John, Tony and Steve sat with attention riveted on the point Judy had made.
“Are we sure it will work in space?” interrupted Steve, his voice brittle with tension.
“It’s all theory,” answered Tony. “In the evenings I have been working on a physics theory of what goes on. It seems like you can explain what happens with just a small modification of Einstein’s relativity theory. If that genius could have seen a LeviStar I am convinced he would have built the fifth force right into general relativity. It’s just that until now almost nobody except a few way-out theorists like me even dreamed that such a thing could happen.”
“So you mean that we do not really know whether it will work on up into space or not?” queried Steve.
“You are right to ask the question, Steve,” continued Tony. “We have been building up all these hopes and dreams with the expectation that we do understand what is happening, and that expectation suggests that if a vehicle has enough energy packed into its batteries, then it could get itself right up into space. You can easily calculate that for a given weight, you need a certain amount of energy to get to a given height. Batteries only hold a certain amount of energy, so if you know how much energy per pound a battery contains you can pretty easily calculate how high it could ever go, without any vehicle to lift.”
“Well how high could a cell phone battery lift itself?” questioned John.
“Most cell phones today have lithium ion polymer batteries,” replied Tony. “In theory one of those could lift itself about 30 miles in the extreme case where there was no weight to lift except the weight of the battery itself. You can do better out of a lithium manganese dioxide non rechargeable battery, which is about one half the weight for the same amount of energy. One of those could take itself up to about 60 miles. Obviously in that case it would be a one way journey”
“So that’s why you spent all that money on lithium manganese dioxide batteries!” exclaimed Steve.
Tony grinned: “If we really load up an Annette model with batteries then the batteries will be about a half of the weight. So if we used lithium manganese dioxide ones it might reach 30 miles if we were lucky. What this all says to me is that if we were planning a space going vehicle, it would have to have its own power generator on board – maybe a nuclear reactor, for example. Remember that the amount of gravitational field our anticoil couples to goes as the square of the diameter, so the bigger we make it the better it works.”
“Let’s be realistic Tony,” interjected Judy. “You are getting too far ahead of things now.”
“OK, being realistic,” continued Tony, “I reckon that if we took one of the Annette models and put in so many lithium manganese dioxide batteries that they were half of the weight, then it would have enough energy to get to about 30 miles. I would lighten up the airframe as much as possible, for example use aluminum instead of copper for the Litz wire.”
John looked anguished. “We really have to settle the point - It could make an enormous difference depending on whether we are going to just replace helicopters or replace the whole aerospace industry. It’s like the difference between huge and huge squared. I think that we have no choice but to get the matter resolved. Let’s take one of the Annette generation units, retrofit it with lithium manganese dioxide batteries, and add a radio transponder to it so that when we transmit a radio signal to it, then it will send back a ping. If we measure how long it takes for the ping to come back then we will know how far away it has gone.”
Tony immediately adopted the idea. “I have an instinct that we ought to put some kind of external covers on it to protect it from cloud condensation, cosmic dust, and all that sort of thing. Probably just some thin film wrap would do the trick. How long do you think it will take to get one ready?”
“I reckon about two weeks,” said John. ‘We already have the good batteries around in sufficient quantities and all we have to do is to retrofit one of the Anettes with a transponder and add the external covers.”
“Have we got another one for the patent office?” queried Tony.
“Well, we have two of them right now. We can take one to the patent office next week and prepare the other one with a radio pinger to go up the following week,” answered John. Suddenly he remembered to act presidential. “We’ve discussed a lot of action items in this meeting – let’s get on with it! Tony – you let me know when we get to go to the patent office!” With that he stood up. After a moment’s hesitation, the others looked at him, noting his newly found authoritativeness, and went back to work.
That evening after most of the staff had left, Hippy was manning the front desk and Tony was poring over equations on the side table in his office. Judy was the only other person left in the office suite, and around 6.30 p.m. she packed up her laptop into her bag and walked down the corridor to check Tony’s status. This was a recurring piece of theater which happened on so many evenings. Tony would get so engrossed in his analysis that he would simply forget about going home. During the day time Judy and Tony would usually have both of their cars at work. Then if they left together, one car would stay in the Electrolev yard, safely inside the walls and watched over by the security guard. If Judy was unsuccessful in persuading Tony to leave then she would just take her own car home and Tony would follow later.
“Honey – it’s time to go home!” announced Judy.
Tony was poring over the papers on his side table with a look of rapt concentration. He swung round his swivel chair, acknowledging Judy with a smile.
“It’s your turn to cook tonight!” said Judy, sweetly.
Tony looked pained. “I’m just starting to get somewhere with these relativistic transforms.”
Judy knew that this could be the lead in for a delaying tactic, so she brought a little more persuasive power to the discussion. Putting down her briefcase with its heavy laptop inside, she straightened the hem of her sweater, pulling it tight across her chest, and sat down on Tony’s lap. She draped her arms around his neck and engaged him in a long passionate kiss.
“You know, I feel like having an early night tonight,” she murmured. She wriggled a little so that her mid thigh length skirt revealed most of her left leg. She started another lengthy kiss, and Tony unconsciously started to enjoy fondling her breast through her sweater. At that moment they were both startled by a discrete “Ahem.” It was John, who had been fiddling around with circuits in the lab outside in the warehouse unnoticed by anybody.
John stood with folded arms, an indignant expression on his face. “I really think that you two ought to be a bit more discreet!” Both Tony and Judy noticed that he was blushing. “It is not dignified and appropriate to your position in the company to behave like that on the premises,” he said sternly. “I’m off now, so I’ll see you tomorrow.” John strode over to the front desk and asked Hippy to open the back gate, and then walked smartly out into the backyard without looking at them again. Inwardly, John was seething with discomfort. He secretly admired Judy’s sexuality from a distance, and worked really well with her professionally, but had never got anywhere with her romantically. On a personal level, he regarded Tony as a sexual rival, on the other hand he respected Tony’s intellect. To see them together in a way that he could only dream of was particularly galling for him. Steve’s admonishments about sexual harassment were running through his mind If I did that I would be had up for sexual harassment, he grieved to himself inwardly.
Back in the office, Tony said to Judy: “I feel awful about that. John is such a nice fellow and he is doing a damn good job as president of Electrolev. I just hate to embarrass him like that”
Judy replied: “I respect him too. He is such good looking guy. He needs nice honest girl who make him happy. Maybe I will make party with some of my old room mates and invite John along. Jenny Wu has just had breast implants and that should get John turned on – she shows them to everybody and likes to get guys to touch them to prove how realistic they are!”
“I seem to have
lost my concentration,” said Tony. “Let’s get on home shall we?” With that they too asked Hippy to open the back gate and they slowly walked out hand in hand to the parking lot, deep in thought.
Chapter 23
Tony and Dan Smuthers the patent attorney were driving into LAX airport for the flight to Washington. They had one of the Annette prototypes, securely packed in a cardboard box, into the back of the car. They had solved the problem of not letting Annette out of their sight by purchasing a seat for the box. Together they lugged the cardboard box containing Annette, which was 3’X3’ by 1’, across the multi story parking lot and into the terminal. Each of them carried a substantial brief case which also contained overnight things. They were going to stay at a hotel in Washington that night, visit the patent office in the morning, and return that day. As anticipated, they had to do a lot of talking at the TSA inspection. The officers insisted upon Annette’s box being placed inside a huge scanning machine which had a red light on the top. The agent pressed a button and immediately the red light started flashing and a siren blared out, causing everybody in the check in hall to turn and stare. Out of nowhere, four helmeted men in khaki uniforms appeared with M16 rifles and surrounded Tony and Dan, who felt a sense of panic rising inside them. Was some government agency determined to steal their invention? Dan’s face clearly showed that he was feeling the same panic. Dan looked at Tony who stared back at him in disbelief. It was a moment that seemed to last for an eternity. Then one of the inspectors turned off the alarms and commented to his colleague “Maybe that sensor element needs cleaning again!” Turning to Tony, he explained: “We are going to put your box on the table but we have to open it, you are not allowed to touch it.” Tony looked at Dan and rolled his eyes. The M16 toting guards backed off slightly while Annette was carried across to an inspection table. The officer donned latex gloves and ever so slowly started to open the box.
“We are going to miss our flight at this rate!” commented Dan to Tony.
“What is this thing?” asked the TSA inspector.
“It’s my work - a prototype electronic device for use in helicopters,” responded Tony. The TSA inspector was clearly uncomfortable and called over his supervisor. Together they looked over it, under it and through it with bewilderment. They tried pushing it and prodding it to make sure it was not anything dangerous. “I guess it’s harmless,” said the supervisor, walking off to another station. The guards filed off behind a door on one side. Tony and Dan looked at each other and started carefully packing Annette and the RC controller back into the cardboard box.
Once on the plane, Tony took the aisle seat, Dan the center seat and the Annette box was placed up against the window. Dan and Tony chatted idly as the flight progressed.
“So how is it going with Electrolev?” asked Dan.
“We really have made a lot of progress this year,” replied Tony. “The biggest thing was the first manned flight a couple of weeks ago. We have learned all kinds of stuff about how to control these vehicles. As you know, they are inherently unstable, and can only remain flat and steady by virtue of the computer sensing its orientation and correcting it back to be flat. As recently as the first test flight, we learned what should have been obvious, that if you start one of them spinning, it will tend to carry on spinning until you stop it. So just this week we have put in a gyroscopically controlled feedback loop which stops the device from rotating unless the driver is twisting the joystick. It sounds simple, but it has consumed six programmers for a week to make it work simultaneously with keeping the device flat and holding it at a desired height.”
Dan nodded sympathetically. “Wow! It must be a tremendous strain on you all learning so much so rapidly. Does everyone of you all have official lab notebooks and all the procedures for recording these inventions?”
“You bet – but all the same it is a strain. Especially for the last two months because we put everybody on a 12 hour day, six days a week in a big push to demonstrate manned flight before our money ran out. I felt like a wreck at the end of it. But it was all worth it to see Judy going through the air in the first manned flight!”
“That Judy seems like a real livewire. It must be fun working around somebody like that.”
“Fun is only half of it. Nobody else knows this, but Judy and I are planning to get married next year. Please don’t tell anybody else – I am afraid it would complicate our lives at Electrolev if anybody else knew. I know I can rely on your discretion – right?”
“Absolutely!” said Dan. “My lips are sealed.”
Tony continued: “Talking of discretion, we are worried about people at the patent office knowing about the anticoil principle. Can we really trust them?”
“You don’t have to worry. Those guys have taken oaths and vows which make any confidentiality agreement you could draft look silly. I know because I used to be one of them. So secret information leaking out of the patent office should be the last thing that you need to worry about. Actually I haven’t been to the USPTO myself for more than five years. The last time I was there they were located at Crystal City, a few miles away. They outgrew that place and have taken up more grandiose premises on Dulaney Street since then. Also I need to forewarn you that these examiners are a pretty erudite bunch of fellows – so give them respect. They work under extreme pressure and after two years from their hire date about a half of them are gone.”
The flight continued uneventfully on to Dulles airport. Tony and Dan took a cab to the Embassy Suites hotel in Alexandria, close by the Patent and Trade Mark office for their ten a.m. meeting the next day.
In the morning, they took a cab to 600 Dulaney Street. Upon entering the building, they went through a time consuming procedure of having an individual photographic ID badge prepared for each of them.
Dan was happy to put up with this. “You should make sure you hang on to that, because you can use it for ID checks in airports and such like and it saves dragging out your wallet and driving license over and again.”
Finally they were shown to a conference room near the entrance. The room was empty when they sat down, and over a period of ten minutes a committee of about ten examiners gradually filed into the room. They were all men, about half of them appearing to be Asian. Tony and Dan overheard snatches of conversation as the examiners chatted amongst themselves. “Last week they had us look at a magnet motor that was supposed to produce energy from nowhere. Now we have to look at a magic carpet that can lift itself off the ground! Do they think we have nothing better to do?” Dan and Tony exchanged glances.
After fifteen minutes an older man came into the room, and Tony guessed from the sudden hush that he must carry some weight in that building. “I am chief examiner Smith of the United States Patent Office.” He looked hard at Tony and Dan. “We have a long standing policy of not accepting patent applications that are so extraordinary that they would be rejected by the body of modern science, unless the inventors can produce a working model of the invention. So I now invite you to show and explain the invention to us. All of these gentlemen are qualified examiners of the USPTO.”
Tony stood up. However Dan motioned him back and said: “We are most grateful to you for the honor of being invited here. Give us a few moments and we will make the demonstration that you have in mind.”
Tony then carefully opened the tie fasteners around Annette’s box, and opened the lid. Then he slowly lifted out the Annette prototype and placed it in the center of the conference table. He next pulled out an RC controller box with an antenna, and switched on both the Annette prototype and the control box. A few LEDs started glowing green and yellow on the Annette circuit board. “Gentlemen, this is a prototype model of a levitation device made using the fifth force principle described in our patent application. It uses a large coil here round the outside which does the actual levitation, and four smaller coils here inside the larger one which are used to stabilize the device, since such a system is inherently unstable by itself. There is a microprocess
or in the center which is orchestrating this balancing act, calling out a correcting signal every time a gyroscope sensor detects a minute shift from the desired level configuration. This particular model is not capable of doing anything except to go up and down, but obviously that is very important.” With that Tony gingerly pushed one of the tiny levers on the RC control box, and Annette started to rise up from the table. When it got to about three feet up, Tony attempted to stop it but overshot the mark so that it started coming down again. After a couple of tweaks on the control levers, he had Annette hovering almost stationary over the conference table at a height between two and three feet. He looked up from his concentrated task and scanned the faces of the assembled examiners. “Any questions?”
The examiners were sitting there dumbstruck. Some had jaws dropping open, while others had gone glassy eyed. The examiners looked at each other in silence for a few moments. Chief examiner Smith stroked his chin with his hand. “Is that all it does?”
“What more do you want?” rejoined Dan.
“OK, I agree that your demonstration is very convincing,” said Chief Examiner Smith. “We will go ahead with an examination of the invention. I will write up minutes of this meeting and send you a copy.”
“Thank you, sir,” replied Dan courteously. The meeting broke up.
Afterwards outside the patent office steps, Tony and Dan finally looked at each other and each of them cracked into smiles and then laughter of delight. Dan held up his hand high in the air and Tony joyously slapped it to give him a high five right there outside 600 Dulaney Street.
Chapter 24
The next morning back at Electrolev, Steve, Tony, John and Judy gathered again in the conference room as soon as they all arrived, around eight a.m.
Steve was burning with impatience. “Well, how did it go?”
A Disruptive Invention Page 11