[2] While at Lockheed, Nelles and his coworkers Morlan A. Visel and Ernest L. Black proposed a "Pacific Research Foundation" which eventually became SRI International.

[4] After Lockheed, Nelles became a professor of aeronautical engineering at the University of Southern California, where he designed the laboratory ship Velero IV.

[2] In 1949 he oversaw Otis Barton's record-breaking 4500 ft deep sea dive off of Santa Cruz Island in a benthoscope that Nelles had designed.

[2] He served as the director of research for Borg Warner, Technicolor, Crane, and Westinghouse.

[6] Nelles died August 30, 1998, in La Jolla, California.