Lost foam casting invention and commercialization

Origin story — a Boston-area sculptor (name uncertain on tape) brings a styrofoam-based casting idea to Professor Flemings at MIT around 1960; MIT perfects the fluid-flow analysis; the technique is now used industrially for GM cast iron engine blocks.

We talked about investment casting, where you have an expendable pattern — the plastic part, the wax part that you mold. We didn't talk about lost foam; we did talk about the semi-solid process. Some of these — investment casting, bonded sand molding — go back thousands of years. Lost foam goes back to 1960 at MIT, but the interesting thing about this one is that it wasn't invented by a scientist. Professor Flemings had the Foundry — I think I told you about the Foundry, MIT had a real Foundry and they cast the gimbals for the space shots in the '60s. So this artist from the Boston area comes in — Anthony E. Arbino, or something like that, I can't quite remember the name. He wasn't a scientist or a foundryman, but he did sculpture. He had decided to sculpt something in styrofoam, pour the sand around the styrofoam, then pour the molten metal in and just let the styrofoam evaporate from the hot metal.