Fellowship Founders Shaped the Modern World

Extracted From “A Good, Goodbye”, the farewell sermon of Paul Ratzlaff Oct. 13, 2002

Each of us is a vessel through which Life/God passes. Our task, for whatever time we have, is to be an ample vessel, richly pouring life through our being so that others may live more fully. I pray that in this time we keep this deep wisdom present.

Many of the people visiting our congregation come seeking a deeper understanding of life than the one offered by the mainstream consumer oriented, "success" by working longer hours model that we live in. They want to experience a deeper assurance that their lives have meaning in a transcendent way, for they suffer the emptiness of much of contemporary American culture.

I want you to be a shining beacon of liberal religious values in the greater Morris area. The world, this part of New Jersey needs our liberal religion more than ever.

The man who created the world’s first computer animated film and became an economist who is still quoted; a still-revered aviation artist who made significant contributions to the invention of the automobile seat belt; and who, along with his wife, were nationally recognized atheists and were friends with Madalyn Murray O’Hair; a rocket scientist who patented a two-stage rocket and a liquid fuel cooling system; another who helped designed thrusters for the lunar landing module; a nationally known portrait photographer who created a method taught around the world, along with his wife, also an expert photographer; an engineer who helped develop acoustical technology for combating Soviet submarines during the Cold War; a mathematician who was worked on the Manhattan project and invented an algorithm still important for its use in data compression; a chemist who virtually invented the medical device industry.

Founders of the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship were responsible for ideas and inventions that impact people around the world in their daily lives.

Among the most important contributions came from Jo Kotula, the aviation artist, known for his drawings of airplanes that adorned hobbyist magazine covers for decades.

As an aviator himself, it was Kotula’s flying hobby and concern for safety there that led him to contribute designs that led to the development of the automobile safety belt. He also credited as the first person to outline plans for automobile air bags.

His correspondence with aviation pioneer Hugh DeHaven on the subject was eventually quoted in Congressional Hearings in 1976 about requiring air bags in automobiles.

In his correspondence to DeHaven, written on May 7, 1941, Kotula gave his description for a safety bag which he described as a cushion, which could be filled with air or gas and provided drawings, although he certainly did not construct a physical model

The first air-bag patents were filed in 1942, but Kotula was not one of the people who sought one,

“I wish I had patented it” he said in articles published in New Jersey newspapers in the 1980s.

If that were not enough, Kotula and wife Charlotte were founding directors of the Freedom from Religion Foundation (although not its unincorporated predecessor) on April 15, 1978. Both were prominent enough that they were friends with Madelyn Murray O’Hair, who could be called America’s Atheist in Chief, and won the battle against prayer in school through a Supreme Court, although the very unlikely O’Hair eventually aliencated them.

And the location of the Foundation’s first chapter: Morristown, New Jersey, with several Fellowship members joining.

The world’s first computer generated animated film was developed by founder, Ed Zajac, who was president of the Fellowship when ground was broken for the meeting room.

In 1963, Zajac, who worked at Bell Laboratories, produced a 1.25-minute film

with the catch title “Simulation of Two-Gyro Gravity-Gradient Attitude Control System” to describe how this kind of satellite would move through space. With Zajac narrating, the film simulated the motion and autorotation of a communication satellite as a succession of single phases.

While the animated drawing is crude (available on YouTube), it was described by Fellowship member George Aronson, who worked with AT&T before becoming a professional photographer as being a decade ahead of anything he had seen at the time.

Zajac promoted the technology in 1964 in an article, “Computer-made Perspective Movies as a Scientific and Communication Tool” that appeared in a scientific publication.

He was not just a mechanical engineer and scientist. After the breakup of AT&T, Zajac moved to Phoenix, to join the Economics Department of the University of Arizona and became nationally known as an economist.

Another computer pioneer was Stuart P. Lloyd, another Bell Lab’s employee. Lloyd, who worked on the Manhattan Project (but as a very young man), was responsible for what is known as Lloyd’s Algorithm or more usually, which was proposed in 1957.

Wikipedia defines the algorithm as a way of” finding evenly spaced sets of points in subsets of Euclidean spaces and partitions of these subsets into well-shaped and uniformly sized convex cells” and is known as a “Volonoi relaxation”.

If you don’t understand that, it’s enough to known it is widely used in data compression and especially in computer graphics and it is so influential there are articles available on the Web discussing whether it’s time to replace Lloyd’s algorithm.

Another pioneer, Robertson Youngquist, served on the first Fellowship’s board of trustees, elected in January 1956 and patented a rocket motor cooling system and a two-stage rocket in the years immediately after World War II. He notably suggested the type of fuel that was adopted for the well-known experimental airplane, the X-15.

Before he joined the Fellowship at its formation, Youngquist designed a rocket that blew up on its launching platform in Wanaque, N.J., basked when rocket pioneers launched rockets from there and Franklin Lakes—which was not highly popular with residents or police.

While he lived in Morris County, Youngquist worked at Reaction Motors, often described as America’s first rocket company. That business also employed Alfred Mathisen, who described himself and his wife, Dorothy, both founding members, as people no one would remember at the Fellowship.

While he described himself as an aerospace engineer, Mathisen was not quick to elaborate on any of his experiences, including the fact that he worked to design the thrusters for the Lunar Landing Module for Project Apollo.

Finally, Art Babson, the third president, had a major impact in the field of medical devices, even though he was not widely known outside the field. In fact, Babson described himself as inventing the medical device industry. He was awarded forty-six U.S. patents on his inventions and published sixty-five scientific papers.

Judging from the fact in later years he became a supporter of the Cheetah Conservation, donating 12 square miles of land in Namibia to expanding a Cheetah preservation area and 35 of his and his wife Susan’s friends attended a surprise party for him in Namibia when he turned 80, he did quite well.

He found Babson Research Laboratories, which became Cirrus Diagnostics of which he was president. In 1992, that company became the Diagnostics Products Corp., and he was chief scientist there when Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics purchase DPC on July 27, 2006, and he remained in that role until his retirement in 2012.

Siemens paid $650 million for DPC and judging from the purchase of the Namibia land, Babson did well from that deal and when he died in 2016, Siemens paid tribute to him.