Samuel Alderson, Crash-Test Dummy Inventor, Dies at 90 (original) (raw)

Samuel Alderson, Crash-Test Dummy Inventor, Dies at 90

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/us/samuel-alderson-crashtest-dummy-inventor-dies-at-90.html

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Feb. 18, 2005

Samuel W. Alderson, a physicist and engineer who was a pioneer in developing the long-suffering, curiously beautiful human surrogates known as automotive crash-test dummies, died Feb. 11 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90.

The cause was complications of myelofibrosis and pneumonia, his grandson Matthew Alderson said.

The dummy that is the current industry standard for frontal crash testing in the United States is a lineal descendant of one Mr. Alderson began manufacturing for the aerospace industry in the early 1950's. It is used today by automakers and government agencies to test safety features like seat belts.

Seat belts, air bags and other safety features are estimated to have saved nearly 329,000 lives since 1960, according to a study released last month by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

"You have to consider that a test dummy basically motivates all restraint design, whether belts or air bags," Rolf Eppinger, chief of the National Transportation Biomechanics Research Center at the safety administration, said in a telephone interview.

Formally known as an A.T.D., for anthropomorphic test device, the crash-test dummy, with its graceful form and inscrutable face, has also become an artifact of contemporary culture.

Samuel W. Alderson was born in Cleveland on Oct. 21, 1914, and reared in California. He graduated from high school at 15 and attended several colleges -- Reed; California Institute of Technology the University of California, Berkeley; and Columbia -- interrupting his education frequently to help his father run the family sheet metal business. Returning to Berkeley, he began working toward a Ph.D. under the physicists J. Robert Oppenheimer and Ernest O. Lawrence, but he left without completing his dissertation.

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