Obituary of Malcolm D. Horton

Malcolm Dudley Horton died on November 4, 2015 after a brief illness. Mal was born March 17, 1923 in Gloversville, New York, to Verna Travis and Thaddeus Horton Jr. He attended Union College on a full academic scholarship, was a member of Sigma Xi, and graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering, with honors, in 1944. He was awarded the Union College Daggett prize in 1945. Mal began work at General Electric shortly after graduating from Union, and retired 48 years later, after a long and fascinating career as a systems application engineer: he attended, then taught in GE's Advanced Engineering Program, and specialized in the application of large adjustable-speed electric motor drive systems for wind tunnels at NASA and Air Force research centers. He also designed and sold large energy storage systems for laboratories at the General Atomic Company, the US Air Force and Princeton University. Mal was named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1996. After his retirement, Mal served as a consultant to many of his former clients, and relished working with individuals who wanted to power their factories and homes with hydroelectric power. Mal had many passions: steam power in all forms; hydroelectric power generation; genealogy; and history of the Erie Canal and the Mohawk Valley. His idea of an excellent weekend was to drive with his family and a handful of neighborhood kids to a county fair or a steam expo or to ride the last of the Hudson River Dayliners, the Alexander Hamilton. He could talk his way into any engine room, and all the kids got to see and understand how machines worked. He was a member of the Elfun Society, the Schenectady County Historical Society, the Schenectady Museum and Planetarium and its Hall of Electrical History, the Steamship Historical Society of America and its Hudson Valley chapter, and the Society for Industrial Archaeology, among others. He was a member of the First Unitarian Society of Schenectady, and was active on the building committee, designing the electrical system, when the church was built on Wendell Avenue. Mal was predeceased by his sister Alice and her husband, Leo Hart. He is survived by his wife Patricia Horton, his son Thomas Horton, his daughter Linda and her husband, Rick Hood, his granddaughter Elizabeth Hood, his niece Barbara Hart Hollister and her husband George, grandnephew Brian with wife Lindsey and their son Kellan, and by his brother-in-law and sister-in-law and their families. He will be interred at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Gloversville. A memorial gathering will be held next year.