Winston Laverne Shelton (May 3, 1922 – April 15, 2019) was an American inventor, electrical engineer and entrepreneur who was awarded 76 US patents as an individual or as part of a team, as well as many corresponding patents. Shelton's patents have had an impact relating to home washing machines and the preparation of food in both the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) industry and fine dining. Technologies Shelton developed while an engineer at General Electric are still in use after more than fifty years. His patent for the modern "Washing Machine" (US 3257830 A), licensed in 1965 to General Electric has been referenced in over 40 subsequent patents.
Shelton also invented new ways to cook and hold food, including the Collectramatic, the first pressurized fryer that did not require interrupting production to frequently filter shortening while cooking. Shelton also invented Controlled Vapor Technology, a patented cooking method that uses water vapor to prepare and safely hold food.
Early life
Born in Lockwood, West Virginia, in 1922, Shelton was the youngest of Naaman Shelton Sr. (1889–1962) and Opal Dell (née Keenan) (1895–1979) Shelton's five children. Opal Shelton operated the "Cross Roads Restaurant", a roadside diner next to the family's Standard Oil service station in Clay, West Virginia, where young Shelton had his first exposure to food service, helping his mother in the diner's kitchen. Shelton enlisted in the US Army in 1943, serving in the Army Specialized Training Program at Princeton University in the School of Engineering and was discharged in 1945. Shelton's education included attending Greenbrier Military School, Princeton University and West Virginia University, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 1948.
Inventions at GE
Shelton's career at General Electric began in 1948 as an engineer in the GE Home Laundry facility in Trenton, New Jersey. In 1952, Shelton transferred to the new General Electric Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky as a Research and Development Engineer when the Trenton Home Laundry division was consolidated there along with GE's other major appliance product lines. His tenure there spanned two decades. While there, his inventions earned 35 patents, primarily related to the drum washing machine, all assigned to GE. His inventions helped create and refine the modern, top-loading, rotating spiral agitator clothes washer. Shelton invented the mechanism to automatically provide the correct water level(s) at a desired water temperature during a washing machine's cycles and an easily removed and cleaned soil trap that strained insoluble dirt and debris as the unit's water was filtered through it during the wash and rinse cycles. GE marketed Shelton's invention as the "Filter-Flo Basket". The unit fit on top of the washing machine's agitator post and rotated during use.
Shelton's inventions also included an anti-siphonage inlet system (US 2638112) to avoid back contamination of a water supply, and a drain overflow arrangement for built-in washing machines that provided a safe means of dealing with excess water during operation.
Addressing the need for better controls for the automatic washing machine, in 1955 Shelton took a Telechron clock motor and built a geared, cam timing control mechanism around it. Patented as the “Timing Mechanism for Conducting a Selected One of a Plurality of Sequences of Operation”, the control is still in use on many appliances (US 2870278 A).
Winston Industries
In 1965, Shelton formed Engineering Prototype Services (EPS) with his brother, Naaman Shelton Jr (1919-1990) in Louisville, Kentucky where he could work on projects outside of the GE product line. Colonel Sanders was one of the first investors in the new company. Shelton resigned from GE in 1968. The company name was changed to Winston Industries in 1984.
The majority of Shelton's inventions after founding Winston Industries focused on solving problems in the food industry. His patents relating to food preparation include an automatic oven that cooks food and then automatically drops the cooked food onto a pivoting platform for sale (US 5990452 A), a food storage device that provides a method of controlling humidity in the cooking chamber (US 5595109 A) and a thermalizing apparatus using both wet bulb and dry bulb temperature sensors to more precisely control cooking parameters inside a cooking chamber (US 6521871 B1).