Inventor, Industrialist, and Writer

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Parents: Peter Houston Kilham (1905–1992) and Frances Potter Breese (1916–1997).

Married: Betsy S. Spaulding (1927- ).

Children: None recorded. Kinship: Eighth cousin once removed of the post–World War II Smith generation.

Education and Early Technical Career Lawrence (“Larry”) Breese Kilham earned a B.S. in Engineering Physics from the University of Colorado and a master’s degree from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Entering the high-technology sector in 1965, he worked in engineering, sales, and management roles for several advanced manufacturing and instrumentation firms. He developed three patented innovations in chemical-process instrumentation, and in 1986 received the IR 100 award for one of the year’s most significant technical products. His articles appeared widely in trade journals and were presented at professional conferences. Much of his career was international, taking him to Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America; he became fluent in Spanish and later wrote a bilingual memoir of his work in Nicaragua, Shades of Truth / Los matices de la verdad.

Eco Sensors In 1991 Kilham founded Eco Sensors, a small company specializing in ozone-sensing technology. Initially based in New Jersey, the firm was later relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Kilham had longstanding family ties through his maternal grandfather, the inventor and aviator James L. Breese. In early 2008 he sold the company to KWJ Engineering of the San Francisco Bay Area. Although KWJ considered moving operations to California, it determined that Santa Fe offered lower costs and a skilled, cohesive team; the business remained on Pacheco Street with a staff of seven.

Kilham continued to serve as a board member and consultant after the sale. At the time, he described himself as “needing more time for skiing” and welcomed the security the transaction provided. He noted that Eco Sensors’ relationship with KWJ would facilitate improvements through micromachining and nanotechnology, strengthening the shared mission “to keep the world as safe as we can from dangerous gases.”

Family Background in Santa Fe Technology Kilham’s grandfather, James L. Breese, was an early high-tech entrepreneur in Santa Fe. Breese designed and built oil burners known as Breese Burners and maintained both a laboratory on Canyon Road and a plant on Cerrillos Road. A mechanical prodigy, he served as flight engineer on the NC-4 biplane that made the first trans-Atlantic flight in 1919. During World War II and the Korean War he worked closely with the U.S. Army. His Canyon Road property later served as the stand-in for Santa Fe High School in the film Red Sky at Morning and as an interim campus for Santa Fe Preparatory School. Breese was widely respected in the city; family tradition holds that Oliver LaFarge wrote his obituary for The New Mexican.

Kilham often recalled his grandfather’s judgment that Santa Fe was “a charming place to live but not a great place to have a high-tech business,” an observation he believed had not entirely changed. Although the state assisted him with foreign-trade programs, he noted the persistent difficulty of recruiting skilled labor locally.

Transition to Writing After retiring from industry in 2007, Kilham became a full-time writer, drawing on skills cultivated as a college newspaper editor.