Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Edgar Belleville COALE
Edgar Belleville "Ned" Coale, 87, a self-taught mechanical engineer and inventor, died of complications of emphysema Dec. 31 at his home in Chestnut Hill.
Without formal education in either engineering or science, Mr. Coale ultimately was the author of four patents in optical engineering that - since their filing in the 1960s and 70s - have been cited as critical prior work in nearly 50 other patents, including innovations developed by General Electric, Sony, Kodak and Hitachi.
Mr. Coale's work on several NASA projects also led to his work being cited in key research papers in astrophysics. Ongoing research continues to reference his work, and his legacy continues in an area that he learned merely because he could not make a living as a playwright or get hired as an English professor.
Mr. Coale was "a mix of glorious contradictions," according to his friend, the late Ian McHarg, the author and pioneer in ecological planning. As a self-taught engineer with a master's degree in English, a pipe smoker devoted to running and swimming, and a Quaker who resigned from the pacifist Chestnut Hill Quaker meeting in 1943 to enlist to fight in World War II, he was a man who defied categorization.
Raised in Chestnut Hill, a son of the late William Ellis and Sydney Belleville Coale, he was a graduate of Germantown Friends School and Haverford College. After returning from his service in Burma, China and India in the Army Air Corps, he earned a master's degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania and went on to pursue writing.
When his first child was born, however, he took a job at the bottom of the engineering firm of Max Levy & Company, the family company of his first wife, Joan Levy. Eventually he rose to become that company's president.
Mr. Coale had an astonishing breadth of knowledge across a broad range of subjects, including literature, Democratic politics, history, biology, astrophysics, anthropology, dendrology, ornithology and computer science, and was a brilliant conversationalist at his kitchen table, where people of diverse backgrounds came to talk and lock horns in debate.
He is survived by his wife, the former Joan Ingersoll; sons William Ellis Coale and Howard S. L. Coale; daughters Hannah Coale and Sydney Coale Light; stepdaughters Nina McNeely Diefenbach and Ashley McNeely; a stepson, George McNeely; four grandchildren; five great-grandchildren, and his former wife, Joan Levy Coale.
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