WEALTHY INVENTOR

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIX, Issue 62, 28 February 1929, Page 8

WEALTHY INVENTOR

NEW ZEALAND RUNAWAY NOW A MILLIONAIRE. GODWABD'S GAS GENERATOR. San Francisco, February 4. The American Press has just unearthed in the labyrinths of populous New York a stocky, spectacled New Zealander, who has become famous. A newspaper man discovered him sitting in his office high above Broadway and modestly telling his story of how the champion napkin-folder of a passenger ship became a successful and wealthy inventor. Ernest R. Godward, a middle-aged man of kindly demeanour, was talking about himself while he puffed at a cigarette. He had neither education nor money as the foundation of a career. He ran away from home at the age of 12 to follow a roving life on the seven seas. Now he is hailed as the inventor of a device which, attached to an automobile, increases economy of fuel, operation arid horse-power. Starting from London. Godward s adventures, undertaken as a madcap prank after failure to pass a school examination, carried him to Japan, New Zealand, and eventually to the United States. Brass polisher, deck boy, ship steward and bicycle repair man, he still found time to go in streuously for athletics, run a business and to study gasolene engines. Godward reached the peak of nap-kin-folding proficiency while steward on a ship plying waters of the Antipodes. It did not appeal to him as a life work. “So I settled down in New Zealand,’’ he stated in NewYork to his interviewer. Bicycle, motor hike and automobile business, built up gradually, became successful, and he gathered enough money to continue his studies of carburetion. And in his spare time he won some half-hundred medals as a boxer, swimmer, rower, bicycle racer and runner. Through Godward’s story ran the moral of hard work. “I’ve torn down my models a hundred times or more and started all over again,” the inventor said. “I dont’ think I’m perfect yea. and still am looking for improvements.” RETURNED TO NEW ZEALAND. Godward’s first trip to the United States, in 1914. was discouraging. The patent office refused the rights he asked. He went back to New Zealand, worked his process all over again, and returned. This time he was successful in having his patents awarded. Godward's gas generator, placed between the carburettor and the engine of an automobile evaporates the hydro-carbon and produces a perfect gas which does not condense. It utilises more of the gasolene than under ordinary circumstances; hence the economy. Tests on omnibuses out. of Philadelphia haev shown a saving of from 10 to 30 per cent., he said.

Under the caption. “Keep Smiling,” the Montreal “Daily Star”, had the subjoined editorial anent the perseverance of Godward: “The New Zealander who started life as a cabin hoy and is now a millionaire inventor in New York adds one more to the list of men whose ambition and industry have more than made up for a poor start. When he ran away from England first, he was practically without education. Yet to-day he knows all there is to be known about the internal combustion engine. He learnt it for himself. And this is what all must do in the battle of life. It is a fine thing to have a. good education, but it is not what others teach us that is going to help us in the long run; it is what we learn by ‘bitter experience.’ And if we have the courage to get out into the world and take the buffets and come up smiling, sooner or later the world will smile with us. and ‘luck’ as they call it will come our way. For this is not such a bad world after all, and anybody who tries his hest is fairly sure of a square deal.” '