Chadwell O'Connor

The family lived in Boston and O'Connor often accompanied his father to his work at the General Electric factory in Lynn, Massachusetts where he acquired an interest in engineering.

In 1974, he used this experience to develop the O'Connor Rotary Combustor that burned municipal garbage to create steam for power generation.

[4][5] He and his company, O'Connor Engineering Laboratories, recreated the drawings and reproduced copies of the Union Pacific No.

119 and Central Pacific Jupiter locomotives that met for the driving of the Golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah.

In later years, O'Connor maintained his own steamboat which he would fire up and tool around the harbor in Newport Beach, California.

[15] In the 1990s the O'Connors donated one of their steam engines to the Minnesota Transportation Museum for the restoration of the streetcar steamboat Minnehaha.

Through the O'Connors' generosity people are still able to experience a historic steamboat cruise on Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota, where they can learn about and see a working steam engine.

[16] O'Connor's fascination with photographing steam locomotives led to his best known invention, an improved tripod fluid head with counterbalance and adjustable drag.