Thorn Mayes photograph collection, 1934-1937

Thorn L. Mayes, Sr. was born April 19, 1903, in Covington, Kentucky and raised in Springfield, Kentucky until 1915, when he moved to Coalinga, California. He attended Coalinga High School from 1919 until 1923.

In 1921 the principal of Coalinga High authorized the purchase of an amateur wireless radio station for the purpose of broadcasting results of athletic events at the school and put Mayes in charge of the purchase. This introduction to electronics was to have a lasting effect on Mayes. The equipment consisted of a 1KW spark transmitter, regenerative receiver, audion detector, and two-stage amplifier. The station reported the results of many local track meets and communicated with amateurs as far away as Alamagordo, New Mexico and Boise, Idaho. Mayes operated the amateur station 6JR of Oakland, California until the fall of 1923, when he moved to Berkeley to attend the University of California.

Mayes graduated with honors from the University of California in 1927, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. In July of 1927, he married Lygia Ouer of Oakland, California, and moved to Schenectady, New York to begin a long career with General Electric. Mayes completed the General Electric test course, and spent the next two and a half years working on large induction motor design. Late in 1930 he transferred to General Electric's Oakland, California plant, and acted as a motor design and application engineer for the eleven western states. This was a vital period as the western pump companies had recently developed small-diameter, multistage pumps which could be installed in drilled irrigation wells as small as eight inches in diameter. These pumps required special vertical hollow shaft induction motors for drive, and their introduction made possible the irrigation of vast agricultural areas in California, Arizona and other states.

It was also during the 1930s that Mayes met Norman Nevills, of Nevills River Expeditions fame, and became interested in compiling the first map of the Monument Valley area. Nevills flew him up in his Pyper Cub so that he could take aerial photographs of the area he wished to map.

During World War II Mayes was Engineer and Superintendent of the Oakland motor plant, and in 1949 was transferred back to Schenectady, New York as Assistant to the Manger of Engineering of General Electric. In 1950 he was transferred by General Electric to the Lynn, Massachusetts plant as Manager of Engineering of the alternating and direct current motor operation. Mayes was transferred in 1953 to Ft. Wayne, Indiana to supervise a study to select tooling and supervisory manpower, and to build and operate a new plant to manufacture single and polyphase production motors with one to five horsepower. He was also manager of the plant. Finally late in 1958 he moved to the Shelbyville, Indiana plant to become Manager of the Engineering Industrial Heating Department, which worked with large steel mill furnaces.

Mayes retired in 1963 at the age of sixty, and moved to Saratoga, California to travel and pursue hid hobbies. He died in about 1988.

(This biography was taken from one Mayes wrote himself, found in Box 1 of Accession 1189.)