Word: karle
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...tricky part was getting the three mirrors exactly the right size and shape, and at just the right angles and distances from one another. The puzzle took Karl three years to solve, working ten-and 15-hour days, trying thousands of pieces of glass. "We had to get rid of the dining-room table," says his wife Adeline, "to give Karl room to work. After that, we ate mostly TV dinners." Adeline taught school in Auberry so they would not starve...
Nearly broke, Karl at last hit on the magic combination of mirrors that had eluded other inventors who had thought of the same basic idea. He bought a '61 white Corvette, built a new top for it, incorporating the mirror, and drove it down to Los Angeles expecting to astound the world. It was indeed a wonderful mirror, making driving many times safer and easier. But all Karl got was one small article in the Los Angeles Times. Then he tried writing letters to all the Senators and Congressmen he had heard of and to 17 federal agencies. Nothing...
Machine Guns in Back. Shaken but undaunted, Karl wrote asking to testify when the Senate auto-safety hearings came along in '65. He was amazed when the committee refused. The following year, however, Karl managed to get on the witness list for the House hearings and drove his Corvette all the way to Washington. On the way he was stopped several times by police, because his Corvette has no rear window, the better to demonstrate the virtues of his device. Once a highway patrolman drew his gun on Karl and searched the car, explaining that cars without rear windows...
...Karl drove doggedly on to Detroit, getting arrested again on the way, and challenged the automakers to match safety mirrors with his. Four auto companies examined it, eventually turned it down. Karl was despairing when the Department of Transportation was founded. He flew back to Washington and explained his mirror to DOT. But the department seemed uninterested also...
...years were rolling by, and Karl had about given up, when DOT commissioned a research firm in Santa Monica to test the leading safety-mirror concepts. Karl's invention was among them. The report, which came out last year, said: "There is no vehicle on the road which permits maneuvers such as freeway lane changes and merges to be made as quickly, safely and with such a high degree of assurance as does the Smith car." As a result, there is a chance that a Santa Barbara firm, under contract to DOT, will build a prototype of Karl...