Jones, Frederick McKinley, 1893-1961

found: Swanson, G.B. I've got an idea! c1994:CIP t.p. (Frederick McKinley Jones) galley (Fred Jones)

found: African American National Biography, accessed May 14, 2015, via Oxford African American Studies Center database:(Jones, Frederick McKinley; "Casey"; inventor, engineer, electrical engineer, soldier; born 17 May 1893 in Ohio, United States; a self-taught mechanical genius; arrived in Hallock, Minnesota (1912); was inducted into the army (1918) and honorably discharged (1919); built the town's first radio broadcast station and belatedly got a license; installed the first X-ray unit at Hallock's hospital (1923); invented an early transistor and what may have been the first condenser microphone (during the 1920s); the first feasible two-cycle gas engine; developed two sound systems for the theater, for soundtracks played on phonograph and then for the sound-on-film system; hired by the company Ultraphone, marketing sound equipment, Minneapolis; invented the first automatic system for movie theater tickets (patented in 1939); worked out a refrigeration system for trucks; the company became Thermo-King; his design for refrigeration equipment was adopted as a national standard by the military; worked out railroad refrigeration equipment (the early 1950s); was inducted into the American Society of Refrigeration Engineers (1944); posthumously was inducted into the Minnesota Inventors Hall of Fame (1977); received the National Medal of Technology (1991); died 21 February 1961 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States)