Tinkerer's Triumph

Even in the golden days of the pre-depression boom, Edmund T. Price was fed up with his job as a stockbroker. He much preferred tinkering in his home workshop, longed for a job where he could work with his hands. In 1928 he pulled up stakes, bought an interest in a tottering California aircraft plant and went to work as a drop-hammer operator. "But after one day, I didn't like the way the place was being run," says Price, "and I asked the board to let me take over as manager. To my utter amazement, they accepted my proposal."

Since then, Ed Price, who has held down almost every bench job in the shop, has boosted Solar Aircraft until it has 4,200 employees. Last week the company announced an $8,000.000 contract from Packard to make parts for J47 turbojets, was building a $1,700,000 second plant in Des Moines and working on a $1,000,000 expansion of its San Diego plant. In California, Solar will make an eye-opening new gas turbine engine which the company unveiled a fortnight ago. Its new "T-45" weighs only 165 Ibs., displaces but two cubic feet, and runs on diesel oil. The Navy was looking for such an engine for power launches, pumps and other shipboard uses. Said Rear Admiral W. D. Leggett, Deputy Chief of the Bureau of Ships: "[It is] the simplest practical gas-turbine engine . . ."

Delivery Boy. For five years after Price took over Solar, and switched from making planes to engine parts, the company stayed deep in the red. Price collected no salary, whittled his staff down to six employees, and worked in the shop helping make exhaust manifolds for plane engines. He often delivered the manifolds in his car, then raced back, cash in hand, to meet his tiny payroll. To make ends meet, he turned out frying pans, book ends and metal panels for trucks. But when stainless steel was developed in the early '30s, Solar was the first to use it for exhaust manifolds, by 1933 bagged $80,000 worth of contracts and began to climb.

During World War II, Solar manufactured $90 million worth of manifolds and engine parts. But like many another war baby, it almost died at war's end. In 1947 it had a $555,867 deficit. Price, who still tinkers with old clocks and gadgets in his home, bet all his money on jets, plowed every cent he could into research.

The Goods. The gamble paid off. Solar developed heat-resistant parts for hell-hot jet engines, promptly began cashing in on the jet boom. Two months ago, Solar's research team came out with the "Solaramic process" for coating stainless steel with a paintlike ceramic, enabling steel to stand extreme heat without corroding and without using such scarce metals as nickel and cobalt.

With its new "T-45" engine, the Solaramic process and a $78 million backlog in orders, President Price, now 56, expects sales to double this year, hit the $50 million mark. He expects the net to be up also. In the first quarter it was $248,300 or 52-c- a share v. 21-c- last year. Prospects looked so good that Solar stock jumped from 15 1/8 to 21 1/4 in the last month.

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