John S. Titus has been included in Marquis Who’s Who. As in all Marquis Who’s Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Over the course of an astonishing career spanning decades, John S. Titus has captained numerous pioneering companies related to scientific research, development, and technical services—and has himself contributed to the science and medical fields as an engineer and an inventor of more than 50 products, including computerized numerical controllers and a heart attack predictor. Since the launch of his primary operation, Perception, Inc. in the 1970s, he has started 17 companies, utilizing his skills and opportunities to better the world around him with each new venture.
Born and raised in Washington, D.C., in the 1940s, Mr. Titus developed his strong work ethic at a young age, having been greatly shaped by his parents; his father was a police officer and his mother a registered nurse. While in high school, he worked as a welder in a shop in the summers and as a bus driver, but strived to get a job at a “sophisticated company.” He quickly got his wish when he entered into a job with Westinghouse while still in school, where he began in a machine shop as part of a team making the radar guidance system for the Saturn missile. After two months, he was offered and accepted an apprenticeship for tool and die making—and through ingenuity, and knowledge he obtained in high school shop class, he excelled, ultimately becoming a lead man. As he was more focused on his career at this point, he took the GED exam, which he passed with record grades, and subsequently earned his diploma. Mr. Titus was then accepted to the University of Oklahoma, where he received a Bachelor of Science in industrial education in 1964.
Always one to find work wherever he goes, while in college, Mr. Titus was hired by his adviser, Lowell Jackson, to run his class ring startup company, Jackson Enterprises, from scratch. Having been previously exposed and partial to computers, he computerized all the business’s tool and die operations, as well as its art operations with computer graphics using his own software invention—Computer-aided Design & Computer-aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM)—which he later sold. The company, as a result, became very successful and competitive. On top of it all, he built the console for his alma mater’s computers. All of this success while still in college naturally encouraged him to work for himself and start his own company; in fact, he never had to apply for a job again because the experience made him an extremely sought-after employee. Upon graduation, he was offered a position with Jostens, the largest manufacturer of educational memorabilia in the world, where he combined his expertise with computers and as a tool and die maker to automate many of its operations and develop a mold-making machine and a stone-setting machine—through which he eliminated many of its operational restrictions and made production more efficient. He later visited the plant he helped Jostens build all those years ago in Denton, Texas and found that it was not only still there, but the company became a non-union single-plant class ring manufacturer because this one was capable of all the production requirements—all because of his innovations there. Jostens had previously produced half of the product volume in five separate locations.
In 1979, he started Micronix, Inc., which later became Perception, Inc., a company that works on product design and development for people’s ideas and inventions in several fields, depending on its clients’ interests and where the clients’ businesses are located. While he uses contract engineers for specialty services, he manages every project all the way through the end, prioritizing that the client’s idea gets to the market through his manufacturing expertise. He has also done patent defense work in Washington, D.C., for companies that have been infringed and requested his services in court; he has never lost a case. Among his several business ventures, he earned a certification in computer graphics from the University of Michigan in 1974 and served as vice president of National Computer Systems from 1985 to 1990, president of Xtal, Inc. from 1990 to 1995, and the chief technical officer of Intercim, Inc. from 1995 to 2000. In addition, his own inventions have dominated the scientific and medical industries, including the one he’s most proud of—a device that warns when a patient is about to enter angina, the first stage of a heart attack. The prototype for it alone was used in an operation, and helped save a patient’s life. He was personally asked to work on the instrument by Dr. Demetre Nicoloff, who was the head of cardiology at the University of Minnesota Medical Center. Mr. Titus also created for Dr. Nicoloff a computerized electronic heart function monitor for use during open heart surgery, the patenting of which helped with the development of the procedure, which was, at the time, fraught with much loss of life on the operating table.
A frequent speaker at conferences and a devoted member of many boards throughout his career, Mr. Titus has been particularly proud of his affiliation with the Inventors Network of Minnesota, which he remains connected to today. Additionally, he founded a local chapter of the Numerical Control Society before being elected to the national board of directors and eventually president of the international organization, and regularly spoke at events hosted by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers—an exposure that always gained him more clients.
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