Inventor improved air travel safety
Charles Donald Bateman counts playing hockey with Gordie Howe at the age of 13 as his claim to fame.
In 2005, he told the StarPhoenix he’d roll up copies of the paper for pads and play the 17-year-old Howe. Bateman went on to become an inventor and it’s U.S. patent No. 3,922,637 that is his real claim to fame.
Born in 1932, Bateman, better known as Don, was a student at Princess Alexandra School where his grade school teacher fostered his interest in problem solving.
Then he took a ride in a Second World War aircraft. There, he fell in love with aviation.
He worked at his father’s store, Bateman’s Jewellers, and attended the University of Saskatchewan, where he earned a degree in electrical engineering. He moved to the U.S. to work for Boeing and after, Honeywell.
In the mid-19th century, plane crashes weren’t uncommon.
“We were losing a commercial plane almost every month,” he told the StarPhoenix in 2011.
Bateman and his team at Honeywell would retrace the flight routes taken by downed planes and test their flight safety mechanisms.
The work led him to invent the ground proximity warning system, which alerts flight crews if their aircraft is in imminent danger of crashing into the ground or an object. Since then, he has advanced that system.
The invention earned him a place in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Ohio.
He was inducted into the Saskatchewan Aviation Hall of Fame in 2011.
Bateman retired from Honeywell in 2016. With files from the Saskatoon StarPhoenix As we celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017, the StarPhoenix and LeaderPost are telling the stories of 150 Saskatchewan people who helped shape the nation. Send your suggestions or feedback to sask150@postmedia.com.