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Obituary

A man of varied interests, talents

The physicist turned inventor was a published philosopher and excelled at lawn bowling.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published September 16, 2005

Charles W. Clapp, 1909-2005

SUN CITY CENTER - Retirement ended Charles W. Clapp's career, but it didn't quell his lifelong passion for learning.

In fact, it was only after he had completed his life's work as a noted physicist and inventor, after he had moved to Sun City Center with his wife, Phyllis, that Mr. Clapp taught himself computer programming and microbiology and became a published philosopher.

Mr. Clapp died Aug. 28 at age 96 of emphysema. His son, Philip Clapp, thinks the disease may have been caused by one of Mr. Clapp's earlier avocations, boat-building. Mr. Clapp spent long hours in his basement working on boats, breathing in fumes from glue and inhaling sawdust.

In his last moments, Mr. Clapp was surrounded by family and was at peace when he died, his son said.

"He said he had done everything he wanted to do," Philip Clapp said.

Mr. Clapp was born in St. Thomas, Ontario. He was the first member of his family to attend college and excelled in his academic work. He was student body president at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, where he met his wife on a blind date, and later earned a doctorate in physics from the University of Michigan.

He began his career at Corning Glass Works, where he worked on the mirrors for the telescope at the Palomar Observatory, and then went to General Electric, where he invented technology that used X-rays to precisely measure the thickness of metal in the manufacturing process. His inventions greatly speeded the production of metal products during World War II, and was still considered high-tech decades later.

Mr. Clapp and his wife retired to Sun City Center in 1970. Not long after that, Mr. Clapp bought a home computer - a rare thing at that time - and began to teach himself programming. He was an avid lawn bowler, and in fact was president of a lawn bowling club in his community. His first computer program predicted the path a lawn bowling ball would take with different amounts of force and spin.

"He could use it to try out various tricks and techniques," his son said. "He didn't use Fortran to create the program, he used the basic language of the computer, which is the most sophisticated kind of programming you can do."

His wife was an avid crossword puzzle buff, and Mr. Clapp took an interest in puzzles. He created a program called Work Weaver that facilitated the process. The program is still widely used by puzzle writers.

While he was in his 80s, Mr. Clapp joined a philosophy discussion group. To prepare for a discussion about the existence of free will, Mr. Clapp prepared a paper that approached the question from a biological perspective. Although Mr. Clapp had no formal background in either philosophy or biology, a prestigious philosophy journal published his paper.

Mr. Clapp never lost his thirst for knowledge. When he was 92 he developed an interest in microbiology. He went out and bought graduate-level texts on the subject and pored over them intensely.

"He loved to learn and he loved to share knowledge," his son said. "If you expressed an interest in something, he'd teach you as much about it as you could absorb."

Mr. Clapp is survived by his wife, his sons Philip, Roger and Peter, his daughter Judith, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

[Last modified September 15, 2005, 11:01:03]