It’s a profoundly thrilling moment for a man who lived his early years on a Long Island duck farm, and a rare honor, for there are only 547 members of the Hall -- only about 100 of whom are still living -- out of an estimated 2 million engineers working in America today.
When the ceremony is over, Jones will make his way back to General Electric’s research campus overlooking the Mohawk River in Niskayuna, where he has worked since 1974, earning 55 patents so far, with more pending.
For at age 75, he has no plans to retire. He has more work to do, as he helps shape what has been called the next stage of the Industrial Revolution: 3D printing, in which lasers fuse metal powder into objects that would be difficult or impossible to create with conventional manufacturing techniques.