters, Charles Kaman – himself a dedicated guitar enthusiast – decided his aerospace division should apply its technology and know-how to the centuries-old art of guitar making.

To pursue this goal, Kaman founded Ovation Instruments, and in 1965 our engineers and luthiers began their quest to determine whether an acoustic guitar could be sonically improved by modifying its shape and construction. Our R&D team spent months building and testing prototype instruments, and by mid 1966, they had the answers they sought. Their research conclusively proved that a semi-parabolic shape yielded the most efficient and responsive guitar body.

Once our engineers had settled on the body design, they turned their attention to developing a substance that could be molded into this bowl-like shape. Using their knowledge of high-tech aerospace composites, they developed Lyrachord, a patented material comprising interwoven layers of glass filament and bonding resin. Our lab team also discovered how to tune Lyrachord at the molecular level so it would resonate musically.

The first Ovation guitar made its debut in November, 1966. Its Lyrachord body gave the instrument unprecedented projection and ringing sustain. Based on this initial success, we developed an entire line of roundback models to provide guitarists with the world’s finest acoustic/electric instruments.

Again, there’s more at the link.

Mr. Kaman was an enthusiastic and hard worker in many fields. His ingenuity, inventiveness and application are legendary in the aerospace industry. One wonders where others of his ilk may be found, because most of the great innovators who were his contemporaries have preceded him to the Landing Strip In The Sky. We’ll miss them.

May he, and they, rest in peace.

Peter