RADIO COMPASS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 174, 25 July 1935, Page 20

RADIO COMPASS.

MAKER FIGHTS POOL. INVENTOR'S UPS AND DOWNS. FOREIGNERS BII> F/IR DEVICE. (By IRA WOLFERT.) NEW YORK, June 20. Tlio title of this story might very well be "Bucking The Patent Pool," and it would have been had anyone but William Lear told it. But Mr. Lear is one of the last of that tribe of vanishing Americans, the ''rugged individualists," and when lie starts a story he finishes it in his own way. All a reporter's questions, like leaves in the wind, just get in the way. The patent pool consists of four great electrical concerns. Technicians believe it is impossible to invent anything electrical that will not infringe on some patent held by the pool. So, if you are an inventor, you take what the pool gives you, you buck the pool, or you go into the men's underwear display business. Very few people ever have been successful at bucking it, and the underwear display business lias gained an army of recruits. Now here comes William Lear, young Chicagoan, canny, shrewd radio inventor, who has been standing on tiptoes all the .'S.'i years of his life and knows all the ropes, who can be found one clay at the top going down and the next at the bottom going up, but never standing still —now here lie comes, knowing all he docs know, bitten as often as he lias been bitten, going with wide open eyes into the business of bucking the patent pool. How did that happen? 'Til have to talk fast,"' said Mr. Lear. ••I'm flying to .Miami. From there I fly to Havana. Then T fly to Chicago and fly back to New York in time to catch a liner to France. Then I fly from Paris to London. Where shall I begin 't" Tile beginning seemed as good a place as any, it was suggested, and Mr. Lcnr put his head down and charged right on from there, covering in a non-stop flight all the lon«r distance that separates a boy who started in the world with a grammar school education and a young man who lives in a New York penthouse and owns his own aeroplane for the fun of it. An Early Radio "Ham." Mr. Lear began with the Titanic, sunk by an iceberg on its maiden voyage. It seems that the heroic part radio played in that great tragedy of the sea inflamed his boyish imagination, knocked him on" his feet and right out of school. He started as one of radio's early "hams," and half a second later he is 10 years old and half-owner of a small radio store in Quincy, Illinois. "I was there three years," said Mr. Lear, "waiting for myself to grow up. Then 1 heard they were thinking of putting up a radio station—WLAL —in Tulsa, Oklahama. T wangled the job and quit the store cold. "Loss than a year later I was on my way back to Chicago in a car that should have known better than to try. I had built the radio station and had stolen myself a wife. "Two days later wo are at, Champaign, Illinois, with a busted car. 1 started looking for a job. and in a feudays a battery company had a new chief radio engineer at, 75 dollars a week. "In a couple of weeks I told the boss I thought I was worth more money, and 1 said, even if 1 wasn't worth it. T was going to get it because I was spending more than 7~> dollars a week.

"I went home. We had n one-room apartment. 'What does the world want new in radio?' J asked myself. And the answer was easy. 'Jt wants to get rid of these batteries and have a radio it can plug into the wall socket.' I went to work on the kitchen table and three months later I failed up Tom Pleteher, head of a music company, and asked hint if he would like to hear a radio that would work on AC current. Ife came right over. Then Ik- brought over a lot of financiers and college professors and engineers. The " Boonvßoom " Idea. "I went to work for Pletcher's company at 12.5 dollars a week. Then I had my 'boom-boom' idea. Yon remember the dynamic loud speaker? I took it to a radio company. A couple of days later I was getting 300 dollars as a super office boy, a sort of liaison officer between the engineering department and the executive department. "I stuck that out three months and then decided I was tired of asking bosses for raises. So I started my own radio development business. The first thing I did was to develop a compact radio that needed no 'B battery,' to be operated in automobiles. That's when the chips started to roll in. My royalties the first year were .30.000 dollars, the second year 40.000 dollars, and getting bigger every day. "All this time I had had little trouble with the patent pool. It's pretty lenient in the home radio field, and lias licensed about 20 companies to use its patents. But in tlie commercial field it has clamped down the lid. "I'm in Chicago, growing fat—packing away dough in annuities and life insurance policies and sporting around in an aeroplane. No excitement. Xo fun. The diive of business kept me away from home pretty often and my wife had divorced me. "On Christinas Day, 1933, I decided I'd take a crack at New York. I called up my three best engineers. 'We may go broke,' I said, 'but we'll get tha"t green mould off us anyway.' They were game. "I came here with LSOO dollars a month lixed expenses—insurance and annuities—a little capital and no income. We rented a hole in the wall and sat down to wait for an idea. All-wave Set Next. "I heard RCA had brought out an allwave radio set. I sketched out my idea of what an all-wave ladio set should be like, and put the engineers to work. "We'll skij) the next three months. They were pretty tough. But here it is a bright, sunny morning, the clink of gold in the air and me on my way to RCA. with an all-wave radio set that works. 1 walked out of that olliee with a cheque for 240,000 dollars in my pocket. "I came back to my hole in the wall. •Boys, 1 said, 'we're going to have some fun with this lough. We're going to build a radio compass.' And they had to be game to start monkeying witli radio compasses. "First, it was in the field of commercial radio. That meant we not only •id Ii Duiid something everybody else ,'d failed to build, but we had to light the most powerful combine on cart]) while doing it. 1,

"The Navy had spent ."iOO.OOO dollars and three years trying to get a radio compass. And all it had was a hodgepodge. The hodge-podge was ',ent to me to put into working order. But I told them it had to be built 011 different principles.

j "A radio compass operates in both the beacon and standard broadcast channels. j Suppose a 'plane is blown off its course by a storm. Now it would lose the beam and have to cruise around trying to pick it up again. But with a radio compass it could pick up the broadcast waves of any station, like KDKA. Pittsburgh, or WKAF, New York, and follow thein on a straight line right in. The beam works on a straight band, while broadcast channels are circular and cover every inch of a territory. You can see how important such an instrument would be to the Navy, whose 'planes fly far afield from a carrier ship, which might be drifting itself. With a radio compass, the 'plane could find the ship no matter where it was. Then the Fight Starts. "Well, for nine months I locked my boys in night and day. They spent 75.000 dollars of my money, but they built the radio compass. The patent pool heard about it and got the Navy to put the Department of Commerce and Department of Justice 071 our trail. They accused us of violating secrets of national defence. "Now I've got eleven patent applications in and the lipht's just starting. Just the other day one of the patent pool companies bought my compass through a third party. They're going to take it apart and see where I have infringed on their patents. '"But I think I've got them this time. T can say. 'Sure, you'll slap a suit on me and stop me from manufacturing these compasses. But don't forget my eleven patents. I'll slap a suit on you if you infringe (hose.' And what that means is that neither of us will be able to make compasses. So we'll have to split the field. They'll have to license me. Tn the meantime, I'm getting my investment back. Two great foreign Powers are bidding for the compass." Mr. Lear snatched a hasfy glance at his watch. "If there's anything more you want to know." he said, grabbing up his hat. "sec me when I get back from Miami —from Havana —from Chicago—from Europe."—(N'.A.X.A.)