Patricia Billings | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1926 (age 97–98) |
| Alma mater | Amarillo College |
| Occupation(s) | sculptor, inventor |
| Notable work | Geobond |
Patricia Billings (born 1926) is a sculptor, inventor and businesswoman. She invented the building material Geobond. [1] Billings has an entry in the Historical Encyclopedia of American Women Entrepreneurs, 1776 to the Present. [2]
Patricia Billings was born in 1926 in Clinton, Missouri to a farmer and his wife. [3] She married a salesman and began working as a medical technologist, studying fungal and bacterial diseases at Kansas City Junior College. [3] She left that job in 1947 when she married; later she and her husband divorced. [3] Billings worked as a tuberculosis researcher at Kansas City Hospital. [4]
In 1956 she began studying art at Amarillo College. [5] [6] She made plaster of Paris sculptures, [5] and in 1964 she opened a store in Kansas City where she sold many of her sculptures. [6] She sculpted a swan and after she finished, it collapsed and broke into pieces. She then decided to make a stronger substance for creating her sculptures. [1]
Billings began researching materials in manuscripts from the Renaissance Era, where she learned that the plaster used in frescoes was fortified with a material similar to cement (but not cement); that material affected the chemical composition of the mixture, thereby strengthening it. [6] Eight years later she invented, in her basement lab, [6] the Geobond construction material. [7] [8] She sent a 10-inch statue made of her new material to a scientist, who encouraged her to persist. [1] In 1996, The Wall Street Journal published a profile of Billings that also described fire-resistance testing of Geobond by Underwriters Laboratories, the Kansas City Fire Department, and a government lab at Edwards Air Force Base. [1]
Geobond research was initially funded by Billings.; [9] it was patented in 1997. [10] The resulting company, Geobond International Inc., began as a small 13-employee company in Kansas City, Missouri. [3] Production was at a Lenexa, Kansas facility until the company moved to a larger factory in Kansas City in 1996. [11] [12] Billings along with Susan Michalski also invented the FireTherm wall system, [9] which combines metal lath and tarpaper with Geobond. [12] Building materials based on Geobond were available in over 20 markets throughout the world in 2006. [13]
Popular Mechanics named Billings, in 2020, one of "37 Women Who’ve Upended Science, Tech, and Engineering For the Better" for her invention of Geobond which was recognized for its non-carcinogenic properties. [14]
A book on women inventors, Patently Female (2002), calls Geobond the "world's first safe alternative to asbestos." [6] Lemmelson-MIT notes its fireproof and resilient properties, calling it "the world's first workable replacement for asbestos." [5] A 2017 book on women designers, craftswomen, architects and engineers states that the Geobond architectural material is an "indestructible, fire-proof and non-toxic building material.” [10]
Billings's work has been featured in newspapers (including the St. Louis Post Dispatch ) and books (including Organizational Wisdom and Executive Courage and The Integration of the Humanities and Arts with Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Higher Education.) [15] [16] [17]
In addition to the invention of Geobond, Billings has received several patents for building materials including modular wall panels and roofing tiles. [18] [19] These include:
Billings and Susan Michalski developed a patented process and design for modular, fire-resistant molded building panels using a gypsum cement catalyst formula in layers between a framework of rigid studs. [20]
Billings married at age 21; she divorced 17 years later. She has a daughter and two grandsons. [1]
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USG Corporation, also known as United States Gypsum Corporation, is an American company which manufactures construction materials, most notably drywall and joint compound. The company is the largest distributor of wallboard in the United States and the largest manufacturer of gypsum products in North America. It is also a major consumer of synthetic gypsum, a byproduct of flue-gas desulfurization. Its corporate offices are located at 550 West Adams Street in Chicago, Illinois.
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Architectural terracotta refers to a fired mixture of clay and water that can be used in a non-structural, semi-structural, or structural capacity on the exterior or interior of a building. Terracotta pottery, as earthenware is called when not used for vessels, is an ancient building material that translates from Latin as "baked earth". Some architectural terracotta is actually stronger than stoneware. It can be unglazed, painted, slip glazed, or glazed. A piece of terracotta is composed of a hollow clay web enclosing a void space or cell. The cell can be installed in compression with mortar or hung with metal anchors; such cells are often partially backfilled with mortar.
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Acoustic plaster is plaster which contains fibres or aggregate so that it absorbs sound. Early plasters contained asbestos, but newer ones consist of a base layer of absorptive substrate panels, which are typically mineral wool, or a non-combustible inorganic blow-glass granulate. A first finishing layer is then applied on top of the substrate panels, and sometimes a second finishing layer is added for greater sound attenuation. Pre-made acoustic panels are more commonly used, but acoustic plaster provides a smooth and seamless appearance, and greater flexibility for readjustment. The drawback is the greater level of skill required in application. Proprietary types of acoustic plaster developed in the 1920s included Macoustic Plaster, Sabinite, Kalite, Wyodak, Old Newark and Sprayo-Flake produced by companies such as US Gypsum.
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...she forwarded a sample to Heinz Poppendiek, an expert on thermal properties of matter who heads GeoScience Laboratories, an independent testing lab in San Diego. "I was surprised by its properties," he recalls. With some pointers from Dr. Poppendiek, Ms. Billings went to work on improving the material's heat-resistance and other properties.
The daughter of a Clinton, Mo., farmer and his wife, she attended Kansas City Junior College and worked as a medical technologist studying fungal and bacterial diseases. She quit in 1947 when she married a plate-glass salesman, from whom she was later divorced. It was in 1956, while living in Texas, that she first studied art, at Amarillo College.
Billings, 69, began developing the GeoBond formula several years ago in an effort to find something better than plaster with which to make castings of statues and other art objects.
The wall tested by Underwriters Laboratories was made by putting GeoBond over metal lath and tarpaper. Billings and Michalski call it the FireTherm system.
History is full of examples of people who drew upon their talent and passion for science and art to drive new discoveries and advances...sculptor Patricia Billings invented "geobond" while trying to improve plaster
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