Harold Chestnut

Harold (Hal) Chestnut (25 November 1917, Albany - Schenectady, NY 29 August 2001) was an American electrical engineer, who contributed to the development of the fields of control theory and systems engineering. Harold Chestnut was born in 1918. He studied electrical engineering at MIT and received a B.S. degree in 1939 and a M.S. degree in 1940. In that same year he began a life-long career with the General Electric Company, which would last unti... more

Harold (Hal) Chestnut (25 November 1917, Albany - Schenectady, NY 29 August 2001) was an American electrical engineer, who contributed to the development of the fields of control theory and systems engineering. Harold Chestnut was born in 1918. He studied electrical engineering at MIT and received a B.S. degree in 1939 and a M.S. degree in 1940. In that same year he began a life-long career with the General Electric Company, which would last until his retirement in 1983. He married his wife Erma Ruth Callaway Chestnut in 1944 and they had three sons. During the Second World War Chestnut was both a student and an instructor in General Electric's well-known Advanced Engineering Program. He worked on the design of the central fire-control system and remotely controlled gunturrets used on the B-29 aircraft. Later he worked in the Aeronautics and Ordnance Department and the Systems Engineering and Analysis branch of the Advanced Technology Laboratory, where he served as manager from 1956... less