Journal perfessor multigeek's Journal: Ah, Makes Me Feel Young Again (Aw, Sh*t!) 3
I've been reading the thread on Phillips having designed liquid lenses for consumer use. Much fun.
Back in '83, when I was in high school I came up with an idea for a way to build liquid lenses. A few weeks later my AP chem teacher announced to the class that NASA was sponsoring a competition for stuff to go on the shuttle. He was quite emphatic about getting folks to enter. After all, my warped little high school was obsessed with certain kinds of achievement and this was the only national science or math competiton in which we had never won anything at all. Or to put it in high school guy terms, our teacher, who was also chairman of the physical sciences department (heavy mojo, especially since I hung out in his office with a bunch of fellow hardcore geeks) made it clear that he would be pissed if nobody stepped forward and that he would make it worthwhile for anybody who did.
Since my little toy would work its best in zero gravity and, well, hell, I never did my homework and cut class constantly and so badly needed a little bit of favoritism, I put up my hand and gave a brief explanation.
Well, let's just say that thinking of such a thing was no big deal, having, for the first time in my life to do a writeup of one of my inventions for somebody else [1], let alone my first competition entry was a frantic and amazing experience. I still remember sitting there for hours creating this drawing of one variant with about two dozen liquid adjustment tubes projecting out from the central lens that ended up looking like some sort of renaissance thing out of Da Vinci's notebooks.
Anyway, I was declared a regional winner, traveled down to Goddard for a few days with aforementioned teacher (who, it turned out, was also one of the people running the teacher's organization that cosponsored the competition) and had a surreal few days of meeting geek kids from around the northeast, presenting to real adults, and generally having a kickass time. The only odd bit was the end when I was given a talking to by some folks from the military who plunked themselves down at my table at the awards banquet and started asking lots of odd, probing questions.
So we go home, I pretty much go back to my normal neurotic, fucked up high school life except for several manic, crazed intervals as aforementioned science teacher pushes me to do my entry for the final round. He orders some kid I don't know in the CAD class to work with me for hours doing new drawings, literally physically throws me out (!) of class one time and tells me that the competition is more important, and generally adds yet another layer of mania, anxiety, and yes, thrills to my already extreme life (let's just say that my stepfather dying the year before had been a *minor* crisis compared to some of the other stuff I had going on.)
So I document my revisions, pack it all up, send it in, and move back to my other (heh) foci.
Finally the day the judging is finished comes, the teacher pulls me into his office and closes the door, calls the head of the competiton and asks her if I've won. He gets this wierd look on his face, a couple of strange comments go back and forth, and he tells me to leave the room and closes the door behind me. A while later he hangs up, lets me back in, and with this odd perplexed look on his face, in words that I didn't understand then and wish I could remember now seems to be telling me that, no I didn't win, but no, I didn't lose either. WTF? Evidently, in some way he leaves very fuzzy, the folks in DC have withdrawn my entry. Again, WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!
Sure enough, time passes, I hear that other have gotten their "so sorry, better luck next time" letters and I get nothing. My entry has unhappened.
As far as I can figure, the DoD creeps had shown up because, while I had been thinking astronomy and cameras and, let's face it, nonspecific "that would be cool and would make me a hoopy frood[2]" thoughts, *they* were thinking, "Cool, a lens that doesn't melt because it's *designed* to work as a liquid". Ya see, the folks working on SDI, a.k.a. "Star Wars" had been having this little problem, which was that sometimes when you run lasers and such at weapon-level strengths, you melt your optics. Oops.
And the only way I can make sense of the whole last phase of my little jaunt into liquid lenses was that the dimwits of DoD decided that even my designs, which, btw, were optimized for things like Van Der Waals forces that don't exist in most fluids were too cool to encourage in the hands of a son of known leftists who when asked about his opinion of military intelligence replies, "Jumbo shrimp! I *love* oxymorons!".
Fuckers.
So I haven't given the design much thought in almost twenty years and it's been really fun to dive back into it in a non-asshat environment. Odd to describe a /. thread that way but in comparison . . .
BTW, the really pathetic postscript to all of this is that I was smart enough to get out of liquid lenses but kept working on optics, and occasionally, portable computing through most of the eighties. This meant that EVERY FUCKING INVENTION I LOVED and put serious time into in the four years after that was subjected to the sleazy, grabby, weasely actions of our military-industrial complex. After all, I had almost no capital, was working under a bunch of ex-military and ex-Tempest whackjobs and was somebody they had no intention of giving a clearance to anyway so I never got a fucking dime let alone an honest answer. All that I got was having my phone tapped, being followed, watching my boss get messed with, and generally getting ever more paranoid, exhausted and bitter as the minions of the FBI, NSA, Navy, and various defence contractors (Hughes Aircraft comes to mind) piddled along their corrupt, self-serving paths.
Anyway, thinking liquid lens problems through again has been fun. Of course, an itty-bitty part of me is tempted to track down my entry papers after all these years (and yeah, the scattered improvements that I did write up in my carefully signed and dated invention notebooks) and threaten Phillips with a lawsuit. After all, from the looks of it, my work is certainly prior art and that goes well beyond the idea of liquid lenses per se.
I probably shouldn't bother. Gawd knows I certainly do still carry around qiute a lot of counterproductive anger and frustration from that period, don't I?
Best probably to let it alone. I envy those of you who are married at this moment. I'ld love to have an understanding spouse to sit down with and go over my options. Somebody with a stake in the game but no emotional baggage. Whatever.
Guess no matter how long I sit here typing away, I'm not coming to any conclusions so I'm just gonna head off and go back to billable work.
Thanks to those of you who have sat this rant through,
-Rustin
[1] Actually, I'ld been working on a Westinghouse entry for implantable synthetic motoneurons since '81 but that was a whole differernt kettle of fish.
[2] I was quite into Hitchhiker's Guide, as were about half of my friends.
Back in '83, when I was in high school I came up with an idea for a way to build liquid lenses. A few weeks later my AP chem teacher announced to the class that NASA was sponsoring a competition for stuff to go on the shuttle. He was quite emphatic about getting folks to enter. After all, my warped little high school was obsessed with certain kinds of achievement and this was the only national science or math competiton in which we had never won anything at all. Or to put it in high school guy terms, our teacher, who was also chairman of the physical sciences department (heavy mojo, especially since I hung out in his office with a bunch of fellow hardcore geeks) made it clear that he would be pissed if nobody stepped forward and that he would make it worthwhile for anybody who did.
Since my little toy would work its best in zero gravity and, well, hell, I never did my homework and cut class constantly and so badly needed a little bit of favoritism, I put up my hand and gave a brief explanation.
Well, let's just say that thinking of such a thing was no big deal, having, for the first time in my life to do a writeup of one of my inventions for somebody else [1], let alone my first competition entry was a frantic and amazing experience. I still remember sitting there for hours creating this drawing of one variant with about two dozen liquid adjustment tubes projecting out from the central lens that ended up looking like some sort of renaissance thing out of Da Vinci's notebooks.
Anyway, I was declared a regional winner, traveled down to Goddard for a few days with aforementioned teacher (who, it turned out, was also one of the people running the teacher's organization that cosponsored the competition) and had a surreal few days of meeting geek kids from around the northeast, presenting to real adults, and generally having a kickass time. The only odd bit was the end when I was given a talking to by some folks from the military who plunked themselves down at my table at the awards banquet and started asking lots of odd, probing questions.
So we go home, I pretty much go back to my normal neurotic, fucked up high school life except for several manic, crazed intervals as aforementioned science teacher pushes me to do my entry for the final round. He orders some kid I don't know in the CAD class to work with me for hours doing new drawings, literally physically throws me out (!) of class one time and tells me that the competition is more important, and generally adds yet another layer of mania, anxiety, and yes, thrills to my already extreme life (let's just say that my stepfather dying the year before had been a *minor* crisis compared to some of the other stuff I had going on.)
So I document my revisions, pack it all up, send it in, and move back to my other (heh) foci.
Finally the day the judging is finished comes, the teacher pulls me into his office and closes the door, calls the head of the competiton and asks her if I've won. He gets this wierd look on his face, a couple of strange comments go back and forth, and he tells me to leave the room and closes the door behind me. A while later he hangs up, lets me back in, and with this odd perplexed look on his face, in words that I didn't understand then and wish I could remember now seems to be telling me that, no I didn't win, but no, I didn't lose either. WTF? Evidently, in some way he leaves very fuzzy, the folks in DC have withdrawn my entry. Again, WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!
Sure enough, time passes, I hear that other have gotten their "so sorry, better luck next time" letters and I get nothing. My entry has unhappened.
As far as I can figure, the DoD creeps had shown up because, while I had been thinking astronomy and cameras and, let's face it, nonspecific "that would be cool and would make me a hoopy frood[2]" thoughts, *they* were thinking, "Cool, a lens that doesn't melt because it's *designed* to work as a liquid". Ya see, the folks working on SDI, a.k.a. "Star Wars" had been having this little problem, which was that sometimes when you run lasers and such at weapon-level strengths, you melt your optics. Oops.
And the only way I can make sense of the whole last phase of my little jaunt into liquid lenses was that the dimwits of DoD decided that even my designs, which, btw, were optimized for things like Van Der Waals forces that don't exist in most fluids were too cool to encourage in the hands of a son of known leftists who when asked about his opinion of military intelligence replies, "Jumbo shrimp! I *love* oxymorons!".
Fuckers.
So I haven't given the design much thought in almost twenty years and it's been really fun to dive back into it in a non-asshat environment. Odd to describe a
BTW, the really pathetic postscript to all of this is that I was smart enough to get out of liquid lenses but kept working on optics, and occasionally, portable computing through most of the eighties. This meant that EVERY FUCKING INVENTION I LOVED and put serious time into in the four years after that was subjected to the sleazy, grabby, weasely actions of our military-industrial complex. After all, I had almost no capital, was working under a bunch of ex-military and ex-Tempest whackjobs and was somebody they had no intention of giving a clearance to anyway so I never got a fucking dime let alone an honest answer. All that I got was having my phone tapped, being followed, watching my boss get messed with, and generally getting ever more paranoid, exhausted and bitter as the minions of the FBI, NSA, Navy, and various defence contractors (Hughes Aircraft comes to mind) piddled along their corrupt, self-serving paths.
Anyway, thinking liquid lens problems through again has been fun. Of course, an itty-bitty part of me is tempted to track down my entry papers after all these years (and yeah, the scattered improvements that I did write up in my carefully signed and dated invention notebooks) and threaten Phillips with a lawsuit. After all, from the looks of it, my work is certainly prior art and that goes well beyond the idea of liquid lenses per se.
I probably shouldn't bother. Gawd knows I certainly do still carry around qiute a lot of counterproductive anger and frustration from that period, don't I?
Best probably to let it alone. I envy those of you who are married at this moment. I'ld love to have an understanding spouse to sit down with and go over my options. Somebody with a stake in the game but no emotional baggage. Whatever.
Guess no matter how long I sit here typing away, I'm not coming to any conclusions so I'm just gonna head off and go back to billable work.
Thanks to those of you who have sat this rant through,
-Rustin
[1] Actually, I'ld been working on a Westinghouse entry for implantable synthetic motoneurons since '81 but that was a whole differernt kettle of fish.
[2] I was quite into Hitchhiker's Guide, as were about half of my friends.
Cool Stuff (Score:2)
Let me guess... you went to Stuy didn't you? (wild shot in the dark).
Re:Cool Stuff (Score:2)
Why, thank you. *bows*
And yep, I'm yet another Stuy
Rustin
Whoa (Score:2)
In all seriousness though, it's a shame you didn't patent this when(/if) you had the chance, you could be making millions now. However, it doesn't mention that philips is looking to patent the process, so you don't really have a leg to stand on in legal-land. But, should phillips indeed patent the process and sue others, I would suggest that you offer your evidence of prior art to the defendants in exchange for a hefty kickback - you could g