“What’s the first address?” asked Judy, who had taken the driving seat.
“It’s at 2800 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park,” said John in a matter of fact way. Inwardly he was trembling with tension, but he was putting on an outward poise in order to be uplifting to the other two.
Judy punched away at the Never Lost GPS for a minute or so. “There, that should do it.”
I hope nobody at Lighting Enterprises notices both Judy and I being out at the same time, John thought to himself as they drove along. I’ve put so much work into this Electrolev project that I feel more like an Electrolev employee than a Lighting Enterprises person. John visualized himself sitting in an office marked “President” while Judy and Tony had adjacent rooms marked “V. P. of Engineering” and “Chief Technologist” respectively. I feel so out of place wearing this pin stripe suit and with my hair cut short. Still, Tony looks impressive in his pin stripe suit and Judy is really neat in her tan pants suit. It shows her figure much better than that safari vest that she wears around work.
As they drove along John thought back over the events of the last six months. My apartment looks like a cross between a carpentry shop and an engineering laboratory. I’ve never been so short on sleep in my life. Tony has been a stalwart keeping up our spirits and bringing the light of understanding. Judy’s coding of the micro has been incredible. The three of us have been working like one person, doing things that none of us could have done alone. Judy has this unbelievable intuition for how things work. If only I could get through to her on a personal level. She is nice to me, but she always seems to be more attentive around Tony.
“How did we choose this first guy we are going to see?” asked Tony.
“Well, they all say that they fund technology startups,” responded John. “and I think that we are just that. People say that it is a work of art to fit together your ideas with somebody who is interested in financing that kind of technology. So we need to be very patient and not be miffed if they are not impressed. The good news is that every one of our appointments is at addresses on Sand Hill Road. Two of them are at this first address #2800. It must be a great big office block stuffed full of bankers.”
They were soon driving down Sand Hill Road, a wide street flanked by big leafy trees. On either side it was just possible to discern huge office buildings nestled in amongst the trees.
“Last night I looked up this place on the internet,” remarked Tony, trying to make conversation. “The rent for an office here runs over $100 per square foot. Regular offices around Long Beach come for $2.25 a square foot by comparison.” John whistled and Judy said “Whoa!”
“You have arrived at your destination,” announced the NeverLost. Since it had a female voice and it was a Hertz car, they had already named the voice “Hertzel.”
“Thank you Hertzel!” replied Judy in a calm, controlled voice.
They walked in and found their way to the suite of Berrin, Jones and Partners. They had been told to ask for Jim Meeching who was the associate with the job of appraising their business plan. They each carried a brief case, and John and Tony carried the big box between them. Asking for Jim Meeching, they were shown into a small conference room. After a few moments Jim Meeching walked in, introducing himself to them. He handed out business cards, and John immediately felt awkward because he did not have an Electrolev card. To John’s surprise, he did not look like a banker, wearing Dockers slacks and a correspondingly soft green golf shirt. John felt a bit silly since compared to him they were too formally dressed.
“John, I would like you to go over the business plan that you are proposing,” commanded Jim.
John had already opened up his laptop, and he turned it around to show the presentation that he had prepared.
“We have discovered a powerful force of nature that has lain undiscovered for the last 150 years. We have a special way of winding coils that can make them use this force to repel gravity, so that they can act as a levitation unit for an aircraft. These aircraft can be used for almost anything that a helicopter could be used for, except that there are no whirling blades and no noise. We think that it will cost about $5 million to make a first man carrying prototype. We then think that we will use another $15 million to get flight worthiness approvals and construct a small low capacity factory that will be capable of making about one unit per month. We believe that we can sell them for about $6M each, and they are actually quite inexpensive to build, no more than about $1M in parts and labor. They are much simpler than a regular helicopter. …”
Jim interrupted: “Are you trying to tell me that you are planning to build a helicopter without rotors? We are just not into that kind of thing. Our idea of technology is to find a case where some engineers have already developed some new technology like a faster memory, or a brighter LED, and are looking to set out by themselves to found a company to develop it. I am sorry, but I think that I would be wasting your time if we went on any longer. We are really only interested in solid state technology.”
With that he slowly stood up. “I think that we should stop there. I really appreciate you coming here to tell me about your ideas, and with such a dramatic invention I am sure that you will have no trouble in getting the funding for Electrolev.”
Having half expected this reception, the three of them stoically made their way out to a large atrium that was shared by many of the suites in that building. They sat down at a small table with armchairs around it.
“He did not believe, John,” said Judy. “Our next appointment in another suite of this same building, right?” John nodded.
Judy continued: “Well, let’s try and do this one different. Before you say a word about business plan, let’s just open box and operate the model LeviStar right there in the room. That will set the tone for the meeting. After that we won’t have to beg them believe us.”
“Yes, of course!” chimed in Tony.
“Great idea! It seems so obvious now,” exclaimed John. “Our next appointment must be upstairs, it is in suite 324. How about wending our way up there?”
A few moments later they arrived at the reception of Jones, Cohen and Brown. John said to the others: “These folk are supposed to be interested in technology – period. They have two billion dollars under management.” They were once again shown into a small conference room near the reception. Since they were early, because their last interview was so short, they knew they would have time to kill.
“Let’s get ready to do it right,” said Judy. Tony and John started unpacking the box which they carried. Annette consisted of a square of balsa wood struts, about two feet across. A large circular coil took up its entire perimeter. Just inside the outer coil were four orientation coils each about the size of a small tumbler for drinking. They were placed symmetrically. The center was taken up by some kind of power electronics circuit which involved one huge transformer and four smaller ones, plus numerous small capacitors – little postage stamp size film capacitors in abundance, plus at least five large electrolytic capacitors which were the shape and size of a cotton reel. All these were mounted on a greenish colored circuit board. All around it were packed rows and rows of battery cells, little cylinders about the size of a flashlight battery, all standing on end in order to take up less space. Underneath the circuit board were hundreds of tiny little surface mount components, so small that they were almost like texturing on the lower surface.
John and Tony carefully and slowly lifted Annette out of her box and placed her in the center of the conference table. John then retrieved an RC control box with a long antenna, joysticks and levers from the box, and the pair of them carefully stowed the empty box against the side wall of the room.
“Let’s rehearse it,” said Tony. Judy picked up the RC controller, and then flipped a tiny switch on Annette. A couple of red and green LED lights on the circuit board lit up in response.
“Here goes,” said Judy. She gingerly operated the levers and after a moment Annette started lifting up off
the table and rising towards the ceiling. Then it changed direction and started descending. It went up, and down.
“I wish that we had time to implement inertial stabilizer loop,” murmured Judy. “We knew that all we could hope for was something that moved up and down, and we need inertial stabilizer implemented to hold still.” Using her delicate feminine touch she coaxed Annette to come to a halt about two feet above the table. “That should convince anybody,” said John. “Put her down and let’s wait.” Judy obligingly landed Annette with a slight thump on the table.
“At least the horizontal stabilization loop is working like treat,” said Judy. “She’s staying flat like pancake.”
They sat there with John nursing his seething thoughts for a few moments, and then the door opened and a short balding man wearing a black suit and a blue tie came into the room.
“Hello, I’m Tim Hetherington,” he said, “I’ve got some background in physics and so the partners asked me to come and meet with you today.” He shook hands with each of them, and John felt a lot more comfortable just because he was dressed in the same way that they were.
“I’ve read your business plan,” he said, “but I would really like to hear it from you personally.”
John took his chance and broke in. “We would like to start out with a demonstration,” he announced. He glanced at Judy, who picked up the RC controller and broke into a serene smile.
“This is LeviStar version A. We call her Annette,” she said. With that she fiddled with the controls and Annette slowly moved up off the table. With courage and skill born of necessity, Judy adjusted the controls so that Annette moved about two feet off the table and to a good approximation became stationary in the air above the conference table. It actually took her a huge amount of judgment to get Annette to come to a halt, but Tim had no idea. Judy knew that with a simple feedback circuit and an inertial sensor, she could make the microprocessor do what she was doing so delicately with her fingers.
Tim looked totally stunned. “Tell me what I am seeing,” he requested with his voice tones giving away his excitement.
John replied: “This is a working model propulsion system which demonstrates LeviStar technology. It has one prime levitation coil, which we call an anti-coil, and four smaller orientation anti-coils to keep it horizontal since naturally it would turn up on its edge. We are driving the coils from audio frequency inverters controlled by a microprocessor which senses miniature gyroscopes. If the structure tilts by even a fraction, the gyro sensors tell the microprocessor to order up a correction to bring it back flat again. The radio controller is adjusting the overall power going into the coils, and that’s all actually. It has a lot of batteries inside to power the whole thing. When it is holding fairly still like this, the power consumption is relatively small, like about 10 watts. When it moves up, it takes in power corresponding to the energy needed to move that amount of weight through the distance involved. When it moves down, less energy is taken, and if we had the necessary regenerative circuitry like you have in a hybrid car then it could even reclaim the energy used to lift it in the first place. This simple prototype does not have any regeneration circuitry, and it simply uses less power when it is coming down.
“We know that this technology can be scaled. In fact the bigger it is, the better it works. We think that it could completely replace helicopters as we know them today. We could make vehicles with the function of a helicopter which would be five times cheaper. Beyond that, the possibilities are enormous. The levitation mechanism can work right up into outer space. We haven’t proved it yet, but we believe that such a vehicle could be powered up into space and then return while reclaiming most of the energy used in its ascent, provided it had big enough batteries.
“Since it can go into space without the need to achieve orbital speed, then these vehicles can replace the whole satellite industry that we know today, providing the same function for a tiny fraction of the cost. The power needed to hold a thousand pound satellite in position 100 miles above the earth would be only about 100 watts. This can be provided by using solar cells, so the vehicle could stay up indefinitely. Best of all, you could bring it down for servicing any time you wanted to.
“I hate to think about it, but if this technology was incorporated into a fighter aircraft, then it could take off and land from a helicopter landing pad. The aircraft carrier would be obsolete.” John was warming to his theme, which he had been dreaming about for months, but Tim interrupted him.
“John, I had read your business plan before you came in here, and actually it is lacking in a certain amount of financial detail and planning. However, that is more than made up for by the dramatic nature of the discovery that you intend to exploit. You have made me a believer already!
“If you could be so patient, I would like to go and fetch Mr. Moshe Cohen, one of the senior partners, to see your demonstration and to meet you.”
“Sure, go ahead”, rejoined John.
When Tim left the room, the three exchanged high fives and broad smiles. Judy carefully brought Annette down onto the table.
Outside in a private office, Tim was meeting with Moshe Cohen, the senior partner. “These Electrolev people have what I judge to be the kind of invention which makes a dislocation in civilizations. They have found a way to make a vehicle levitate with quite a small expenditure of energy. Market wise, it displaces the entire satellite industry. It makes helicopters obsolete. It makes aircraft carriers obsolete. They are here asking for $20 million but I reckon their plan easily has a net present value of $10 billion.” Moshe was a balding, sixty something year old man with thick pebble glasses. He was wearing dark blue slacks and a light blue polo shirt, which contrasted strangely with Tim’s neat suit. Moshe spent his life looking for ideas that would upset the status quo, and everything Tim said resounded well with him.
“Why don’t you introduce me?” he said to Tim.
The pair of them re-entered the conference room where the three were waiting patiently. “This is Moshe Cohen, the senior partner,” explained Tim. “Could you show him your demonstration please?”
“This is a scale model of the working parts of the product which we are proposing, sir,” explained John. “The most important innovation is a scheme for overcoming gravity under power electronic control.” He nodded to Judy, who then gave a masterful performance by powering up Annette to so that she rose three feet up off the conference table, and stopped almost still about three below the ceiling.
“This technology allows a vehicle to rise to a height limited only by the amount of energy that can be stored in it. It can remain stationary in height with only minor amounts of power – for example, this model is using about 10 watts to remain suspended over your conference table, and essentially all of that is just from power losses in its power converters. Vehicles made this way can replace helicopters, but they can also travel into space in theory. The immediate application is for law enforcement and anti-terrorist operations. Beyond that they can replace satellites and the space shuttle. Sometimes we think the applications are limitless.”
“Couldn’t you make a Jetson’s futuristic car out of it?” asked Moshe naively.
“Well, we thought of that, and the answer is, not right away,” said Tony. “You see, once you levitate a vehicle you have lost all that convenient steering and braking power that comes from traction with the ground. Such a vehicle would be a whole lot like one of those airboats they use in Florida, or maybe one of the hovercrafts that the marines use. It would not be too good at stopping or going round corners. If you had a street full of them, it would be hard to stop them all from bumping into each other like dodgem cars. That’s why we thought that the first application ought to be for helicopter replacement. The capability to go up into space and come back while reclaiming all the energy on the way down is an immensely powerful feature.
“We have calculated that these things work better the bigger you make them. The implications of that are incredible. It
can replace the space shuttle, in a sense. This is because one of these vehicles, which are called LeviStars, can easily go up into space and return, without wasting energy. However it would not be achieving orbital speed, and so it could only visit another LeviStar parked up there. If it was big enough, the parked vehicle could have its entire top side covered with solar cells and that would provide enough energy to hold it levitated.”
“How much of this have you proved?” queried Moshe.
“It’s all theory, except for this demonstration.” answered John.
“Which is very convincing,” rejoined Moshe. “Could you people excuse us for a few minutes?” With that he and Tim drifted out of the room and reconvened in an empty conference room next door.
“It’s sensational!” exclaimed Moshe. “How is the business plan?”
“It sucks, by itself,” said Tim. “They are financially naïve and inexperienced in what it takes to do a revolutionary technology development. We must insist that they take on board a seasoned person to look after finance and administration of the company while they give birth to this new technology. I think that what will happen is that after a few more stages we can easily get a 500 million dollar contract from NASA to bring the technology into reality. After that, the company will be placed right at the heart of the new aerospace industry. I will personally advise them on how to recruit really good technical people. We can easily hire the best from MIT. We are going to have to teach them about secrecy and discretion, and that will be a bitter pill for them to swallow.”
“I suggest you offer them 50% ownership”, said Moshe. “Make sure that they get to understand how good that deal is. At all costs I want them taken off the street – they are probably planning to go the length of Sand Hill Road and you have got to head that off.”
A Disruptive Invention Page 4