The Founders: Ralph Edward Flanders

[9/28/1880 - 2/19/1970] Ralph Edward Flanders - Mechanical Engineer, Inventor, US Senator from Vermont, Member of the Springfield Telescope Makers.

Ralph Flanders was born in northeastern Vermont (Barnet in Caledonia County) and was educated in Rhode Island. He apprenticed as a machinist, and was also a broadly-read self-taught scholar. From 1905 to 1910, he was the editor in New York City of Machine magazine and he traveled widely to cover developments in machine tool technology. Then he moved to Springfield Vermont to work for the Fellows Gear Shaper Company.

In 1911, Flanders married Helen Hartness, the daughter of James Hartness, who was then President of the Jones and Lamson Machine Company. Soon after, Hartness hired Flanders as a department manager at J&L, where he improved the efficiency and accuracy of their automatic lathe. He became President of J&L in 1933, and implemented continuous production line manufacturing, bringing some of the efficiencies of mass production to machine tool building, and aquiring more than 20 patents for J&L.

Ralph and Helen had three children, Elizabeth (born 1912), Anna aka Nancy (1918), and James (1923).

Together with his brother Ernest, Flanders developed award-winning precision grinding machines that greatly enabled rapid production of turbine blades for jet engines.

Ralph Flanders was US Senator from Vermont from 1946 to 1958. He served on the Finance Committee and the Committee on Armed Services. He was a supporter of the US Marshall Plan for rebuilding wartorn Europe, and in 1954 he introduced a motion in the Senate to censure the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Ralph Flanders died in Springfield on February 19, 1970 at age 89. He was interred at Summer Hill Cemetary in Springfield.

Ed Note: Ralph Flanders was important in the founding of the Club, and his signature appears on the list of Charter Members in the Secretary's Report of the founding meeting in 1923. However, he was not recognized as a charter member on a later Members Log. It is not known if he completed a telescope mirror, which is a requirement for membership, but he deserves to be included here among the founders because of his support of the Club from its inception.

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