John Coleman Purves

John Coleman Purves

• John C. Purves papers at MIT
• Find A Grave Memorial ID # 173666522

John Coleman Purves was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1896. He received Bachelor of Science degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Civil Engineering in 1918, and in Mechanical Engineering in 1920. He married Mary Temple Bradley in 1922. After working as an engineer for four companies between 1920 and 1930, Purves served as an officer and on the Board of Directors of the Automatic Compass Corporation until 1935. He then did consulting work for E. S. Ritchie & Sons, a Brookline, Massachusetts, firm that made nautical instruments.

In 1937 John Purves founded the Purves Corporation. This commercial organization was created to develop the flux-valve—an electrical coil which senses the direction of the magnetic north. Purves held controlling interest and managed the company until November 1953, when Purves Corporation stock was sold and all assets turned over to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

From 1941 to 1947 Purves served as a compliance investigator for the US Government, specifically in such agencies as the War Production Board and the Office of Housing Expediter. In 1953 he established, and was later president of, the Longview Corporation, an apartment cooperative at 983-986 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he and Mrs. Purves resided for many years. Purves was active during his college years as president of the No. 6 Club (Delta Psi), and later as chair of the Cambridge Red Cross and as a member of the Board of Trustees of Hampshire Country School in Rindge, New Hampshire.

He died on September 6, 1980.

He's the maternal grandfather of Dr. Temple Grandin
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 2018, Dr. Temple Grandin gave as an example of people with different learning styles — including visual or object thinkers, pattern or mathematical thinkers (also excelling in music), and word or concept thinkers, among others — are most effective when they work together, the story of her grandfather, John Coleman Purves, who “worked with a guy who was probably on the autistic spectrum, who came up with this crazy idea … everybody in aviation thought it was crazy.” Her grandfather was not dismissive, and in fact decided he could make it work. The two men co-invented the autopilot.

It took a visual thinker to conceptualize something new and someone with practical engineering skills to build it. Together the two men “tinkered and tinkered and tinkered” to make the system work, trial and error. “You need different kinds of thinkers working together,” Dr. Grandin said. “Engineers calculate risk. Visual thinkers see risk.”