Word: inventor
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Eric Cottell, a British-born inventor, does not change base metals into gold, but he does mix oil and water-and these days that may be the most welcome alchemy of all. Cottell claims that in a furnace a blend of three parts oil and one part water burns so much more cleanly and efficiently than ordinary oil that it can cut fuel consumption by at least 20% while producing almost no soot or ash. He also claims that road tests show that a car can run on 18% water and 82% gasoline, with such a low output of pollutants...
Thomas' mother also claims that his life was ruined by the 1966 operation. Before the operation, Thomas had been an engineer and inventor who held patents on the Land camera. After the operation, in 1968, a Veterans Administration hospital declared Thomas totally disabled for the first time in his life. In 1971, the courts declared Thomas an incompetent and his mother became his legal ward. Thomas has been hospitalized four times since the operation, the most recent for attacking his father...
William Shockley, inventor of the transistor and would-be geneticist, claims to have discovered that "the world spins on a teensy, weensy electric motor." "Sure, I'm saying this partly for shock value," Shockley says, "but, gosh, how else do you explain a play title like Stop the World, I Want to Get Off, or a movie like The Day the Earth Stood Still...
Died. Charles Greeley Abbot, 101, astrophysicist, inventor and secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1928-44; in Riverdale, Md. In 1972, a crater on the moon's dark side was named for Abbot, who spent more than 70 years studying the effects of solar radiation on terrestrial weather patterns and patented numerous devices for converting the sun's heat into energy...
Died. Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt, 81, a British government scientist who developed the first practical radar system; after a long illness; in Inverness, Scotland. A member of the same family to which the inventor of the steam engine, James Watt, belonged, Watson-Watt worked on what was then called "radio location," a process of bouncing radio waves off distant objects. Tested by tracking the plane that carried Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to Munich and back in 1938, Watson-Watt's aircraft-spotting radar later helped his country repel German attacks during the Battle of Britain...