Plasma Torch

Back in the 1950s, Thayer Engineering Professor James Browning '44 was trying to build ever-hotter torches. Known as Hanover's own fire bug, Browning discovered that under certain conditions liquid fuels will burn with the same velocity as gaseous fuels. By the end of the decade, Browning and Thayer colleague Merle Thorpe had founded Thermal Dynamics Corporation to manufacture and market a new kind of torch that produced temperatures up to 20,000° twice as hot as the sun's surface and could slice through metal as if it were butter. The torch's super-hot plasma flame consisted of nitrogen or hydrogen passed through a high-intensity electric arc.

By 1968, another plasma-torch innovator was on the Hanover scene: Richard Couch '64, Th'65 founded Hypertherm, which remains a leader in plasma-cutting technology. Couch and his mentor, former Thayer Professor Robert Dean, developed a water-injection plasma-cutting device that achieved nine times the surface temperature of the sun.

Meanwhile, original plasma torcher Browning had long since turned to other inventions including "ThermoBlast," a high-temperature rocket drill which he used to pierce Antarctica's 1,400-foot-thick Ross Ice Shelf in 1977 so researchers could study the water underneath. Drilling time: nine hours.

Browning's torch could cut metal like butter.