Our Beginnings

Flintridge Foundation was created through the estates of Francis and Louisa Moseley in 1985. The Moseleys lived in Southern California from 1949 to 1984, residing in Pasadena and La Cañada-Flintridge, California. Louisa and Francis both felt strongly that individual creativity should be encouraged, believing that the private sector was best able to understand and respond to individuals and the changing needs of our society. They established a foundation to support charitable activities in areas of lifelong interest to them. Their four children became the founding directors of the Flintridge Foundation.

Francis L. Moseley (1908-1984)

Francis L. Moseley was always curious. As a child he wanted to know how things worked and why. He was intelligent, determined, and persistent in his quest for answers. He loved working with his hands, recombining elements to achieve a new result. He was an inventor.

Francis was a man who needed to know the answers to the problems his mind posed, and he was willing to work long hours in his shop to find them, teaching himself the skills he needed for the task. His gift was inventing a new answer, and problem solving was his joy. A self-taught electro-mechanical engineer, he had more than 50 patents to his credit over his influential career, which helped advance aerial navigation, graphic recording, and machine tool controls.

He invented the first automatic radio direction finder (ADF) for aircraft and helped develop the instrument landing system (ILS) that guides pilots toward the runway. Both these systems are used worldwide by commercial, military and private flyers today. He also made the first circuitry to allow automatic blind landing of aircraft.

Another of his groundbreaking inventions was the first two axis (X-Y) graphic recorder, which he brought to market in 1951 as the initial product of the F. L. Moseley Company. Having more interest in invention and development than running a company, he sold the F. L. Moseley Company to the Hewlett Packard Company in 1964. HP's inkjet printer business is a direct outgrowth of Francis's pioneering work. He then started the Servo Products Company that continues to this day. Located in Pasadena, it manufactures power feeds for milling machines and numerically controlled machine tools—products that he originally created in his home workshop.

Francis found a hobby in live steam backyard railroading, creating a beautifully detailed scale working model steam engine as well as steam driven generators for locomotives. His grandchildren had the delight of riding the rails around the family home, with steam blowing back into their excited faces. He possessed an abiding interest in the physical sciences, which he and his wife expressed through their support of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Louisa Moseley (1907-1983)

Louisa Moseley was a beautiful, gracious, private woman, who trained as an artist before her marriage. During her 51 years of marriage, while raising four children, she painted plein-air watercolors. In the early years, her subjects were the shorelines of Jamestown, Rhode Island from the family home built by her grandmother and later, the barns and turbulent clouds of the Midwest. After moving to California, she painted the Pacific shoreline from her house on the beach. When residing in Pasadena, she raised beautiful flowers and painted them more abstractly, closely exploring their form and color. She also did very expressive clay sketches of figures. She created beauty wherever she was—in her garden, her home, and by her very presence. It is a gift she has given to her children, who each in their own way carry the thread of beauty forward.

Louisa was a life member of the Descanso Gardens Guild, served on their advisory board and, with her husband, supported its building fund between 1978-1982. As a lifelong avid reader, she was a member of the La Cañada Thursday Club and The Friends of the La Cañada Library. She was a life member of the Society of Sponsors of the U.S. Navy and, being a direct descendant of Benjamin Franklin, had the privilege of co-sponsoring the atomic submarine Benjamin Franklin SSBN-640.

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