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Meeting	ACGS Committee Meeting 109 - Salt Lake City - March 2012
Agenda Location	5 GENERAL COMMITTEE TECHNICAL SESSION 5.2 Research Institutions, Industry, and University Reports 5.2.2 Research Institutions and Companies 5.2.2.4 Systems Technology, Inc.
Title	Systems Technology, Inc.
Presenter	Dave Klyde
Available Downloads*	presentation
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Abstract	Systems Technology, Inc A Tribute to HENRY JEX Henry Jex was an exceptional engineer with a wide range of interests, innovations, and expertise. He spent most of his career at Systems Technology, Inc. where he greatly influenced the evolution of the firm. He was born December 16, 1929 in Baltimore, MD and died November 11, 2011 in Santa Monica, CA. Henry was a great friend to his colleagues. He had tremendous energy and tenacity, and his coworkers always enjoyed working with him. It was important to Henry to understand the fundamentals of a problem. He could make complicated problems easy to comprehend, always including many examples and anecdotes. He took pride in training young engineers. Henry received a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951 and a Master of Science in Aeronautical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1953. He began his career as an aerodynamic development engineer at the Cooperative Wind Tunnel at Caltech. In 1955 Mr. Jex joined the Radioplane Division of Northrop Aviation, Inc. and worked in the Preliminary Design Department. In 1958 he joined Systems Technology, Inc. and worked at STI until 1994 retiring as Chief Scientist. Since 1953 Mr. Jex’s professional activities were devoted to all aspects of aerodynamic design, flight control integration and manmachine dynamics, including the conception, development, and testing of aircraft employing minimal flight control systems, tailored airframe characteristics, and novel control surface arrangements. Mr. Jex was experienced in wind tunnel testing at a wide range of facilities from subsonic to supersonic, and he involved in extensive flight and dynamic testing of numerous aircraft, spacecraft and underwater vehicles. His accomplishments include establishing mathematical models for man-machine dynamics; the development of a “critical tracking task” for operator performance; theory and experiments on manual control displays; research on human homeostatic stress and stability; testing these with advanced simulations; and applying the results to practical vehicular piloting problems, such as: vehicle handling, pilot induced oscillations (PIO), orbital rendezvous and manned rocket boosters. Mr. Jex did the control system design and analysis for the successful Gossamer -Condor and Gossamer-Albatross human powered aircraft, and for the Smithsonian Institution’s “Quetzalcoatlus Northropi” robotic pterodactyl project. Other projects include: preliminary design for a variable stability airborne simulator, dynamics of buoyant vehicles, studies on terrain avoidance, gust alleviation, elastic mode suppression, and homing missiles. His work in aerospace vehicle dynamics also covers ground effect machines, spacecraft boosters, and re-entry vehicles. He conducted major programs on the motion effects on crewmen in Surface Effect Ships, motion-cue effects in simulators, ride-qualities of a variety of vehicles, the dynamics of kinetosis, and vibration effects. He directed research on the effects of alcohol and drugs on operator performance and visual perception and countermeasures thereto, leading to the commercially successful Factor-1000 fleet-driver screening system. He designed a Highway-Driving Research Simulator facility and a Vehicle Crosswind Generator. He completed preliminary work on an Al type expert system for use in analyzing vehicular control by human operators. Mr. Jex investigated the control dynamics and manual control problems of several launch vehicles, spacecraft, and hypersonic recovery vehicles. Among these are: the DynaSoar skipgider, a manual control system for the Saturn V booster, an orbital rendezvous system for Apollo, and re-entry and landing for the Space Shuttle. He provided consulting support on the Pegasus (original and XL versions), and dynamics, thrust/shockwave control interactions, and related hypersonic vehicle simulation requirements for the National AeroSpace Plane. He was an invited lecturer or delegate to several government, academic, or international organizations in the areas of: man-machine dynamics, bio-dynamics, ride-qualities, mental workload and impaired drivers. Mr. Jex has published dozens of papers and monographs in various Journals, Conference Proceedings, and books. His paper on the Wright Flyer was recently voted among the most influential of the 1980’s by the AIAA Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Technical Committee. He was a member of the Tau Beta Pi and Gamma Alpha Rho Honor Societies, AIAA (Associate Fellow); Human Factors Society (Elected Fellow); Institute for Advancement of Engineering (Elected Fellow); Low Speed Aerodynamics Research Association. He was a Registered Professional Engineer, Control Systems Branch, State of California and was Awarded the 1980 Franklin V. Taylor Award by the American Psychological Association for work in engineering psychology.