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J. Edward Anderson, BSME, Iowa State University, MSME, University of Minnesota, Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Following his undergraduate work he developed methods of structural analysis of supersonic-aircraft wings (NACA Report No. 1131) at the Structures Research Division of NACA (now NASA), and contributed to the design of the F-103 wing. He then moved to the Honeywell Aeronautical Division where he designed aircraft instruments including the first transistorized amplifier used in a military aircraft, performed computer analysis of autopilots for military and space applications, and directed the work of up to 15 research engineers. While at Honeywell he invented and led the development of a new type of inertial navigator now used widely on military and commercial aircraft.
In 1959 he received a Convair Fellowship under which, with a half-salary grant from Honeywell, he went to M. I. T. to study for a Ph. D. degree. He became fascinated with magnetohydrodynamics and wrote a thesis entitled Magnetohydrodynmaic Shock Waves, which was the only M. I. T. Ph.D. thesis that year out of 200 published by M. I. T. Press. It was later reprinted by the University of Tokyo Press and translated into Russian and published by Atomizdat in Moscow in 1968 at a time Dr. Anderson was in the Soviet Union on an exchange visit sponsored jointly by the National Academy of Sciences and the Soviet Academy of Science.
After returning to Honeywell in 1962 he directed a team of 24 engineers in the advanced development of a solar-probe spacecraft and in August 1963, following a briefing he gave with his staff to officials at NASA Ames Research Center, NASA informed Honeywell that they were equal in capability with its two funded contractors on the solar-probe effort. He had written a report justifying the solar-problem mission, which was used in 1964 by NASA personnel in testimony to Congress.
In September 1963 Dr. Anderson joined the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota as an associate professor and later as a full professor directed its Industrial Engineering Division. In 1968, after returning from 10 months in the Soviet Union, he became interested in PRT. He chaired a Symposium on the Role of Science and Technology in Society; initiated, managed and lectured in a large interdisciplinary course "Ecology, Technology, and Society;" coordinated a 15-professor Task Force on New Concepts in Urban Transportation; and chaired three International Conferences on Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) following which he was elected first president of the Advanced Transit Association. In 1972 he briefed NASA Headquarters on PRT in relation to a “NASA Advanced PRT Program” and in December 1972 he was asked by a NASA official to chair a National Advisory Committee on a proposed NASA PRT Program.
During the 1970s, Dr. Anderson consulted on PRT planning, ridership analysis, and system design for the Colorado Regional Transportation District, Raytheon Company, the German joint venture DEMAG+MBB, and the State of Indiana. For several years he was a Regional Director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and one of its Distinguished Lecturers. He lectured widely on new transit concepts and was sponsored on several lecture tours abroad by the United States Information Agency and the United States State Department. In 1982 he was presented with the George Williams Fellowship Award sponsored by the YMCA and presented for public service, and the MPIRG Public Citizen Award.
In 1978 he published the textbook Transit Systems Theory (D. C. Heath, Lexington Books) [1], which he has used in his course "Transit Systems Analysis and Design." In addition to engineering students, enrollment in this course has included professional transportation engineers from across United States as well as from Sweden and Korea.
In 1981 he initiated and led the development of a new High-Capacity PRT system. By June of 1983 the design was sufficiently advanced that, with University of Minnesota officials, he was able to co-founded Automated Transportation Systems, Inc., the name of which was changed to Taxi 2000 Corporation in March 1986. Between 1984 and 1992 he developed computer programs for vehicle control, station operation, operation of multiple vehicles in networks, calculation of guideways curved in three dimensions to ride-comfort standards, study of the dynamics of transit vehicles, economic analysis of transit systems, and calculation of transit ridership.
In 1986 he was attracted to the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at Boston University where as a full professor he taught engineering design and transit systems analysis and design; and organized, coordinated and lectured in an interdisciplinary course "Technology and Society." On his own time, as CEO of Taxi 2000 Corporation, he organized a team of a half-dozen engineers and managers from major Boston-Area firms to further develop High-Capacity PRT. In May 1989, the Northeastern Illinois Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) learned of his company’s work together with Raytheon Company and, as a result, initiated a program to fully develop PRT. This led to a $1.5M PRT design study led by Stone & Webster Engineering Corporation, followed by a $40M joint development program funded by Raytheon Company and the RTA. In 1992, as a result of publicity from the RTA project, the Taxi 2000 PRT system was selected unanimously by a 17-person steering committee over bus and rail systems for deployment at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
While at Boston University, he developed the Maglev Performance Simulator used by the National Maglev Initiative Office, U. S. Department of Transportation, to study the performance of high-speed maglev vehicles traveling within ride-comfort standards over the curves and hills of an interstate expressway.
Following the RTA program, which was abandoned by the RTA [2] and successful only because it inspired others to work on PRT, Dr. Anderson returned to Minnesota. He gave courses on transit systems analysis and design to transportation professionals in the U. S., Sweden and Korea; and engaged in PRT planning studies for several clients including several simulations of PRT and automated baggage-handling systems. In 1996 he chaired an international conference on PRT and related technologies. In 1998 the Taxi 2000 system was accepted as the preferred technology promoted for the Greater Cincinnati Area by a committee of Forward Quest, a Northern Kentucky business organization. In the period 2000-2002 he led the design and construction supervision of a full-scale linear-induction-motor-propelled, automatically controlled vehicle that operated on a short segment of guideway for thousands of error-free rides.
In January 2005, he found it necessary to resign from Taxi 2000 Corporation and soon, with two other of its Board Members, founded PRT International, LLC through which he has developed from basic principles and available public-domain material a PRT system under the name “Intelligent Transportation Network System (ITNS),” which was coined by his Manager of Marketing and Business Development, Jake Solomon. He continues the challenging task of determining how to fully commercialize ITNS.
For his patents on PRT, the Intellectual Property Owners Foundation named Dr. Anderson an Outstanding American Inventor of 1989. In 1994 he was Distinguished Alumni Lecturer at North Park University in Chicago. In 2001 he was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his work on PRT. In 2008 he was elected Lifetime Honorary Member of the Advanced Transit Association. He is a registered professional engineer in the State of Minnesota, author of about 150 technical papers and three books, and is listed in 36 biographical reference works including Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World.
[2] Explained in a paper entitled “The Unraveling of the Taxi 2000 design.”
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