Word: karle
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...KARL E. SMITH, 54, is a shy, forlorn man who is almost marooned in his solitude. To find him, a visitor heads north from Fresno, Calif., and up into the Sierras, following a single-lane trail that winds endlessly along 9,000-ft. precipices. Finally, the traveler arrives at Florence Lake, and there is Karl, smiling nervously, waiting in rumpled cowboy clothes, wearing a three-day beard and smelling of horses. He helps you into his aluminum outboard motorboat and you putter to the other end of the lake. There you mount a horse, and three hours later, after climbing...
Monster Chickens. Karl was a trombonist with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra when he bought his 200 acres in 1952. At first he wintered in Dallas, spent summers building the ranch. But as he built, he found he could not keep from inventing things: an underwater device that guides his boat safely to shore, or a collapsible bow, for hunting on horseback...
...which enabled an electronic needle to enter a chicken's brain and reach its hypothalamus with out killing the chicken. "It worked so well I had chickens laying double eggs, eating their heads off, or not eating at all. They could have created monster chickens with my instrument," Karl says proudly...
...that Karl had his biggest brainstorm: a revolutionary new rear-view mirror for automobiles. "Suddenly I got the idea, what a great thing to see over the top of the car instead of having to see through all those heads and seats and blind spots inside the car. I thought, 'Gee whiz, Karl, here's opportunity knocking at the back door, success. Invent over-the-top rear vision and make money fast...
Panoramic Periscope. So Karl quit the symphony, moved his family from Dallas to Auberry, a town in the foothills below his ranch, and began to develop his mirror full time. The principle was simple: a panoramic periscope. A system of three mirrors, each as wide as the car, mounted in the roof above and inside the windshield. The top mirror juts four inches above the roof, catches an unobstructed view to the rear and sides, and then transmits it via the other two mirrors down to the driver...