Indianapolis engineer Harry Hellman, died on Saturday, July 3, 2004 in Edmonds, Washington, after a long illness. He was 76.
Hellman was born in 1928 in Gary, IN to a Swedish immigrant family. When the great depression hit, his parents returned to northern Sweden along with Harry and his sister, leaving 8 brothers in North America. Harry excelled in his studies and won a place at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, where he graduated in 1953. Faced with the choice of doing military service in Sweden (and giving up his American citizenship) and returning to the US, he chose to accept a position at Goodyear Aerospace in Akron, OH. At Goodyear, he worked on miniaturized analog computers for the space program. In 1967, he left Goodyear to be one of the founders of Solid State Scientific of Montgomeryville PA, one of the originators of the CMOS integrated circuit technology now used in almost every computer chip. In 1971 he and his colleagues produced the first successful watch circuits for liquid crystal display wristwatches.
After three years working to set up watch factories in Hong Kong, in 1983 Harry joined the corded phone development team at AT&T Bell Labs in Indianapolis. He became an expert on low cost telephone manufacturing and testing for electromagnetic interference. He retired in 1996.
Soon after Harry arrived in Akron, he met a girl from his home province of Vasterbotten, Sweden who had an appreciation for Harry's impish sense of humor. Harry and Lisbeth married and raised 3 children. Lisbeth died in 1987. In retirement, Harry pursued genealogy and folk dancing. He was also active in VASA lodge SVEA in Indianapolis.
Harry is survived by 2 sons, Eric, of Montclair, NJ, Olof, of Bothell, WA and a daughter, Maria of Sherman Oaks, CA, by a sister, 2 brothers and 5 grandchildren. He was one of the founding members of Christ the Saviour Lutheran Church in Fishers IN, where a Memorial Service will be held on August 8 at 2 PM. Contributions in his memory may be made to the church or the Hellman memorial fund at Newtown Friends School. A "begravning" will be held in Sweden in August of 2005. He will be missed by friends and family around the world.