James R (Jim) Ludden is a retired engineer who lived in Seattle, Washington, USA for nearly 50 years. He started Olympic Organ Builders after a year of practical training at the shop of Detlef Kleuker in Brackwede, (then West) Germany, where he built and installed several pipe organs. Jim is an inorganic chemist, forester, and economist by education, but an analyst, designer, engineer, and builder by vocation. Prior to retirement he designed databases for Microsoft.
Jim graduated from Pomona College in 1961 with a major in Chemistry. He served in the US Peace Corps in Arochukwu, Nigeria, from 1963-65, teaching science and math at Aggrey Memorial College. During this period he took a 4,000 mile motorcycle trip through Chad, Central African Republic, and Cameroon on his Honda CB125, spending 30 days of Christmas vacation on mostly dirt roads. After Peace Corps he spent a year in Germany learning pipe organ building. He received a Master of Science from University of Washington in 1967 in Chemistry and a PhD from UoW in 1977 in Forest Economics.
With a PhD he was employed by Weyerhaeuser Company as a research scientist in gypsum wallboard and managed technical support for the particleboard mills. He also supported computer users in the department and developed software to find bottlenecks in continuous-flow processes, particularly the emerging oriented strand board (OSB) factories.
After two years of general management consulting in New York City, he returned to Weyerhaeuser and developed his talents for computer consulting, leading a growing PC Support group in the Technology Center with up to seven staff. After working as Director of Management Information Services (an old-school title that represented the service they actually provided) he consulted around Puget Sound for about ten years, finally employed as a data architect at Microsoft.