7 Robert Noyce 7

semiconductor manufacturing capacity. Noyce became

Sematech, Inc.’s, first president in 1988.

Noyce held 16 patents and was awarded the National

Medal of Science in 1979. A lifelong swimmer (and former

Iowa state diving champion), Noyce died of a heart attack

following a morning swim in 1990.

Ron Toomer

(b. May 31, 1930, Pasadena, Calif., U.S.)

R

onald Valentine Toomer is an American engineer and

roller coaster designer who could be considered the

sovereign of steel coasters. His work with Arrow Dynamics

(founded as Arrow Development Company in 1946)

brought to life such influential steel thrillers as the tubular

track Runaway Mine Ride (1966), the inverted helix-

shaped Corkscrew (1975), and the first suspended coasters

of the 1980s.

A mechanical engineering graduate of the University

of Nevada–Reno (1961, B.S.), Toomer was involved in the

first U.S. satellite launches and served on the team that

designed the heat shield for the Apollo spacecraft. During

his stint in the space program, Toomer met a coworker

who had previously been a welder for the Arrow Devel-

opment Company. In 1965 Toomer joined the company

and was hired to work on the design of the Runaway Mine

Ride, the world’s first all-steel coaster. Toomer’s tool of

choice (and necessity): the slide rule. “A big part of the

attraction of roller coasters is that people know that unlike

with hang-gliding or skydiving, the train is definitely going

to come back,” Toomer said.

In more than 30 years in the amusement industry,

Toomer designed more than 80 steel coasters worldwide.

In 1975 he built one of the first looping coasters of the

modern era—the Corkscrew at Knott’s Berry Farm (Buena