John W. Simpson, a former top executive and engineer for the Westinghouse Electric Corporation who played a major role in developing the nation’s first commercial nuclear power plant and its first nuclear-powered submarine, the U.S.S. Nautilus, died Jan. 4 near his home on Hilton Head Island, S.C. He was 92.
He died at a hospital of complications of pneumonia, his son Carter said.
Mr. Simpson was a close associate of Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, known as the father of the nuclear Navy. The two first worked together during World War II to build switchboards that could withstand the hard impacts faced by naval vessels. Mr. Simpson, already a Westinghouse employee, and Admiral Rickover later joined in designing the Nautilus. Mr. Simpson was in charge of the design and construction of the submarine’s power plant.
In 1951, when Westinghouse received a contract from the federal Atomic Energy Commission to build the first atomic electricity-generating plant, at Shippingport, Pa., Mr. Simpson was named manager. In the late 1950s, he organized the company’s astronuclear laboratory, which won the federal government’s first contract to develop a nuclear reactor for rocket propulsion. It was successfully tested, but money was later redirected to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Gemini program.
Mr. Simpson was president of the Westinghouse Electric Power Systems Company, one of four major divisions of Westinghouse, from 1969 to 1977. In the late ’50s and early ’60s, Westinghouse held about 30 percent of the nation’s market for power-generating equipment. Industry analysts eventually credited Mr. Simpson with turning Westinghouse into a close competitor of General Electric in the production of nuclear plants, turbines and transformers and the distribution of electricity.
When Mr. Simpson was awarded the Edison Medal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1971, the citation said he had made contributions to electricity generation and naval and space propulsion. It continued: “The extent to which he influenced the transition from scientific discovery to practical application in all three areas is to a substantial degree responsible for the eminence of the United States in the atomic energy field today.”
John Wistar Simpson was born in Glenn Springs, S.C., on Sept. 25, 1914, to Richard and Mary Berkeley Simpson. As a young man, he was torn between competing passions, his son Carter said — a fascination with science and an urge to serve in the military.
Mr. Simpson joined the Marines in 1933. Just as he was completing basic training, his application to attend the United States Naval Academy was accepted. He graduated from Annapolis in 1937. But in his last year at the academy, Mr. Simpson developed near-sightedness and was denied a commission.
Soon after, he went to work as a junior engineer at the Westinghouse switchboard division in East Pittsburgh, Pa. There he met Rickover, the Navy’s contract officer on the switchboard project. At the same time, Mr. Simpson was studying at the University of Pittsburgh for a master’s degree in electrical engineering, which he received in 1941.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mr. Simpson tried to enlist in the Army. His son recounted that when Rickover found out, he called Mr. Simpson into his office and told him he would never let him leave his scientific work. He said, “We don’t need more heroes, we need to win this war.”
In 1946, Westinghouse granted Mr. Simpson a two-year leave to work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. There, with Rickover and a group of engineers and scientists, he helped draft plans for the first attempt at applying nuclear energy to the generation of electricity.
After returning to Westinghouse in 1949, he was named assistant manager of engineering at the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in Pittsburgh, which the company operated for the Atomic Energy Commission. There, in addition to working on the Nautilus with Rickover, he helped design propulsion plants for the U.S.S. Long Beach and the U.S.S. Enterprise, the nation’s first nuclear surface ships, and for the U.S.S. George Washington, the first nuclear submarine that carried Polaris missiles.
In addition to Carter, of Great Falls, Va., Mr. Simpson is survived by another son, John Jr., of Bridgeville, Pa.; two daughters, Patricia Deely of Indianapolis and Barbara Wilkinson of Truckee, Calif.; and seven grandchildren. His wife of 56 years, the former Esther Slattery, died in 2004.