About Robert L. Cattoi
Robert L. Cattoi was an engineer who loved literature. His family has made a donation to our lab in his memory, finding in the lab's celebration of both technology and literature a fitting parallel to Bob's own life. They share the following bio about our lab's namesake.
Bob was fascinated by flight ever since he was six years old, when his father paid fifty cents to take him up to the sky in a Ford Trimotor at the Iron County Fair. Bob served in the US Army Air Corps during World War II. While he was stationed in Brownsville, TX, he and his team rescued three submarine-hunting B-17s that were lost at sea by triangulating an increasingly faint signal and transmitting guidance to shore, saving the lives of all three crews. After the war, Bob graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering (1950). He began work at Collins Radio (later Rockwell Collins), where some of his earliest work involved designing on-aircraft printing and teletype devices. Bob’s technological expertise wasn’t just for military aircraft; he also designed communication systems for space shuttles. Dedicated to this work, Bob advanced to Senior V.P. of Engineering (1970), V.P. of Engineering, Aerospace and Electronic Operations (1976), and Corporate Senior V.P. of Research, Engineering, and Manufacturing Processes (1991) before retiring in 1995 after 45 years of service. He also served eight years as a member of the U.S. Defense Science Board, where he brought his expertise in systems engineering, communication networks, and manufacturing to the office of the Secretary of Defense. His whole life, Bob loved to read books about aviation, from high-flying adventures to memoirs like The Spirit of St. Louis. He could recite John Gillespie Magee Jr.’s poem “High Flight” from memory. He loved Ogden Nash and read every Agatha Christie mystery. He always believed in the power of language and was proud to devote a career to building technologies to enable communication, even from the stars.