free to the public from his own radio facility. After recovering from the terrible crash of 1929 that ushered in the decades of the Great Depression, Joe decided to get into the refrigeration business. He joined Serval as a refrigeration sales engineer and began selling coin-operated commercial refrigeration. His strategy was to followthe horsedrawn ice delivery wagons and note the locations of all the taverns and grocery stores receiving block ice delivery from refrigations. He would knock on the door and deliver his sales pitch: he promised clean, hygienic, twenty-four hour a day refrigeration without any business interruption. No longer would the ice man come in and mess up the store. And all this by inserting six quarters a day in a brand a new shiny reach -in case- pay as you go. it was an offer the proprietor could not refuse. His first engineering job at Serval was at twelve- unit apartment house central refrigeration system. Utilizing a two- cylinder, one horsepower condensing unit in the basement, he pumped methyl chloride through block iron pipe with pipe coils in each ice box. There were no thermostats yet in those days, the system was controlled by a back pressure control valve. in 1937 Lazar joined Westinghouse as a sales engineer and sold his first air conditioning job to a small cocktail lounge. He remembered recently that the job was a "sensation" in those early years when very few air conditioning installations where in operating anywhere. With the drums of war sounding over Europe and reverberating across the Atlantic, Joe, in 1939, the year of the Hitler-Stalin pact, launched his own mechanical engineering- contracting business, System Engineering Corp. Having installed over FROM ASHRAE JOURNAL twenty- five hospital jobs, and many pharmaceutical company systems, Lazar had established a reputation as a specialist in this field. When the US Government called on the pharmaceutical industry to come up with a method of drying blood plasma, the Michael Reese Research foundation Company, a non-profit organization, called Lazar in to solve the problem which he did in record time-ten days. He designed a roller bath of -90 °f alcohol in which the 500 cc bottles containing the blood plasma were rotated while partially submerged thus creating a thin film or shell formed on the inside which allowed a rapid vacuum pulldown to 1/2 micron turning the dried blood to powder. Transported to the front lines by plane, the shipping weight of 8.33 lb. per gallon was reduced to a couple of ounces. This was tlıe first of Lazar's contributions to the war effort. it saved untold lives. Among Joe' s many wartime accomplishments is a freeze-dry system he developed far the US Chemical Warfare Division, a 90 °f explosives test chamber far Picatinny Arsenal, an atmospheric chamber far 100,000 ft. altitude far the Chrysler Corpora·ıion, Missile Branch, a low temperature facility at White Sands, New Mexico, two walk-in chambers forThiokol Corporation to test rocket motors far NASA, and a top-secret temperature-humidity control facility far the renowned ato mic scientist, Enrico fermi. His non-military projects incl ude a refrigerated beer dispensing system tor Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer, a mobile 7-1/2 ton year-round reverse cycle air conditioning system far Commonwealth Edison Company to air condition manholes when splicing higlı voltage cables, and a system of measuring the water content of natural gas far his old alma mater, the lllinois lnstitute of Technology. He alsa de18 signed a testfacility far U L Laboratories to test window air-conditioners, a triple product-testing facility far Sears Roebuck, a testfacility far Kraft Cheese, and a special facility far growing crystals far Western Electric. in addition, he was the design-engineer contractor far thirteen hotels incl uding the world famous Drake in Chicago (which after 44 years and a change of compressors, continues to operate with the original equipment), the 80,000 sq. fi. Beltone Hearing Aid plant, a 1,000-ton system far Sara Lee, incl uding four 125ton R-12 systems far air conditioning and four ammonia compressors far processing product, as well as dozens of restaurants, theaters, bowling alleys, and major buildings in the Chicago area. Lazar joined ASRE in 1943. He received his Professional Engineer's License from the State of lllinois in 1946 and joined ASHVE in 1955. in 1971 he received the grade of Life Member ASHRAE. fouryear later, at the age of 80, he retired from his business and began a new career as asculptor. He remains an active sculptor today at the age of 100, working in his sculptor's studio every day. At the ASHRAE Centennial celebration Winter Meeting in Chicago, Jan: feb.,1995, Joseph Lazar was one of three 100 year old ASHRAE members to receive the special Centennial Award. He has since been nominated far the grade of fellow, and Distinguished fifty-year Service award. His family incl uding his fourteen greatgrand children are very proud. When interviewed recently at his home by myself and Stephen Comstock (ASHRAE Director of Communications and Publications), he was asked it he had any advice to offer young engineers coming into the profession. "Yes;' he said, "drop the 't' in can't:'
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