John Warwick

  Birth Notes:

At Home, Kearny, Hudson, NJ

  Death Notes:

Bacteremia sencondary to recurrent pancreatic carcinoma

  Noted events in his life were:

1. Social Security Number. 152-10-9299

2. Education. John left high school at Kearny High School before graduation. He stated that his father insisted that he take secretarial courses so that he would not have to work in a factory as his father had. John had an extremely high mechanical aptitude and deeply resented his father's decision. He left school and went to work as an industrial mechanic at the Clark Thread Company in Kearny. After his marriage, he returned to night school at Newark Technical School and completed his high school requirements, emphasizing math and physics. He then continued night school for a total of seven years attending Newark College of Engineering. He was about six months short of completing his degree in Mechanical Engineering while working as an engineer for Clark Thread Company. His job required much traveling, and he was unable to continue his studies while meeting employment requirements to support his family. Nevertheless, he continued working as a mechanical engineer for the rest of his professional career.

3. Employment. John began work at approximately 16 years of age as an industrial mechanic dealing with the repair and maintenance of textile machines for the Clark Thread Company (CTC) After his marriage, he continued night school to prepare himself for a career in mechanical engineering. Though he did not complete his engineering degree, due to employment responsibilities, he worked as a professional mechanical engineer for his entire career. In 1948, the CTC sent him to Albany, GA to set up a new textile plant. This required moving the family to GA. After he completed his task, he did not wish to continue living in GA and he left his employment with CTC.

John then joined Walter Kidde Company in Belleville, NJ, approximately in 1950. There he worked as a mechanical engineer, inventing a device called a "Compensator" which maintained constant tension of yarn going through the device, irrespective of the tension of the feed source. He received a patent for the Compensator. During the time of his employment with Walter Kidde he yearned to go into business for himself. He was constrained by employment agreements not to develop any product that was associated with his field of expertise, tension control. He invented several devices out side of the textile field. One was an easel to be used with the "paint by numbers" fad. The fad was over before he could get the "Easy Easel" into production. He was continually looking for new products and new applications, including a device to aid children to drink from soda bottles. None of his ideas were developed into products.

John wisely concluded that trying to invent products outside of his area of expertise was not a fruitful way to achieve his goal of becoming self employed. In approximately 1959 he left Walter Kidde to work in an entirely different field for several years until his employment agreement expired. He became an engineer for Gioninni Controls, designing spiral wound precision potentiometers, which were essentially electrical variable resistors which changed resistance as a function of multiple turns of a shaft.

After his employment agreement with Walter Kidde had expired, he left Gionnini to form his own business, Compensating Tension Controls. This new business came into being about 1962. He had two partners in the business, Mr. Herbert who handled sales, and Mr. Flattly who was in charge of the machine shop. There were several other employees who handled drafting, machining, and building of devices. During this part of his career, John invented several devices that involved the concept of constant tension output from sources that varied in tension. An example, would be a device which provided constant tension of a wide fiberglass band that was wound into a casing for a rocket engine. The source spool for the fiberglass would present greater tension when it was full, and less tension as it emptied. The Compensator provided constant tension to the winding machine.

While the company was very successful, there was friction between John and Mr. Herbert. Ultimately John accepted a buyout from the business and finished his career doing private consulting and design work. Compensating Tension Controls hired several other engineers, but none had the experience or creativity of John in the area of tension control. Ultimately the company went out of business.

4. Cremation, 6 Oct 1973, Newark, Essex, New Jersey, United States. John's remains were cremated after his funeral and the ashes were scattered by brother David in the church yard of the North Reformed Church, Newark, Essex, NJ.

John married Eleanor Corey Swiss, daughter of Joshua Alexander Swiss and Elizabeth Robertson, on 1 Jan 1938 in Kearny, Hudson, New Jersey, USA. (Eleanor Corey Swiss was born on 16 Aug 1916 in Kearny, Hudson, New Jersey, USA, died on 27 Dec 1957 in Livingston, Essex, New Jersey, USA and was buried in 1957 in East Hanover, Morris, New Jersey, USA.). The cause of her death was Cardiovascular Infarct.