Atomic-Power Men

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The star appliance salesman in the U.S. is a blonde named Betty Furness. In her TV apartment, a kind of electrified Utopia, she shows the American housewife how wonderfully easy life can be--if she has the right gadgets. Fashionably dressed to look the way a housewife would like to look if she only had time, Betty crawls into bed to show off her electric blanket, washes clothes and dishes, plays How Dry I Am on her electric dryer, and peers into ovens--all without disturbing a lock of Her carefully curled hair. Betty does this for $50,000 a year and Westinghouse.

Betty is casual, direct and commonsensical. She gives women viewers a quick, feminine briefing on the products' best points; she does not offend men by gushing. And she knows, as does Westinghouse, that the only way to stay in the appliance business is to bring out something new every year. When a new product comes out, Betty immediately forgets about the product it supersedes; in fact, she acts as though she never heard of that old-fashioned knickknack she had plugged just the week before.

This week Betty will have some new products to display. One is a range which will preserve even the newest bride from cooking disasters. An "electronic-eye" thermostat, controlled by the heat of the cooking pan, automatically turns off the burner when the water boils away or the food begins to scorch. Westinghouse's new refrigerator has a "magic door" which pops open at a finger touch.

Betty's new automatic dishwasher is designed for apartment dwellers; it's on rollers, so that it can be moved along with the rest of the furniture. As for deep-freezers, Betty wouldn't think of the low, chest-type any more; the new Westinghouse is upright, with "drop-down doors" and "rollout drawers," so that Betty can get at all her frozen foods easily. Her new steam iron eliminates the old pressure method of spreading steam, since it has a mass of little gullies on its bottom which lead the steam across the entire ironing surface.

To advertise these and its other appliances, Westinghouse this week began spending $28 million--the biggest promotion splurge in its history. It even began giving appliances away on a new TV quiz show about its products called Freedom Rings. Contestants will be out of luck unless they have called at their Westinghouse dealers to pick up clue sheets.

Man of the House. Though Betty Furness is the star of its kitchen, the man of the Westinghouse is its $203,250-a-year president, Gwilym Alexander Price. It was he who took the gamble two years ago of spending $2,000,000 on the football telecasts that made Betty's face more familiar than the players'. It was he who staked another $3,000,000 last year to telecast the Chicago conventions, where Betty was shown oftener than Eisenhower or Stevenson. Price thinks the money well spent, modestly jests: "That girl's worth more to this company than I am."

No one else at Westinghouse would agree. Price's aggressive leadership has kept Westinghouse second to General Electric as the biggest appliance maker in the U.S. But in the twelfth biggest corporation in the nation, with 112,000 employees and 87 plants in 31 states, Price is a lot more than an appliance man. Westinghouse and G.E. fight for the title of the world's biggest maker of ship-propulsion turbines, electric fans, water coolers, transformers and generators for utilities. Westinghouse is the second biggest maker of elevators and electric stairs (after Otis), street lights and airport floodlights. It owns six radio stations and two TV stations. It makes 8,000 basic products, ranging from "grain-of-wheat" lamps for bronchoscopes to 2,000,000-lb. generators. When the United States won the Blue Riband as fastest ocean liner last year, it was Westinghouse's steam turbines which drove her to victory.

On all these things Price keeps a watchful eye. But what he watches closest is something on which Westinghouse will not spend a penny of advertising this year, for the very good reason that it may not talk about it--except in general terms. It is atomic energy. Says Price: "We're giving that top priority." It is his pet baby.

Desert Drama. Baby is growing fast. Last week, in a tumbleweed-strewn desert near Arco, Idaho, behind wire fences guarded by sentries, scores of scientists and skilled workers gathered around the hull of a submarine.

In it Westinghouse had built an engine consisting of a nuclear reactor and a complex of pumps and tubes containing water and hitched up to a steam turbine. The basic plan was simple. The water would be piped through the reactor and heated, then piped to a heat exchanger with tubes inside, much like a conventional boiler. Cold water would be piped into the exchanger, turned into steam by the superheated water in the tubes, and then shot into a steam turbine which, in turn, would operate a propeller shaft. But three years of work and millions in federal funds had gone into making the simple plan practical. Soon the atomic engine will be ready for its first test--the insertion of enough rods of U-235 into the reactor to make it "critical," i.e., start breeding plutonium and generating tremendous heat. If the test works out as expected, that heat will be used to send steam surging into the turbines and start the world's first practical atomic engine. Westinghouse has no doubts that the engine will work. It is working on a duplicate engine to power the world's first atomic submarine, Nautilus, which is expected to put to sea next year.

Gwilym Price's goal is far beyond an atomic submarine: it is atomic power for commercial use. Anything that generates steam can also generate electricity. But the submarine engines are too small to generate enough commercial electricity to be worth while. What Westinghouse is banking on to turn the trick is the far more powerful atomic engine which Westinghouse is working on for a super aircraft carrier. It would be big enough to run a generator to light a city of 500,000.

The Atomic Age. When will such an atomic engine be ready? Last week the Newport News shipyard, which is working on the supercarrier Forrestal, gave a possible hint. It took ads asking for men "interested in a career in atomic energy." It looked as if the shipbuilding company hopes to land a contract for another carrier of the Forrestal class, to be powered by an atomic engine. Price evidently thinks the atomic age of power is close. This week he announced that Westinghouse will spend $2,000,000 to build, on an abandoned golf course five miles northeast of Pittsburgh, the first U.S. plant devoted exclusively to making components for atomic-power plants. Its first product: the "canned" pumps* which Westinghouse developed for the atomic-submarine engine, and which Price thinks will find plenty of use in existing, as well as atomic, power plants. With this head start, Price believes that Westinghouse is well ahead of rival G.E. in atomic-power plants. Says he: "I believe that we are within five years of the beginning of commercial atomic power."

The most remarkable thing about this remarkable progress in everything from toasters to atomic energy is that it is bossed by a man who is neither physicist, engineer nor production expert. Price is still so innocent of mechanical lore that friends kid him about the time his car stalled in Pittsburgh's rush-hour traffic. Mrs. Price had to lift the hood and get it started, because Price didn't know how to work the jammed automatic choke. But what unscientific President Price demonstrates is that management is a science of its own, and that, in a mass-production society based on interchangeable parts, the top managers are also interchangeable--when shaped and machined to the new standards of Big Business management.

Hard Knocks. Gwilym (Welsh for William) Price has been shaped by hard work and ambition. The shaping began in the hard-scrabbling mine and mill town of Cannonsburg, Pa., where his father, Welsh-born John Llewellyn Price, worked as a roller in a tin mill when he wasn't striking for the old Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers. When the men were out, the cupboard was bare, and Bill Price early began piecing out the family income by running errands and clerking nights in a store. At 16, when his father died suddenly, Bill had to go to work in earnest. He learned shorthand, earned $50 a month as a secretary by day, and by night went to Professor Dennis O'Connor's $25-a-month classes in math, geography, history, English and Latin. After three years he was able to pass exams to enter night law classes at the University of Pittsburgh, and graduated at 22, the youngest in his class.

After a World War I overseas hitch as a tank captain, he settled down to a $75-a-month job preparing briefs for a law firm, and worked briefly as a bank trust officer. He didn't like it, tried politics, served one term as a Republican state representative. When Pittsburgh's Peoples Savings and Trust Co. offered him $7,500 a year as a trust officer, 27-year-old Bill Price grabbed it.

He hated the job, but having married his sweetheart, Marion Roberts, and started a family, he couldn't give it up. "I wanted to be a lawyer," recalls Price, "and I only enjoyed what parts of the job had to do with law." When the depression threatened the bank, Price got interested, found that "there was such a thing as organizing just to stay alive." He organized so furiously that in 1940, at 44, he became president of Peoples-Pittsburgh Trust Co., fifth biggest bank in the city.

Crazy Man. In a low-paid business, Price shocked some colleagues by raising pay and setting up profit sharing to spark incentive. He shocked other bankers by using billboards and big newspaper ads to build business, and astounded reporters, who had never been able to get the time of day at Peoples' before, by telling them: "The door is always open, and I'll tell you anything I can." Some crusty oldtimers at Pittsburgh's potent Duquesne Club began wondering about "that crazy

Bill Price." But Westinghouse's shrewd old Chairman Andrew Robertson, 63, had noted that Peoples' deposits had doubled in three years. He decided that Bill was crazy like a fox, and offered him a vice-presidency at Westinghouse. He made no promises, but said meaningfully: "You know my age and you know the competition." Bill Price, taking this as a challenge to prove he could get the top job, took the offer. He took on Westinghouse's war-contract termination, did such a model job that many other companies copied it. In January 1946, he became Westinghouse's president, succeeding Robertson as chief executive.

The Good Race. The company was founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse, who invented the railroad air brake, proved the usefulness of alternating current, was first to introduce the Saturday half-holiday to U.S. Industry, and ran the company until it failed in the panic of 1907. After a succession of bosses, in 1929, Robertson took command. He nursed it through depression quivers and launched it into vigorous World War II growth.

But that growth, big as it was, has been far exceeded since Bill Price took over. He has almost doubled Westinghouse's sales--from $730 million in 1945 to a record $1.4 billion last year. And he has more than doubled its profits ($26.7 million to $68.5 million). Last year alone, sales rose 17%, and in spite of excess-profits taxes, the net rose 6% at a time when most corporate nets were falling. Finally, Price has launched Westinghouse on such shirt-splitting expansion that within two years it will be twice as big as when he took command. G.E. has been growing even faster in new plants, but Price has crept up in sales. In 1951, Westinghouse sales were 46% of G.E.'s. Last year Westinghouse sales crept up to 57% of G.E.'s. Says Price: "It wasn't even a race before World War II. Now it's a good race--a very exciting, stimulating experience."

Command Decisions. From his 23rd-floor, Gateway Center headquarters in Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle, Price runs his side of the race with all the quiet, unspectacular efficiency of one of his electric motors. No desk-pounder, when he wants something done, he offers it as a polite suggestion. But if it isn't done, Price is apt to remind a deputy: "When I make a suggestion. I don't mean it to be ignored." His aides have learned that he has "a whim of iron." He always uses the direct approach, either phones a man or sees him. writes no memos, hates even to dictate letters.

As a newcomer to Westinghouse, Price's biggest worry was whether or not he could win the respect of the old hands. For a while it seemed a question whether he would lick the job or it would lick him. He chain-smoked cigars, often 20 a day. He developed ulcers worrying whether he could make good in an industry completely new to him. Price whipped his ulcers, grew assured enough not to mind the jokes about his mechanical ignorance, and cut down his smoking.

In 1946. he did not have to understand atomic energy to realize that it would cause a revolution in his industry, and that Westinghouse had to get into it or be swept away by it.

Price didn't think Westinghouse could learn anything running plants like Hanford or Oak Ridge; they had become management, not development, projects. "Our engineers advised us," says Price, "that naval propulsion was likely to be the first practical application of atomic engines. In warships, the advantages of increased range would outweigh the high costs of the engine. So we went after that as the best means of gaining nuclear experience and at the same time solving practical problems which would have application in our business."

The Navy had set up an atomic project under Captain Hyman Rickover, a hard-driving officer who had been insisting since 1947 that an atomic-powered submarine was feasible (TIME, Sept. 3, 1951). So Westinghouse and Captain Rickover got together and in 1948, signed the contract for the reactor.

Staff & Line. To get the company in shape to handle such tough new projects, Price also had to streamline his management. It was too cumbersome; six different divisions might have to work on cost estimates before Westinghouse could bid for an order, taking so many weeks that the company could lose it. One day in 1949, Price dropped in, unannounced, on a Manhattan efficiency expert, Mark Cresap, and asked him to study Westinghouse's sales methods, which Price thought needed improving. In 90 days Cresap brought in a report which so impressed Price that he hired Cresap as a vice president, made him his assistant, and set him to mapping an entire new command system.

Westinghouse's numerous divisions are now divided into four major groups, each with its own vice president as boss. Executive Vice President Latham Edgar Osborne, who has spent 42 of his 57 years at Westinghouse, runs the vital defense group, which includes atomic energy. The most profitable group, apparatus (heavy generators, transformers, etc.), is under John Koga Hodnette, 50, another Westinghouse veteran and a brilliant mechanical engineer (Alabama Polytechnic, '22) with a long string of patents. Virginia-born William White Sproul Jr., 45, an electrical engineer, bosses the general industrial-products group, which includes elevators, airconditioning, plastics, small motors, etc. Appliances are under consumer products, run by ex-Adman John Meek McKibben, 51. Price is the overseer who keeps the top echelon pulling together, holds it responsible for meeting goals. All of them sit in on the overall management committee, which determines how high Westinghouse should set its sights for expansion.

Imagitron & Goositron. Price himself keeps raising the sights. He has to. "This country's use of electricity," he points out, "has been doubling every decade since 1900, and is now doubling again." To keep Westinghouse doubling with it, Price has already spent $230 million on expansion, has earmarked $200 million more for the next three years. "We had the electron," says Appliance Boss McKibben, and Price supplies "the imagitron and the goositron."

Price also went to work on the production workers at the bottom. He sought to give them more identity with the company. He wrote letters inviting them to buy Westinghouse stock, offering it at $5 under the market (44 3/8 last week). In five years, 28,000 workers have bought $29 million worth of stock--a total of 660,000 shares --and some of the worker-owners show up at the annual meeting and don't hesitate to offer their ideas. Price encouraged the unions to join him in looking for ways both could work together for their mutual good. In 1952 he spoke to the C.I.O.'s electrical-workers' union at its national convention, saying: "We respect union leaders, and we think the union should respect management . . . Our program . . . is neither a 'get tough' policy nor is it a 'pushover' policy. It is primarily an offer of cooperation . . . Understanding and unity, like charity, begin at home . . ."

Demand Meter. Gwilym Price is one of his own best customers. His home has so many appliances that he has been forced to have a "demand meter" (made by Westinghouse) installed, and pay a premium for the extra current, because it is an added load during the utility company's peak period. The ten-room house, tucked away in ten acres of woodland just eight miles west of Pittsburgh, was built by the Prices 16 years ago. Price always arrives with a bulging briefcase, but his wife tries to keep him from opening it and usually succeeds.

Marion Price, witty and a good storyteller, complements her husband, who has little small talk and forgets jokes as soon as he hears them. They shoot together at a nearby skeet club, where the dues are a year and members work their own traps; they go bird hunting and like to fish for dolphin off Florida (which they did last week). At home, the Prices and their three sons long had an unwritten rule that nobody would make outside dates on Sunday nights, when they all ate together in front of the fireplace. The sons are now grown, but Lawyer Gwilym Jr., 30, brings his wife and Gwilym III to continue the custom. Alfred Roberts, 26, is a physician, and the youngest son, Richard, 22, will finish Yale Law School next year. Price still talks wistfully of going back to the law, forming a firm with his two lawyer sons, and being "the elder statesman while they do the work."

Change in Demand. But Price smiles when he talks of retiring. He has a long way to go to finish the tremendous job of expansion he has cut out for Westinghouse. After the Navy picked Westinghouse to make jet-aircraft engines, Price realized the tremendous prospects for jets, stepped up Westinghouse's facilities to the point where jets accounted for $80 million worth of sales in 1952. This year jet sales will total $250 million. Price also staked big sums on other new projects. Westinghouse succeeded in building a generator nearly twice as powerful as any built before, without any increase in size. Formerly generator coils, which revolve almost as fast as a pistol bullet travels, would burn out if the current were increased above 135,000 kw. But Westinghouse, using hollow coils cooled by hydrogen gas, was able to almost double the capacity without increasing the size. (TVA is now spending $9,500,000 for two of these 250,000-kw. giants.)

Westinghouse's engineers, given free rein, also brought forth an operatorless elevator,* which promises to revolutionize city office-building transportation. Each car not only operates itself electrically (it will not stop at a floor where no one has rung), but coordinates its operation with every other car in the system, so that no two stop at the same floor.

Price has put heavy emphasis on appliances, because, during World War II, production of the "heavy stuff" (turbines, generators, etc.) grew so fast that, in the early postwar years, the corporation was top heavy with it. Price hopes to balance it out by boosting appliances to 30% of his overall sales. To do that, he spends millions on improvements. Westinghouse engineers experimented for ten years and spent $790,000 before they got a Frost-Free refrigerator that worked; the first on the market, it enabled Westinghouse to grab bigger sales. In Columbus, Ohio, Westinghouse will shortly open a new refrigerator plant bigger than its huge appliance center at Mansfield, Ohio. Just to get the dealers ready for the 1953 line, Price spent $1,500,000 for a musical to acquaint dealers in 38 cities with "The Greatest Appliance Show on Earth."

The appliance industry is now in the midst of the fiercest selling war since 1940. Price, who came up on the crest of the great postwar buying spree, knows that he still has to pass the tests of dog-eat-dog competition. As Price puts it: "I can turn out to be a success or a bum."

Every maker, big & small, is expanding the number of his products. RCA, once known only for phonographs and radio-TV appliances, this year is selling air-conditioners and electric ranges. Crosley Division of Avco Manufacturing Corp. will begin marketing washing machines. General Electric is building the world's biggest appliance center at Louisville, Ky., on which it will spend $200 million.

For the U.S. housewife, this means that the appliance makers will be working twice as hard to develop new gadgets for the whole house. And some day Betty Furness might appear on color TV to say: "Now I want to show you the toaster that butters the bread, the range that washes the pans, and this wonderful electrically-powered crib that rocks the baby back to sleep if he cries."

*The pump, which drives the water to be heated through the atomic reactor, can have no protruding shafts, which might cause leaks of deadly radioactive material. Pump and motor combined are "canned" inside the water pipe.

*Westinghouse provided those for G.E.'s Manhattan headquarters, since G.E. makes none.

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