to treat water with powdered formulas rather than heavy chemical solutions. He raised startup money by selling the rights to another invention. The Walter Kidde fire extinguisher company had approached the University of Iowa for ideas for generating carbon dioxide to fight fires. Clifford came up with a patentable idea, and sold it to the fire company for $15,000. With the money the Hachs co-founded Hach Chemical Company in 1947. They bought an acre of land in Ames, Iowa, and built a cement block building which became their plant. They lived with their three children in a small apartment at the plant. Clifford Hach was in charge of research and development while Kitty handled management and marketing. Their first successful product was a simplified titration method for measuring hardness in drinking water, which they packaged in easy-to-use testing kits. As municipal standards for drinking water were developed, Kitty recognized both the importance of water plant operators as a market, and the need to work closely with them to develop standards and provide long-term customer service. She developed a direct mail marketing campaign, and earned the nickname "Kitty" Hach by flying her plane across the United States, sometimes landing on rural dirt airstrips in bad weather, delivering water quality testing kits to municipalities of all sizes. She became a member of the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of licensed women pilots, and accumulated over 7,000 hours flying time. She was rated for multi-engine and instrument flying. Kathryn Hach became the first woman director of the American Water Works Association, an international non-profit, scientific and educational association founded to improve water quality and supply throughout the world. She later served on numerous AWWA committees, including the President's Advisory Council. Hach Chemical Company Hach Chemical was instrumental in standardizing water-purification tests and pioneered many world-standard analytical instruments. Their tests were designed to be simple and effective, with nontechnical directions that made their products easy for both chemists and non-chemists to use. As of 2012, about 70 percent of municipalities in the United States used Hach Company instrumentation, allowing them to detect impurities in water at the parts-per-billion level. Hach Chemical Company was incorporated in 1951, went public in 1968. The company moved its headquarters to Loveland, Colorado, in 1978, and was renamed Hach Company in 1980. Under Kitty Hach's management, the company developed an employee base of over 900 people and became one of