Jack Naylor - Post WWII

Post WWII

Back stateside after the war, Naylor used the GI Bill to finish a degree in mechanical engineering from prestigious Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. But for his first job after graduation he chose to capitalize on his training during the war and became a test pilot. He put experimental planes through their paces until he crashed one into a river bank next to a pasture. The farmer ran up holding his mangled propeller blade and announced "son, you lost this thing..." The accident cut his swashbuckling career short.

Putting that dangerous occupation aside, Jack became a consultant to industry. Hired to advise companies in how to grow and manage their resources, he was asked to prepare one of them for bankruptcy. Seeing the value in the business, Jack Naylor embarked on yet another career as an entrepreneur and, in 1970, took over Thomson International Corporation which was headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. The engineering and manufacturing company made automotive and airplane parts. In the reorganization, Jack moved to Massachusetts, made some tough choices by cutting personnel and closed extraneous plants.

Thomson's biggest seller was car thermostats and heat exchangers for aircraft engines. In desperation, Naylor, living out of a hotel room, sat in the restaurant at the Somerset Hotel in Boston and, over a matter of months, designed a new automotive thermostat. Able to work reliably at higher temperatures, it allowed the car designers to use smaller radiators. He took it to General Motors first, next Chrysler, Ford and then to Europe. Today every motor vehicle in the world uses that design.