Paul Blasingame

Benjamin Paul Blasingame was born in State College, Pennsylvania, on 1 August 1919. He graduated from Pennsylvania State College in 1940, having majored in mechanical engineering. He also participated in the college's Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps program. In early 1941 he was called to active duty. He received a regular commission in the United States Army Signal Corps in January 1942. During World War II he worked on ground-based radar systems with an Air Force Fighter Group in Panama as a communications and radar officer. In 1945 he joined the Armament Laboratory at Wright Field, Ohio. ==US Air Force==

Blasingame remained in the Army after the war, working in engineering positions, and he joined the United States Air Force (USAF) on its formation in September 1947. That year the USAF sponsored his enrolment in a graduate program at the Instrumentation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned his Doctor of Science degree in 1950, He became known as a member of Draper's "inertial mafia", who advocated the use of inertial navigation systems. For his services, Blasingame was awarded the Legion of Merit. ==Delco==

Blasingame resigned his commission in the USAF in 1959, and took a job at AC Spark Plug in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he became the director of engineering, and later the manager. AC Spark Plug merged with United Delco in 1971, and became Delco Electronics in 1974. He moved to Santa Barbara, California, where he managed its operations, and worked on the development of helicopters. ==Later life==

After retiring from Delco in 1979, Blasingame continued to serve on National Research Council committees that advised NASA on the development of helicopter technology. His papers are in the University Archives at Virginia Tech. ==Bibliography==