W. Brandt Goldsworthy
Goldsworthy Engineering
Inducted 1979
Brandt Goldsworthy (1915 – 2003) made numerous contributions over a six-decade-long career in developing pultrusion and filament winding processes, using reinforced plastics in automotive applications, and developing matched metal die molding for reinforced plastics. Products he developed are used under the oceans, on land, and in outer space.
Goldsworthy received a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1935 and began his plastics career in 1938 as a process engineer at the Douglas Aircraft Company. He then worked as a plastics engineer in the company’s Process Engineering Group, where he pioneered cast phenolic. Later, he combined fiberglass reinforcements with cast phenolic, producing some of the first laminated molds. While at Douglas, he developed molded glass/phenolic ammunition chutes, which were subsequently adopted by every aircraft company during WWII.
Anticipating the potential of glass-reinforced polyester laminates, Goldsworthy started Industrial Plastics Corporation, the West Coast’s first reinforced plastics production plant. Production was primarily for military equipment, aircraft, reinforced plastic tools, and structures from fiberglass and the newly available unsaturated polyester resins.
During the post-war car-building boom, Goldsworthy was consulting director of Henry Kaiser’s reinforced plastics research laboratory in Emeryville, California, which developed fiberglass bodies for Kaiser’s Darrin automobile. General Motors then asked Goldsworthy to consult on a fiberglass body for its new Corvette sports car. In 1956, he sold his manufacturing operation to H.I. Thompson Fiberglass Co. to consult full-time, working in nearly every area of composites development. He developed ablative materials and fabricating techniques for the military to re-entry cones, rocket motor liners, blast tubes, and nozzles. Goldsworthy was also a proponent of composites for housing and developed award-winning lightweight cored building panels for rapid home building.
In 1966, he founded Goldsworthy Engineering, Inc. in partnership with Ferro Corporation of Plymouth, Indiana, to specialize in automated composite product production equipment such as the Owens Corning winding machine for glass roving packages. He also developed pultrusion capabilities for various profiles and complex shapes, including curved pultrusion/pulforming and automated composite material cutting and kitting equipment for airframe components.
Goldsworthy authored more than 115 technical articles, received 50 U.S. patents, and became the most-honored representative of the composites community. He received NASA’s Certificate of Recognition for creative development of technical innovation in 1983, the first Jud Hall Composites Manufacturing Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, the Society of Plastics Engineers’ John Wesley Hyatt Service to Mankind Award, and the Counterpoise Award from the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI – now PLASTICS) for the development of an all-composite pultruded railcar for the Union Pacific Railroad. The Belgian government knighted Goldsworthy in 1999 for his contributions to industry.
Areas of Expertise:
Plastic processing, Composite materials
Related Links:
“Brandt Goldsworthy: Composites Visionary: A tribute to a pioneer and innovator who helped define seven decades of composites industry history” at http://www.compositesworld.com/articles/brandt-goldsworthy-composites-visionary