chasing edison: meet canada's most prolific (arguably) inventor who sees ideas everywhere - portable ozone generator

HAMPTON, ONT. —
Gary Burns grinned and relaxed, he can tell a lot of stories about Wayne Conrad to the audience, his childhood friend and current employer of the omakron Group, headquartered in a small village of 75 minutes northeast of Toronto, R & D agency.
Burns said, but it's not easy to pick one, because Conrad is not the same as everyone else he knows.
He added that Conrad is certainly not like other students at the Whitby Anderson College Vocational College, Ontario.
They're hitting their heads against the wall to keep C-
In their 70 s, they didn't think about what they would do when they really grew up.
Conrad has been thinking.
"Wayne was just as crazy a scientist as he was today," Burns said . ".
"We don't have Google if we want to know anything, but we have Wayne.
We can ask him anything and he will have an answer and I really don't remember him being wrong.
Burns sits in a conference room in the basement of the Conrad stone building, a family home in Hampton and serves as a laboratory/business headquarters, A magnificent stone wall, a row of mature fir trees and a locked security door blocked the road.
On the other side of the conference room is a wall.
The length of the aquarium, in addition to this, there is a locked door that leads to the hot hive
Control Workshop, one of the most prolific, independent and almost completely unknown inventors in Canada, with engineers, tool manufacturers, technicians and other convenient types of staff on a range of electronic devices
Mechanical gadgets
Their creators can't talk about the works that are going on, at least because they haven't got a patent yet, so they can't talk about them publicly, but in an exciting and Frank moment, he ignores that, "The future of the vacuum cleaner is forming here.
If this is the case, it will only help Conrad achieve his life ambition: to surpass the total amount of his professional patents before Thomas Edison is completed.
In theory, Conrad began to accomplish such a feat very early on.
When he started the company, he was 15 years old. if you count the patents that are still pending, he currently owns nearly 600 patents.
By contrast, the inventor of the film camera, phonograph and electric chandelier for human beings, Babe Ruth Edison, obtained 1,093 patents.
"Over the years ,(Edison)
The record becomes less important, "55-year-old said.
"Your achievements and what you have done to help people have become more important, but I may still do that.
Conrad, like Edison, is Jack in all his works.
Today's product is probably a vacuum cleaner.
His innovation has changed Boston.
Home appliance manufacturer based in SharkNinja Operations Co. , Ltd. dollar-
Global players-
But who knows what the little invention will be tomorrow?
Except for all the vacuum-
Related ideas, Conrad's patent portfolio has a space
NASA is the International Space Station, ozone generator, automotive air conditioning, pulse power system, Cyclone particle separator, vortex mixer, desktop-
Large plastic mold extruder, portable personal boat and even indoor BBQ.
Conrad's eclectic approach makes him somewhat different from your campaign. of-the-mill uber-
Three doctoral nerds inventors who focus on a small corner of the innovative universe. Conrad —
He left the University of Toronto before he graduated.
He can see his ideas everywhere, including the kitchen, where, on a cold winter night, the idea of cooking outdoors inspired the above BBQ.
"I 've worked with a lot of inventors, but Wayne is in a different category.
He is really unique, and his knowledge of different industries and technologies is so broad that he is able to pick from different areas, just like a buffet, says Alan Millman, president of omachron: "combine things with different ideas. ".
"With a lot of people, what you get is very deep knowledge, but its focus is very narrow, which leads to incremental innovation.
But with Wayne, you have this broad knowledge that can leadof-the-box thinking.
He also has a good business mind.
"Before meeting with SharkNinja founder Mark Rosenzweig, Conrad has run home runs several times under his belt, and he
On June 2005, Milman, Conrad and another business contact drove Dodge Durango to Boston to meet with Rosenzweig to discuss science, kill time, philosophy, and world events, at the same time stop to find the strange things about junk food. (
Conrad's fatal weakness is not to resist the temptation of McDonald's fries).
The meeting is scheduled at 9: 1 hour. m. start.
The parties are still meeting at six points. m.
The rest is the history of vacuum cleaners.
"Wayne is very smart, very smart," Rosenzweig recalls . "
"He has been a good partner for years, but at the beginning he was crucial.
We are selling (hand and stick)
Vacuum cleaner, but I don't feel good enough, without Wayne, I don't think it's possible for us to get them to the level they need to start creating the shark brand where people really like our upright vacuum cleaner. ”Pre-
SharkNinja's annual sales are around $0. 3 billion, according to Rosenzweig, a figure that has ballooned to nearly $1. 7 billion. (
Over time, the privately owned company has also expanded the range of home appliances).
"What Wayne has the ability to do is to develop things that are not only related to the lab, but also to the consumer," Rosen Zweig said . ".
The lab is Conrad's creative space, but it's upstairs, on the main floor of his house, where he hammer out the details of his business deal, meet in a room imitating a British bar.
Sitting in the conference room can make people feel nervous, he said.
Sitting at the bar can make things happen.
Decorated with a variety of curiosity, including a frame air mail from American AirlinesS.
Aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh delivered a picture of Lancaster bomber and an old-fashioned Pepsi logo, and the bar felt as welcome as the owner.
Conrad may look like a crazy scientist, but he looks more like a father. A middle-aged dad —with six kids —
In Daddy's jeans, lavender.
Color shirt, soft eyes, glasses, brush
Cut the hair and the middle. age belly.
He and his wife Nina are passionate about Broadway musicals.
Indoor home life is the opposite of "none"to-see-here-you-nosey-
People in the outside atmosphere of the building project.
For example, there are many windows in Conrad's home. Mid-
In the afternoon, the blinds were pulled up in a warm and sunny spring.
Does the inventor hide some "I hide the fact that I'm saving money", Conrad says with a smile, and then goes into a completely No. cloak-and-
Dagger explanation for lowering the blinds.
The typical insulation value of the window is R-
Or, in other words, not very good.
Simply draw the blinds to raise the value to R-
For an inventor who lives and works in a stone mansion, it's enough to cut his energy bill by half.
One of Conrad's many features is practicality.
In fact, he doesn't create something he can't sell, or at least try to sell, which may be something he can thank his parents.
Ruth and Helmut Conrad were German immigrants who were former prisoners of war.
The couple came to Canada with very little money and adopted Wayne.
There is a picture of Wayne's family, he baked Christmas cookies with Helmut.
Another picture shows his knee.
High up, waving a little handsaw and working with his dad
A manufacturer of aircraft in de havelan
On the backyard construction project.
"Wayne's dad is salt on Earth," said Gary Burns . ".
"Wayne is an energetic child, an energetic rabbit, but on steroids.
Helmut has a child with no boundaries and he will keep trying to get Wayne into new territory.
But as Wayne grows older, it becomes more complicated to discover new things.
When Conrad was 11 years old, he and his father fixed a 1929 glider. (
A few years later, he took his mother around).
At the age of 13, he creatively attacked alone and won 1976 Canadian Solar Science Expo.
Power car design.
The car attracted the attention of Arthur Moore, an honorary professor at the University of Michigan, and the world --
A famous expert in static electricity.
Moore invited Conrad to Ann Arbor, Michigan.
He will stay there for a few days at a time. Rochester, N. Y.
The location of Xerox
Is another frequent destination.
Physicist and inventor Robert Gundlach, often referred to as the father of modern copiers, has accumulated numerous patents.
Like Moore, he was shining on the young Canadian, adding his name to Conrad's mentor list, and a series of influential people became possible to some extent, because his mother is willing to drive her son to wherever he needs to go.
The principal of Anderson Seve is happy that Wayne is skipping school, and as long as his parents agree with the arrangement, he will appear in the exam and remain on average.
"My mom is not a hockey mom, she's an inventor/businessman mom," Conrad said . " She showed obvious happiness in her memory.
"I have this wide
Diversified education, which I really think is the key to any young person.
When Conrad described his various inventions, he still exudes a childlike sense of wonder, an obvious passion, including the latest invention: A plastic extruder that does not exceed the table this requires minimal force and is able to change after
Consumer plastic scrap in plastic wood and siding.
He said, imagine that for little-
Canadian manufacturing of scale: no need to build large facilities with the energy costs of elephant machines and astronomical figures, but can run out of garages or basements, hire two, maybe three more, they create jobs and think that not everything in the world has to be made in China.
The technology could also be useful for island economies like Haiti, an extremely poor place with plastic debris everywhere and cheap housing.
"If you don't use it, waste is just a waste," Conrad said . ".
The desire to minimize waste applies to Conrad's living arrangements.
His home is his office and lab.
If he had any ideas at 4: 30 A. M. m.
He can break it.
If he makes a breakthrough at eight in the eveningm.
He knew that his bed was not an hour's commute but several stairs so he could work in the early hours of the morning.
However, Conrad's time, in any case, can be flexible in its application.
In a recent interview, the inventor told his visitors that he had a 3: 30. m. “hard-stop. ” At 3:15 p. m.
His wife Nina appeared at the bar to remind her husband of the deadline. At 3:45 p. m.
Although Conrad is now in his library/family cinema, a room with two floors and 25,000 books, he is still talking.
He also has 100,000 artifacts, early drafts, and prototype gadgets that reflect 40-
He can refer to years of inventions when needed. By 3:57 p. m.
Conrad went back to his elements, and was relaxed in the basement lab, stopping to show off another invention he could not talk about, at least not publicly speaking about patents.
"When Wayne says," I'll be back in five minutes, "What he really wants to say is that in the best case, in an ideal world, I'll be back in five minutes-
But don't count on it, "said Alan Milman, President omakron.
"This happens here every day.
It's just Wayne.