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Floyd E. Kingston ’51

Floyd Kingston ’51, October 17, 1999, in Palo Alto, California. After graduating from Reed, Tim worked at Boeing in Seattle as a missile test engineer. He became chief electrical test engineer for secret research on pilotless ground-to-air interceptor missiles and worked in Seattle and in Florida on the project. In 1955, he moved to Palo Alto with his wife and their young daughter to take a job with Varian Associates as an engineer. There, he developed a single coil dual probe that allowed the design of the first commercial field-to-frequency lock NMR spectrometer. While at Varian, he was awarded nine patents for his work on NMR instruments, which are now known as Magnetic Resonance Imaging. He later worked in the company’s radiation division and worked on a radiation machine used to treat cancer in large hospitals. In 1979, he obtained an aircraft and power plant mechanics license, and in 1988 he founded a nonprofit corporation to help other adults acquire the license, which is difficult to obtain. 1991, he retired from Varian and joined the teaching staff at the Palo Alto Adult School, teaching aircraft and power plant mechanics. He later became department chair of the program, retiring in 1994, and continued his work with the nonprofit corporation Kingston Aeronautics Academy. Survivors include his wife, a son, and two daughters, including Susan Kingston ’76.

Appeared in Reed magazine: February 2000

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