Long before Union began to focus on interdisciplinary learning and entrepreneurship, the College was the perfect breeding ground for undergraduates like David Flinchbaugh: innovator, inventor, health physicist and businessman.
David E. Flinchbaugh '57 earned money for his Union tuition by building experimental equipment for the physics labs in the department machine shop.
“We had a whole attic of Manhattan Project surplus equipment,” he said. “My roommate, Edward Crawford, and I built a high-voltage Van de Graff generator, other accelerators and a functioning radar system. We worked with Professors Winfred Schwarz, Charles Schwartz and Vladimir Rojansky.”
One day, Flinchbaugh opened the door to his work lab and found an array of boxes in assorted shapes and sizes. They contained parts of an electron microscope that a German company had bought from General Electric (Serial # 6) and traded for a new model. Another professor, Curtis Hemenway, and his close friend, Ernest Fullam, a pioneer in electron microscopy who worked at GE, arranged to have the apparatus shipped to the College.
“It was a very expensive and valuable research tool in those days,” Flinchbaugh recalled. “I reassembled it and built the vacuum deposition and other supporting equipment for use in our studies.”
Later, Hemenway and Fullam asked Flinchbaugh to build a specimen mount “so we could take stereoscopic or 3D electron microscope pictures, and we wrote it up as a patent application,” Flinchbaugh said. “I gave a presentation that was judged by GE and other folks at a science seminar held at Union. I also was invited to give the technical paper at a college science conference in Washington.
In 1956, I wrote that patent application. It was a very exciting period.” Flinchbaugh, 71, has spent a lifetime generating excitement in numerous fields through his work as an inventor. In the summers of 1956 and 1957, he was hired by IBM in Poughkeepsie to conduct experiments and design transistors for their future computers, and he also wrote a second patent application for them.
He has taken a multi-disciplinary approach as an atomic physicist, health physicist and registered professional electrical engineer. Many of his devices are designed to improve health for Americans and others around the world.
“My inventions and patents and trademarks all started at Union,” he said from his Florida home. “I loved Union.”
With more than 200 inventions to his name, Flinchbaugh recently was named a semifinalist in the History Channel's “Modern Marvels” Invent Now Challenge, which celebrates “ingenuity, invention and imagination brought to life on a grand scale.”
He was cited for his Urocycler®, a bladder management system that was selected from among more than 4,200 entries. The sophisticated, palm-sized invention has won numerous awards and has been hailed by internationally prominent physicians as “the most significant breakthrough in the field of urology” in 70 years.
He drew inspiration from personal experience after his own father, an otherwise healthy and active engineer, died prematurely from a urinary tract infection contracted during a hospital stay.
A native of Poughkeepsie, Flinchbaugh lives in Orlando, Fla., where he founded UroSolutions, Inc., to manufacture and market urological products for global distribution. He moved to Orlando in 1968 as director of R&D for Orlando Research Corp., which later became Control Laser Corp., where he was vice president.
He has worked in research and engineering positions at IBM, Sperry, Lockheed-Martin, Westinghouse, United Aircraft, McDonnell Douglas, Andersen Laboratories and as a contractor at Argonne National Laboratories and at NASA, KCS.
At Union, Flinchbaugh studied classical and quantum physics with a double major in physics and mathematics. He also found time for the Union College Choir, Glee Club, ROTC, WRUC, the Amateur Radio Club (W2GSB) and Photography Club, with fellow student Tom Durfey and Faculty Advisor Gil Harlow.
He enjoyed writing and was coached by English and Religion Professor Norman Johnson. In preparation for his later years at NASA Headquarters at the Kennedy Space Center, he was influenced by Engineering Professor Augustus Fox as a student member of the American Rocket Society.
Flinchbaugh met his wife of 49 years, Heidi, a microbiologist, plant physiologist and Vassar graduate, through Union's Outing Club. They enjoy their growing family, including two sons, two daughters and two grandchildren.
At Union, Flinchbaugh also did community service with Alpha Phi Omega, a national service fraternity affiliated with Boys Scouts of America, and he began his life membership in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1954.
Flinchbaugh was valedictorian of his high school class, “but college was a whole new world. At Union, you met people from all over, and they were the best of the best. I was not the best student, but I was very persistent and hard working. When I walked across the stage at Commencement, President Carter Davidson shook my hand and said, ‘Thanks, Dave, for a lot of things.' That meant a lot to me. He realized I did a lot that wasn't strictly academic but that contributed positively to campus life.”
In addition to Hemenway, Schwarz, Schwartz and Rojansky, Flinchbaugh praised Professor Emeritus V. Ennis Pilcher (“a very good friend”), Department Chair Harold Way and Professor Theodore Goble, who fostered his keen interest in optical physics.
Following Union, Flinchbaugh did his graduate work in atomic physics and mathematics at the University of Connecticut, from which he also holds a Ph.D. in atomic physics. He conducted post-doctoral work at the University of Colorado, Case Institute of Technology and Harvard University. He has taught as an adjunct at numerous colleges, and he helped form 18 corporations, two of which are traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
Flinchbaugh has been elected a Fellow of the IEEE, Society of Manufacturing Engineers/ Robotics and Automation, Optical Society of America and American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery. Last year he was also honored as a Fellow of the Laser Institute of America for his pioneering work in lasers and “acousto-optic” modulators.
His many other honors include the IEEE's “Entrepreneur of the Year” award in 1998; Orange County, Florida's Environmental Excellence Award; and the Governor A.W. Gilchrist Humanitarian Award from the Florida Institute of Consulting Engineers for “outstanding and innovative engineering designs.”
Before creating the Urocycler®, Flinchbaugh designed and built Argon-ion and other gas and solid-state types of laser systems for use in ophthalmology and surgery. His first laser design was a Cesium-Ion LASER in 1960. In 1980, he devised the Remotely Operated Service Arm (ROSA), an anthropomorphic robot manipulator that helps reduce human risk to high levels of radiation while servicing and refueling nuclear power reactors. The patent was assigned to Westinghouse and later licensed to Mitsubishi and Siemens.
He also is an accomplished musician, having composed and copyrighted eight hymns, anthems and songs with lyrics.
“I practiced many hours on the Union College Chapel organ while taking lessons from Dr. Elmer Tidmarsh,” he said. “I also took flying lessons from Elmer Tidmarsh, Jr., the professor's son, as an active member of the Union College ‘Flying Dutchmen.'”
Flinchbaugh will take time out from his busy schedule next year to make a trip back to the place that nurtured and sustained his inventive and scientific spirit. “I'm looking forward to next year's ReUnion, my 50th,” he said.