Inside ICI


Industry Pioneer Edgar Gotthold Remembered IN MEMORIAM


Edgar Gotthold 1922 - 2017


The following is part of an interivew conducted in an effort to retain the history of investment casting.


T A German immigrant who came to


the U.S. at age 15, Edgar Gotthold, was an industry pioneer in the development of high-property aluminum castings. He was president of Tec-Cast, an aluminum investment casting foundry in Carlstadt, NJ.


there after my father was released from prison.


“I was born in Germany, and we left The Nazis had him in prison.


He had a very large factory where he refined certain metals. When I was 15, I came here, and at 19, I was in the army in Europe as an American soldier,” Gotthold said. “The army gave me the opportunity to study what I wanted to study. So I went to Columbia and I got my degree in metallurgy engineering at the end of 1949.” Gotthold got his first job at Arwood


(New York) in 1950 as an assistant metallurgist where he worked for several years. “I started, with the condition that I


would do all the metals, and they had an engineering section that made samples, and I was in charge of that,” he said. During his tenure with Arwood, Gotthold also spent some time at the company’s starter plant in Tilton, NH. A somewhat restless soul, Gotthold


made the first of several career moves, which resulted in a broad base of expe- rience. “I left and joined a small company


called K.W. Thompson in New Hyde Park. One of my roles was to start Thompson in casting steels. During this period, there was no shell material; everything was solid mold,” Gotthold


4 ❘ December 2017 ®


continued. “I left K. W. Thompson and went


to a company in Long Island City, and together with a microwave engineer, we developed making wave guide components out of aluminum. “One of the things we came up with,


we found out we could assemble waxes. In other words, where we couldn’t build molds, or the molds were very expen- sive, we took waxes and assembled them or glued them together, and that was very successful. And so most of the stuff that was very complicated was done that way because... microwave components were complicated and had to be very exact.” Gotthold later went to a Rhode


Island foundry which was a part of the Gorham Company.


“The investment


casting equipment was moved to Rhode Island, and I trained some people and we made parts out there. We were quite successful because there was nothing else at the time,” he said. “From there I met an electronic


engineer, who was actually a microwave engineer who specialized in antenna work and radar, and they came with a lot of new antennas that were used and bought at airports.” Gotthold indicated the challenges of


producing wave guide and microwave components required creative think- ing. “I found I wasn’t really progressive enough. I had a boss, a young man, who was very ingenious. I’d say, ‘Mike, this will never work’ And he’d say ‘why not; lets try it; you never know!’ And we did and it worked. So he taught me a lot by


he Investment Casting Institute is deeply saddened to announce the passing of Edgar Gotthold.


just going ahead and doing it.” With all this experience under his


belt, Gotthold felt he was ready to break out on his own. “So this time, I got rest- less and we moved back to New York. I wanted to start my own place,” he said The large building where he shared


space with another company was located across the street from IT&T. “I used to go across the street and


look for work, and they had plenty of it. We made all types kinds of telephone components for IT&T, and they also found out a lot of parts could be cast rather than fabricated,” he continued. "Because of complications arising


from sharing of space with a larger com- pany, they had to move. Hitchiner up in New Hampshire had a lot of problems casting aluminum, and we were very, very good at aluminum,” Gotthold said. “I had a choice of several people who wanted to buy us and try to see what it was all about; I decided to go with Hitch- iner... My company was called Delta Mi- crowave, and we were a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitchiner Manufacturing.” A few years later, when Got-


thold decided to leave Hitchiner, he again opened his own business. “We started Tec-Cast (1970) and decid- ed to specialize in complicated parts,” he said. Tec-Cast has been producing reliable, complex castings for the aero- space, military, and commercial indus- tries for more than 30 years. “I’m doing this because I really enjoy


this,” he concluded. “I’m 86 years old; from the time I graduated, I’ve always worked in this industry.”


Edgar Isaac Gotthold, on November


8, 2017, passed away at the age of 94. He was predeceased by his wife of 57 years, Beatrice Buckler Gotthold, and is survived by his daughter, Jessica Gotthold and son-in-law, Jeff Rudden, his incredible cat, Sir Joshua Cuddlesworth, nieces: Jacqueline, Devora and Michal; nephews; Danny, David, Joel and Navot, and their respective spouses and children.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48