firstborn car: invention

Showing posts with label invention. Show all posts

Thursday, April 8, 2010

two good ideas I'd like to see in the world of street signs

I didn't keep track of what Tumbler I found the top one at, but the bottom is from a great idea at http://www.ted.com/

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Segs 4 Vets, Mobilizing America's Heroes

The below seat can be seen at http://www.segseat.com/ and purchased for about 500 bucks

Just check the seating custom changes... this is what enables anyone with leg problems to utilize a Segway and have upright mobility. Both of the seats will flip up or down to get out of the way when getting on or off the Segway.

Seventeen severely wounded warriors received a custom modified Segway, the personal mobility device, at a ceremony on the forward deck of the historic USS Midway.

Segs4Vets recipients use the Segway instead of a wheelchair and say the Segway allows them to stand tall in their prosthetic legs, improves their mobility and lets them appear less disabled in public.

The recipients included nine soldiers, two Marines, two national guardsmen, two airmen and two sailors. They come from Guam , Washington, D.C. and a dozen states, including California. Many are still undergoing treatment and rehabilitation at the Naval Medical Center San Diego.
Segs4Vets, a project of Disability Rights Advocates for Technology, a non-profit organization rated as one of America’s best charities, (one of 2,000 out of 1,000,000 charities in America) returned to San Diego for the third time to make the presentation.

The recipients sustained serious injuries which limit their mobility during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Segway dramatically improves personal mobility for military service members who lost limbs to amputation or suffer from spinal cord injuries, neurological injuries and soft tissue damage.

``Those who become disabled while serving our nation deserve the best tools available to live productive and fulfilling lives,’’ said Jerry Kerr, president and founder of DRAFT. ``The Segway has proven its value to more than 400 wounded warriors and we are delighted to provide this device to these brave military service members to help them fulfill their dreams.’’

Several former recipients who attended the ceremony included John Hyland, a former Army soldier and trained opera singer who will sang the National Anthem at the ceremony, and Kortney Clemons who is training for the Paralympic Games at the Olympic Training Center in San Diego. Two of the earliest recipients used their Segways to complete undergraduate studies at Georgetown University and are now attending law school.

More than 33,000 men and women in uniform have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan since the beginning of hostilities. The Segway is not covered by military medical insurance.

Segs4Vets, created in late 2005, is run entirely by volunteers as part of Disability Rights Advocates for Technology (DRAFT), a 501c3 created to represent people with disabilities who refuse to be defined by their disability and whose passionate enthusiasm for participation in life’s activities is supported by Universal Design and new and emerging technologies. The organization is a member of Military, Veterans & Patriotic Service Organizations of America and has been certified as one of the best charities in America by the Independent Charities Seal of Excellence, an honor accorded fewer than 2,000 of the more than one million public charities in the United States.

DRAFT is the only organization to ever receive a blanket waiver from the U.S. military allowing a gift in excess to $1,000 to severely injured active duty military force members serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Czysz C1 990 MotoGP racebike. Innovation hasn't happened in motorcycles to this extant in, perhaps, decades

Image via: http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/oped/tradition-business-model-motoczysz/

40-year-old American architect Michael Czysz from Portland, Oregon was an architectural designer by trade, a damn good one, he heads Architropolis which has done work for celebs Lenny Kravitz and Cindy Crawford.

But his father and grandfather were motorcycle mechanics, and Micheal wanted to make his mark in the MotoGP world, and he has now done more, he's invented a new engine design, new front forks and front suspension design, new chassis design, and engineered and manufactured it to full functionality, perhaps even competiveness. Definitely breaking apart from the paradigm of prior engine design, and pulling a fully realized racing motorcycle from paper to race track in about 3 years.

HD Theater on cable tv had a one hour show about all of this, and I was blown away at the total single handed design of a previously unheard of motor. Then they showed how Michael drew up a new design of all the other things I've mentioned.

But think about just the one part, the engine.

A new design. When was the last new design in engines of any kind engineered or produced?

The Dual over head cam 427 Ford in the 60's? The Wankel (rotary engine) in the 70's? It took about 10 years of GM and other companies putting full engineer teams at work to make a rotary engine actually work, and then Mazda to perfect it. . . but Michael designed, engineered, built, and perfected his split crank counter rotating inline 4 cylinder engine... in months. Start to finish, paper to combustion, in months.

Then he puts this inline with the wheels, countering gyroscopic torque that causes wheelies, and it also doesn't screw around with the bike's rolling left or right when turning.

To read a real motorcycle journalists description of it, and thoughts on the ride he had: http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/firstrides/122_0507_radical_c1_990/index.html

For an update on what happened after the C1 990, and how MotoGP reducing the engine size from 990cc to 800cc, read this http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/oped/tradition-business-model-motoczysz/