James Scott:
CLASS OF 1958
Alhambra High SchoolClass of 1958
Alhambra, CA
James's Story
Hello Folks!
My transition from Ted to Jim proved to have many funny moments. My Dad did not want to call me junior, so he let my two sisters name me at birth. They decided on Teddy for Teddy Bear. It stuck.
Therefore, all through high school I was Ted. When I got into college, I decided that I needed to use my given name and switched to Jim. It became funny for about four years when Elaine, my wife, and I went to formal school functions and she would ask me to get her a drink or such. For all of our lives together, I was always Ted. But every time she used my name in a formal situation we would hear people say, “I thought his name was Jim.” We would always laugh and explain.
I worked through a MS in Chemistry at Cal State LA in 1967. We had a staff of 13 and in 1967 we out published Berkeley for the year in Chemistry.
I went to Dow Chemical in Midland, Michigan and thought that the salary I received, which was 50% higher than a BS Chemist was quite a good thing. Years later I was thinking about what I did at Dow and thought that during 100% of the time the BS people had only one technician. I on the other hand always had at least two technicians, and occasionally three! They definitely got their extra salary back, but I enjoyed every minute or it!
All of the technicians were in the union. As a chemist I was supposed to be able to do able to do anything in the lab they could do and then some. I always worked with my men and by the time I left I could do things that no other chemist could. The pronouncement was always, “That is Ok, That is Scott.” One of my men came up with a way to make a wax emulsion, for use in coating gas tanks. It involved stirring the mixture through the melt point of the wax. We were making a 25 gallon batch in the pilot plant and my tech was handling a large mixer. It was about 100 degrees and he had sweat dripping off his nose. I went over and took the mixer and told him to sit down and have a cigarette. When he was seated, in comes on of the plant operators who immediately went over to him and said “Hay, he is taking your job.” My tech said “I know, shut up!”
While at Dow I went into an MBA program and had to take a course in statistics. The most boring class I ever participated in! The teacher would begin his lectures as the hand of the clock swept the 12 at 7:00. He would then cease his lecture as the hand of the clock passed the 12 at 9:00. I was getting a flat D as of the final. I took three days off from work and taught myself statistics. I got the highest grade on the final and the teacher would only give me a B.
We moved from Michigan to Seattle and I worked in paper chemistry. I came up with a super strong paper which was intended to be used to make road signs. The problem before had been the sign would be destroyed if anyone tried to remove a word or letter to change its use. The paper on the sign would rip apart and new letters could not be attached. So just when the new paper became available, some wise guy invented the Aluminum road signs!
I went from Seattle to Chicago to work for Nalco Chemical Co., perhaps the largest water treatment company in the US, at that time. However, I was hired into the corporate rubber group as a polymer chemist. They were trying to make an EPDM rubber tire. This would be highly resistant to atmospheric attacks. The problem was that EPDM sheets did not stick to each other, which is an absolute necessity when making a tire. Therefore, Nalco had spent two and one half years developing a m...Expand for more
aterial they termed a “Tackifier” to add to the mixture to enable tires to be made. I was hired to write up the procedure to take the process for making the material from the lab to manufacturing.
I ask if they thought we should offer a research report to confirm the lab’s work. Everyone thought this was an excellent idea. At Dow we had to write research reports every month!
The first thing I found out was the project was justified by the “fact” that the tackifier market was 50 million dollars per year. It was, except this included everything from adhesive tape to sticky notes. The true market for what we were proposing was maybe ½ million dollars per year. Then when I studied the data available I found that they had never run the control experiments to define the size of the blank. When I ran this set of control experiments, I found that in 2 ½ years they had done exactly nothing! Then I showed that if you mixed two EPDM rubbers together, the resultant sheets stuck together like grim death. There was therefore in reality a zero market. Within another 90 days I had shown that three of the four remaining projects had no potential. The group was shut down and I transferred to water treatment. My boss in rubber had been with the company for 15 years. About 90 days after I went to water my new boss came to me and said the my old boss had just been fired for incompetence, and what did I think, My answer was “Who was his boss for the past 15 years?”
After Nalco, I moved back to the LA area. I went to work for Purex in an international group. I got to go around central and south America. I went to Taiwan, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Kuala Lumper, and Bangkok Thailand. I never made it to Europe. However, when I left Purex I left a round the world ticket on Pan Am with stops in Bangkok, Taipei, Teheran, Iran and Paris. However, that was at exactly the time, 1979, that the Iranians took over the US embassy in Teheran. I was very glad not to have to take that trip.
I have bounced around water treatment since that time. I had one fun story about publishing. I wrote a review article an all of the pathogens infecting drinking water from 2000 to 2010. Just after it was published there was an international symposium offered in Savanna, Georgia. I attended with 142 of the world’s top microbiologists and epidemiologists. The fun started when they had four distinct problems, for which none of them had a clue as to what the problem was, nor how to fix it. When I stood up and began to tell them what was happening with the first problem, they were not taking the advice from a mere chemist well. A lady, sitting in back of me by the name of Dr. Janet Stout, one of the top microbiologists in the world, and a personal friend, stood up and said; you may want to listen to him as he knows what he is saying. Instant acceptance.
I have worked for San Joaquin Chemicals since 2000, and with AWT for the past 10 years, on three technical committees. I am currently stepping back from industrial water with AWT and concentrating on potable waters with the AWWT Water Reuse Committee. I am currently attempting to get the water reuse committee to accept Monet’s Water Lilies as a logo!
My second project may be setting up a trip to a workshop in Shanghai, China, I figure about a 2% chance, but fun to contemplate.
Enough for now. I look forward to hearing what you have been doing. I also checked with AHS, there will be no 60th reunion planned that they know about.
Ted
Jim Scott, CWT, CA T2, D2, QAL
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