NORMAN, Okla., April 22, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The International School of Hydrocarbon Measurement (ISHM) proudly announces that Edward E. Francisco, Jr. is the recipient of the 2014 Laurance S. Reid Award which will be presented posthumously at the 89 th annual school (May 13-15, 2014) at the Cox Communications Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. This award is presented each year in recognition of outstanding individual contributions to the measurement and/or control of hydrocarbon fluids.
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For more than seventy years, Ed Francisco was an international leader in the design, manufacture, and calibration of turbine flow meters for rocket propulsion and industrial fluid flow measurement applications. His engineering accomplishments and inventions have contributed significantly to the aerospace as well as the oil and gas industries.
Ed Francisco successfully designed, built, launched, and parachute-recovered his first solid-propellant rocket in 1935 while just a fourteen year-old high school freshman in Upper Montclair, NJ. Ed maintained his membership in the American Rocket Society and its successor, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), from 1939 through 2014.
After enrolling in Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the fall of 1939, Ed wrote a letter to Dr. Robert H. Goddard to ask how best to prepare himself for a career in rocket engine development. Dr. Goddard replied, saying he doubted there would ever be a job available in developing rocket engines, but if Ed wanted to pursue that field as a hobby he should take all university courses available in physics, chemistry, and math…which he did.
After graduating from an accelerated program at Georgia Tech with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1942, Ed was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy and attained the rank of Lieutenant while serving on active duty in the Pacific Theater until 1946. After leaving the Navy he joined Reaction Motors, which was the first commercial rocket propulsion company to be formed in the United States. While at Reaction Motors, he developed and refined the pulse rate measuring turbine meter, which has subsequently become the fluid flow measurement standard throughout the world.
From 1949 through 1958, Ed worked with M.W. Kellogg, the Eclipse-Pioneer Division of Bendix Aviation, Lockheed, and at White Sands Missile Range in the field of rocket propulsion. He formed Francisco Engineering in 1958 and Hydropoise in the early 1960s. In 1963, Ed began Flow Technology, Inc., in Phoenix, Arizona to build turbine meters and flow provers. Ed applied the techniques he had developed in the rocket propulsion and space fields to build meters for the industrial world. He invented the calibration system known as the "small volume prover," utilizing his patented double-chronometry technique which has become a standard throughout the world and has greatly improved the accuracy of flow meter calibrations.
Ed's flow measuring systems were used during the Apollo program to fuel rockets with liquid hydrogen and oxygen, in the astronauts' spacesuits to measure the amounts of coolant that was being circulated to cool their bodies during their excursions outside of the lunar module, and on the lunar module propulsion system. Ed's meters also were found in such varied locations and applications as the Skylab orbiting laboratory, kidney dialysis machines, the first unmanned drones, production of pharmaceuticals, and the Space Shuttle.
In 1988, Ed founded Calibron Systems, Inc. in Scottsdale, AZ to further develop and build small volume provers for the measurement of liquid hydrocarbons in the petroleum industry. He also marketed the Calibron online densitometer that was used world-wide in industrial processes and the petroleum industry. In 2006, Ed sold Calibron Systems to Enraf and started Omnicraft LLC where he was engaged in inventing and building a family of devices that utilize vibration to measure densities of flowing fluids at extremely high pressures and temperatures.
Ed has numerous US and international patents to his credit…and following an exceptionally creative and productive life, Ed retired in 2007. But during his retirement years he remained very active, routinely working out at the gym and frequently having lunch with friends and former associates. Ed Francisco passed away on February 19, 2014 at the age of 92, leaving his wife of 65 years, Estelle, two daughters, Dian and Lynn, and three grandchildren.
Information and registration links for the 89 th annual International School of Hydrocarbon Measurement and presentation of the Laurance S. Reid award are available on the web at www.ishm.info , by phone at 405-325-6034, by fax at 405-325-7164, and by mail to CCE Registration, University of Oklahoma, 1700 Asp Avenue, Norman, Oklahoma, 73072.
Leon Crowley - University of Oklahoma Phone: 405-831-8609
