August 8, 2019
QUEEN CITY LEGEND
As celebrations of GE Aviation’s 100th birthday got underway this year, a young staffer in the communications department began to dig into the business’ storied past. Cole Massie found himself particularly taken with the life and career of John Blanton Sr. One of the few high-ranking African Americans in the company in the 1950s and ’60s, Blanton was a visionary engineer who drew up designs for engines that would push jets to fly at Mach 3.5 and take off and land vertically. He was also a civic leader in his adopted hometown of Cincinnati and a 1991 inductee into GE Aviation’s Propulsion Hall of Fame. Yearning to learn more about Blanton, who died in 2003, 21-year-old Massie tracked down the best source around: his 96-year-old widow, Corinne Blanton, who still lives in Cincinnati.
A life well-lived: Though she once shied away from interviews, Corinne Blanton spent hours with Massie reminiscing about her late husband — poring over old clippings and photos and regaling him with stories of their life together. When the Blantons first moved to Cincinnati from upstate New York in 1956, they found a community split by segregation; the pair had trouble buying a house, and their young son was forbidden from swimming at a local pool. John Blanton set to work: He advocated for better public transportation in the Queen City, served as president of the Urban League of Greater Cincinnati and even helped run a local chapter of the Boy Scouts. His son, John Jr., spoke with Cole Massie too. “I really do think he felt a deep obligation to give back to his community,” Blanton Jr. said. “And he was grateful for the opportunity to work for a company that encouraged that type of behavior.”
Blanton gave a lot to GE, as well. Click here to learn about his futuristic vision for aviation — and his remarkable life and career.
PLAY’S THE THING
“Physical therapy is boring,” says Peter Green, diagnosing a particular problem for the healthcare industry: Important as physical rehab may be, nobody really wants to do it, particularly once they’ve been discharged from the hospital. Studies show that only a third of patients adhere fully to physical therapy regimens, but Green’s conducted his own research too. After shoulder surgery a few years ago, he was determined to bounce back fully — but found his commitment waning once he’d gotten home from the hospital and didn’t have a physical therapist urging him on. Afterward Green, the CEO of a family-owned digital marketing company, hit on an idea: Is there a way to make rehab fun?
Race to the Finnish: Green’s new company, Rehaboo!, makes a physical therapy game currently being tested at a large children’s hospital in Finland. It’s a good deal for everybody involved: Kids with foot and leg injuries have fun grabbing for virtual jewels (i.e., stretching their arms and doing squats) while their muscles heal. Medical professionals designed the game and collect data to ensure it’s working. Green’s company got a boost by locating itself in the GE Health Innovation Village, an incubator inside GE Healthcare’s Helsinki offices where Rehaboo! workers can rub shoulders with other startups and access experts from GE Healthcare. They got another boost when they showed off their tech at HIMSS & Health Europe 2.0, a digital health conference this spring in Helsinki. Now Rehaboo! has plans to open offices in Denmark and Texas, and expand to physical-therapy-based games for elderly people and office workers.
Even the vice minister of the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport stretched and squatted in front of Green’s game in Helsinki earlier this year. Learn more here about how gamification can strengthen physical therapy.
BATTERIES, CHARGING AHEAD
In 20 years, the way the world gets its energy is going to look radically different — less fossil fuel, namely, and more wind and solar. And the rise in renewables will be made possible by advances in energy storage technology, a field that’s going to boom over the next couple decades, according to a new report from BloombergNEF. In BNEF’s Energy Storage Outlook 2019, the research agency estimates that energy storage installations around the world will grow 122-fold — from 9 gigawatts in 2018 to 1,095 GW by 2040. That’ll create tremendous opportunities for investment in stationary energy storage — up to $662 billion, according to BNEF. The plummeting cost of lithium-ion batteries, a key storage technology, should also spur investments. The cost of those batteries has declined 85% since 2010, and is expected to drop further by half by 2030.
The future is bright (and blustery): “Two big changes this year are that we have raised our estimate of the investment that will go into energy storage by 2040 by more than $40 billion, and that we now think the majority of new capacity will be utility-scale, rather than behind-the-meter at homes and businesses,” said BNEF energy storage analyst Yayoi Sekine. One example of a utility-scale storage solution is GE’s Reservoir, a battery system powerful enough to help restart an entire power plant. Tech like that will help utilities bridge customer demand when renewable supply drops — like when the sun stops shining or the wind stops blowing.
That’s the way the world is turning. Learn more here about BNEF’s predictions for the future of energy storage, and click here for more about GE’s mighty Reservoir.
— VIDEO OF THE WEEK —
— QUOTE OF THE DAY —
“The children’s hospitals are the most important audience because we want to make an impact. We want to be a company with a purpose.”
— Peter Green, co-founder and CEO of Rehaboo!
Quote: GE Reports. Image: John Blanton family.
ENJOY THIS NEWSLETTER?
Please send it to your friends and let them know they can subscribe here.
"