EuroWire May 2019

Corporate News

Death of Henry Hobart Clinton, aged 92

tester prompted Mr Clinton to focus almost entirely on high voltage test equipment for the wire and cable industry. Over the years he grew the business nationally and internationally and in 1991 his efforts, throughout the years of working in the wire and cable industry, earned him Wire Association International’s Mordica Award. A family business, Clinton Instrument Company has employed several of his children and grandchildren, as well as cousins and friends. Many current employees have worked at CIC for decades, in which time the company has

nine full cycles of the AC test voltage. This would mean that in order to spark test a wire, moving 4,000 feet per minute to UL requirements, the electrode would have to be ten feet long. During its development, Mr Clinton realised that the impulse tester was problematic in several ways that would limit its commercial use. He believed that a better solution for high-speed testing of wire insulation would be to increase the frequency of AC sine wave testers, which at that time operated at power mains frequencies of 50 or 60 Hz. He reasoned that if he could

HENRY Hobart Clinton, the founder and first president of Clinton Instrument Company, passed away peacefully at home in March, aged 92. A prolific inventor, Mr Clinton received his degree in electrical engineering from Yale University, after returning from service in the Navy in the Second World War. He began working as a consulting engineer and in 1952 the Clinton Instrument Company (CIC) was born. He found work within the growing wire and cable industry, working on many different projects in the early years and becoming increasingly focused on the design and production of specialised electronic test and control equipment. Working with the US Department of Defense, he designed and produced the first domestically made impulse dielectric tester for wire and cable insulation. During this time, production line speeds in the industry had steadily climbed to 4,000 feet per minute and above. Underwriters Laboratories (UL), which wrote specifications for commercial wire and cable manufacturing, required a dwell time in the spark test electrode equal to

grown and prospered by following Henry’s founding principles. Mr Clinton retired from the company in 2001, leaving the business in the hands of his children. He spent his later years writing several books on family history as well as his ownmemoirs. Clinton Instrument Company – USA Website : www.cicsparkers.com

increase the test frequency of the AC spark tester, then the electrode could become shorter and would still be compliant to UL. After a period of development he invented and patented the 3 kHz sine wave spark tester. Operating at 3,000 Hz, this unit could test wire at 3,333 feet per minute with an electrode only 2 inches (50mm) in length, a revolutionary idea. The success of the high frequency sine wave spark

▲ ▲ Henry Hobart Clinton

10

www.read-eurowire.com

May 2019