James F. Sutherland
James F. (Jim) Sutherland graduated from the University of Missouri in January 1955, with a BS in Electrical Engineering degree. Immediately, he and his wife, Ruth, came to Pittsburgh, where he began work assignments for Westinghouse Electric Corporation on the Graduate Student Course.
In June 1955, because of an ROTC commitment, he was ordered to four years of active duty in the US Air Force, where he served as a Weather Officer in Georgia, Morocco, and Spain. Returning to Westinghouse in 1959, he accepted a job offer at the New Products Laboratory, temporarily located at the Cheswick plant. His first engineering work was as a logic designer on the PRODAC electric utility digital computer being designed for the Sewarren station of New Jersey Public Service Gas and Electric Company. After the prototype was shipped to the site, the New Products Lab moved to the R&D Center in Churchill.
At the R&D Center, Jim transferred to the newly formed Electric Utility Control System development team where he applied a UNIVAC digital computer to the Arizona Public Service ADDAPS economic dispatch system. In 1965, he transferred to the development group at the Computer Systems Division at R&D, where the P-50 computer was being developed. Jim designed, built, and programmed the ECHO-IV home computer during this time. Jim was promoted to Fellow Engineer, a title he held until he retired in 1993.
In 1968, the division moved to O’Hara Township where Jim continued to work in development of Hagan instrument systems and computer system interfaces. He led the development team which produced the 7300 line of nuclear protection and control instrumentation. The success of the 7300 line of modular instrumentation is evidenced by its use in over 70 fossil electric power generating plants in addition to the originally intended Westinghouse PWR plants.
In early 1979, Jim was asked to go to Shannon, Ireland, to teach a Westinghouse indoctrination course for 50 newly hired Irish engineers who were coming to the O’Hara site for a year of training before returning to Ireland in the Fall of 1980. The course was so successful that Jim and his wife, Ruth, were offered a two-year Irish assignment at the new Westinghouse operation at the Shannon Airport, in August 1980. They took their son, Jay, and they enjoyed the privilege of living in Limerick, and being paid for it.
When the Irish assignment ended in April 1982, Jim accepted a six-month job assignment at Leicester, England, with the Westinghouse team working on design of the Sizewell-B PWR plant instrumentation system. He rented a room in Leicester and commuted each weekend to Ireland where Ruth and Jay were still living. In August of 1982, Jim and family returned to their home in Holiday Park, Plum Boro, and he began work at the Westinghouse ITTC on Route 286, three miles away He continued working on the Sizewell Protection System for the next 10 years. The plant was scheduled to start up in 1994.
In 1992, Jim was chosen PCD’s Sizewell Quality Leader for June, and he received the 1992 George Westinghouse Signature Award for Excellence for development of an innovative engineering-to-drafting process which reduced cycle time for drawings by a factor of 20 to 1.
Seventeen of Jim’s 25 US Patents are utilized in Westinghouse control systems and nuclear protection systems in power plants all over the world.
