In 1948, 58-year-old Simpson was hit again. His house was burned to ashes by a fire. He was diagnosed with cancer. The doctor said he only had 6 months left to live.
In this case, I believe that most people will be desperate about life and have lost all their thoughts, so they can only wait for death.
However, Simpson used these "6 months" to create a miracle in the medical community and create a glorious history of the world's automotive automatic transmission.
smpson was born in 1890. He has a strong personality and is talented. He graduated from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Michigan, USA.
1921, Simpson entered a tractor factory to work and worked as an draftsman . Later, the factory was acquired by Ford Motor Company, and Simpson became the design engineer of Ford founder Henry Ford straight pipe.
Simpson is an innovative mechanical engineer who designed and built rear wheel fenders to prevent the tractor from tipping over. Later, this fender became a standardized feature of Ford tractors.
While working at Ford, Simpson also invented a kerosene carburetor and designed many personal items for his boss Henry Ford, such as a miniature tractor designed for Ford's four grandchildren.
Later, Simpson designed a test transmission that was used for Ford car . But because Henry Ford prefers his own T-T-Hand transmission, he ignores Simpson's transmission. Later, whether it was because of jealousy or the escalation of the conflict between the two, Henry Ford suppressed Simpson everywhere and asked him to study some "strange things".
Henry Ford
1931, Henry Ford asked Simpson to develop a "one-wheel drive tractor". After the tractor was built, it could only be turned around in the same place and had no value. Henry Ford was still showing off in the engineering laboratory, which made Simpson feel very ashamed.
Later, he asked Simpson to develop a three-wheeled tractor, but he always leaned to the side. Simpson was helpless and wronged, but because Henry Ford was his boss, he could only endure it, and let others drive it like an old cow and work silently.
In 1938, Henry Ferguson asked Simpson to design a lighter tractor, and at the same time received instructions from Charlie Sorensen to do another study. Simpson was at a loss and accomplished because of his limited energy and lack of ability.
was excluded and ignored. Seeing that the hero was useless, Simpson was forced to leave Ford, which he had worked for 20 years.
Then, Simpson came to Detroit Harvester as an engineer. After four years of work, he resigned as a consultant, specializing in the research and development of planetary gear transmission .
However, there are unexpected situations in the sky, and people have good fortune and good fortune at any time. One day in 1948, a fire burned the Simpsons' house and the family of four had nowhere to live.
What's even more terrible is that he was diagnosed with cancer at that time. The doctor told him, "You have 6 months left, enjoy the rest of your life."
The old horse is in the stable and has ambitions; the martyr has ambitions in his old age.
The dead Simpson did not abandon his dream and enjoy life, but moved to the deserts of Arizona and California to devote himself to studying planetary gear transmissions.
Planetary gear structure
Is this research difficult? From now on, the planetary gear structure is extremely simple. Isn’t it just a few gears? But more than 70 years ago, no one knew what combination and construction it should be. In fact, this research has started in 1920. Hundreds of engineers in Detroit have been trying and experimenting, but none of them have achieved results.
Miracles are often born in a pure state.
It is in that remote and arduous desert that Simpson independently completed the research and obtained the patent for an automatic transmission cleverly composed of "stellar gears, ring gears and planetary gears".
What's even more amazing is that he did not end his life in 6 months as the doctor predicted, but lived for many more years.
Ford Thunderbird
In 1952, Simpson tried his best to sell his automatic transmission concept to Ford and submitted a 50-page paper.
But Ford didn't want to overturn its existing 2-speed transmission and instead use Simpson's new transmission, but it turned out that the Simpson transmission was the easiest, most effective and smoothest structure.
On July 1, 1953, Simpson signed a product license agreement with Ford. He received a commission of $25 per transmission, but it was only a small-scale promotion. In 1955, Chrysler obtained a Simpson license to apply it to the "Imperial" sedan.
It was not until 1964 that Ford began to truly promote the Simpson-style transmission and applied it to cars such as Thunderbird , Mercury, Lincoln , etc. In the same year, General Motors also obtained a Simpson production license to apply the new three-speed automatic transmission to Cadylake and Bick sedans.
Since then, Simpson-style transmissions have become popular in the United States and have been promoted worldwide.
However, Simpson did not see this day. Because he died the year before, in 1963.
Simpson is known as the "father of automatic transmission". He has had many ups and downs in his life, suffered repeated setbacks, but he owned more than 40 invention patents, leaving valuable wealth to mankind.
In the current automatic transmission structures such as AT, AMT, DCT, CVT, etc., planetary gear structures and their modifications can always be found, and they all have the shadow of Simpson behind them.
Reference:
- Simpson-----The father of modern automotive automatic transmission
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