See The Journey Of George Crowley, The Man Behind The Electric Blanket

George C. Crowley, an engineer and inventor whose work led to 80 patents, including one for the first thermostatically controlled electric blanket, died Jan. 15 in Pinehurst, N. C., after suffering from pneumonia. He was 80 years old. After his graduation in 1942 from the University ofNotre Dame, where he was a third-string quarterback, Mr Crowley joined the Navy and was assigned to the General Electric Company, which was engaged in numerous wartime technical projects. It was Mr Crowley's development work on electrically heated flying suits that would enable pilots to fly above antiaircraft flak that led to his invention of the electric blanket, which was patented by the company. 

Mr Crowley's later work for G. E. and for the Northern Electric Company brought dozens more patents for other products as well as refinements for blankets. He continued to invent after retiring from Northern Electric in 1982 as executive vice president for research and engineering. When he died, he had a patent pending for a control that would automatically switch off an overheating blanket; he had hoped to provide the device to Japanese manufacturers. By the time he was 6 years old, Mr Crowley was exhibiting his flair for invention, wiring the stairs to his third-floor room to warn of approaching parents, according to David Scott, a son-in-law. By 12 he had rigged a dining room door to open so that his mother could easily pass through carrying armloads of dishes and had made it so the curtains would close when someone flipped on the lights. Sometimes he would induce family members to survey the kitchen looking for things he could invent. For his work in developing a negative temperature coefficient electrical cable, a major improvement in blanket technology, G. E. presented him its Charles A. Coffin Award in 1949, the company's highest honour for an employee. The citation spoke of his ''outstanding ingenuity and technical judgment in the design and development of a control circuit which made possible considerable advances'' in blanket quality.

Mr Crowley, who was born in Keansburg, N. J., also turned his inventiveness to golf. In 1958, he and a partner, Robert J. Sertl, patented a device for painting balls that used a blower to suspend them in the air while they were sprayed and dried. Other inventions were a tennis-ball bouncer and a device to chase squirrels from bird-feeders, the latter abandoned when he began to feel bad for the squirrels' receiving a one-volt shock.