Howard Oldford McMahon (1914–1990) was an American electrical engineer who was Science Director, Vice President, Head of the Research and Development Division, and then President of Arthur D. Little, Inc, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, retiring from the Company in 1977. He was born in Alberta, Canada, and became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He made contributions to the field of cryogenics as inventor during the 1940s through the 1960s, and subsequently as an executive and member of the Board of Directors of both ADL and the Helix Technology Corporation, of Waltham, Massachusetts.
Biography
McMahon's parents, Thomas Alexander McMahon and Tryphena Oldford McMahon, moved their family of five children from the prairie province of Alberta to the city of Victoria, in British Columbia, in the mid-1920s. McMahon attended Victoria College there for two years and then went on to earn his B.A. and M.A. degrees at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver. During his undergraduate years, in the depth of the Great Depression, when his parents were unable to help pay his college tuition, he developed and patented a device later used in bubbling Christmas tree candle lights. The sale of the patent to a Canadian neon sign company for $100 enabled him to return to college, as he later told an interviewer.
For his doctoral work at M.I.T., McMahon worked in the laboratory of Samuel C. Collins, chemist and professor of mechanical engineering, who became McMahon's mentor. Prof. Collins brought in a very substantial grant from the National Defense Research Committee at the outset of World War II to work on a project to liquefy oxygen “for use on high-flying aircraft,” along with other defense-related work.
After receiving his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in 1941, McMahon continued at M.I.T. as a research associate, and joined Dr. Collins in working on the development of a small, portable oxygen machine for the Office of Scientific Research and Development, with funding from the Navy Department. Earl Stevenson, then president of Arthur D. Little, Inc., had recruited Collins and McMahon for this work. When McMahon was hired at ADL in 1943, he continued to collaborate with Dr. Collins on the application of very low temperatures to liquefying gases. Between 1945 and 1947 the Collins Helium Cryostat was engineered and became available for research laboratories. As reported in November 1947,
Dr. Collins is the inventor of the Collins Helium Cryostat, a comparatively simple device which can be operated by a laboratory technician, produces liquid helium and can maintain its space for experiments at any temperature down to 2 degrees Kelvin, or 456 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale. Dr. McMahon assisted Dr. Collins in the original work on the Cryostat, and later, as a member of the staff of Arthur D. Little, Inc., was a leading participant in development of a design which could be regularly produced for operation by laboratory technicians. . . .:
Temperatures close to absolute zero can be reached only by liquefying helium, which previously has usually required a high-pressure cascade system of refrigeration, whereby liquefying helium gives up its heat to liquid hydrogen, which in turn is cooled by liquid air. Such an installation is both hazardous and extremely expensive. . . .There were only four helium-liquefying installations in North America before the first of the Cryostats went into use early in 1947.:
A 1948 Life Magazine spread on “Absolute Zero,” featuring the Collins Helium Cryostat, publicized both the technological feat of creating a safe and relatively inexpensive apparatus for approaching absolute zero, and the expected industrial and research uses of the machine.
Collins and McMahon both received medals from the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia in September 1951 for their collaborative work on the Collins Helium Cryostat.