[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 42 (Thursday, April 6, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H1942-H1943]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   TRIBUTE TO EDSON INGERSOLL GAYLORD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shimkus). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Manzullo) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. MANZULLO. Mr. Speaker, Rockford, Illinois, lost a giant in 
industry this past week with the death of Edson Ingersoll Gaylord, 
leaving his wife, Jane, and children, Charles, Will, Susan, Mary, and 
John. Edson Gaylord, one of the last of the manufacturing giants; one 
of the great minds of this century; one of the people who took the 
innate ability to see things in his spirit, to be able to construct 
them in his mind and with his hands and the people who surrounded him, 
was able to manufacture some of the largest machines, actually, in 
history. Rockford, Illinois, is at a tremendous loss over the death of 
this man who took a company in 1947 from 400 people to over 4,000.
  Edson Gaylord, the free trader; a person whom I met a few years ago 
when I first ran for Congress. I sat in front of him and looked at him 
with those very piercing eyes of his and that squared jaw as he 
examined me on a number of issues, and whenever I agreed with him there 
was this slight nod, a little bit of a smile, and he said you know, 
Don, if you would only change your mind or modify your position on a 
particular point of view that I had with which he disagreed, he said, 
things would go better for you. I said Edson, I said, that is like me 
asking you to change your mind on free trade. He looked at me totally 
without expression, sat back in his chair, the corners of his mouth 
went up slightly and he said, you have my support to be our next 
Congressman. At that point I thought that he was almost as steeled as 
the steel with which he worked at Ingersoll Mill and Machine. I would 
learn over a period of time of these last several years what a very 
kind and gentle industry giant this man was.
  Let me give my colleagues some of the patents that he and his company 
innovated: the I-line transfer machines, the Masterhead machining 
systems, the Mastercenter machining systems, the Nutating spindle 
units, the

[[Page H1943]]

natural path tapelaying systems. These are very complicated terms. What 
they do, Mr. Speaker, is they make technology in this country. We hear 
today about the technology revolution and what is going on in high 
tech, but high tech was nothing to Edson Ingersoll Gaylord, because he, 
in fact, probably is the inventor of those words, ``high tech.'' Let us 
take something and let us make it better.
  What did his friends say about him? Well, one person who started as a 
new employee at the company was really impressed when Edson Gaylord 
took 2 hours, walked him around the entire shop, showed him where the 
company had been and his vision of the future, because that is what he 
liked, being on the floor of the shop. His good friend, John Doar, an 
attorney out of Chicago, said this of Edson Gaylord. He said, ``Edson 
Gaylord's mind has thrived on machine tool manufacturing technology. 
For as long as I have known him, this curiosity has energized him. 
This, plus the years of hard work, makes Edson as informed and as 
knowledgeable as anyone in the world about the opportunities for 
further developments in the machine tool industry.''
  Fortune Magazine said of Edson Gaylord, ``He is the master builder of 
mammoth tools. He is the bellwether of the machine tool industry. Quite 
a man, making machines that are used on airplane lines and automobile 
lines.''
  His good friend, Dan LeBlond from the Institute of Advanced 
Manufacturing Sciences said of Edson, ``An unrivaled inspirer and 
shepherder of people to accomplish pioneering and singularly successful 
innovation of advanced manufacturing and machine tool technology.

                              {time}  1615

  ``A perceptive and innovative industrialist.''
  He was a man that America will miss, a man with numerous awards for 
technology. We know him as Edson Ingersoll Gaylord. America knows him 
as the friend of innovation.

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