|
Posted by Ken S. Tucker on April 15, 2006, 12:47 pm
Please log in for more thread options
Henry Spencer wrote:
> >> >For years he carried on his work virtually alone...
> >> Note, though, that this was by his own wish. Attempts by others to get
> >> him involved in cooperation and information exchange were persistently
> >> rebuffed.
> >
> >Henry, that's plain wrong, eventually 214 patents were
> >filed in Goddards name as a matter of PUBLIC record...
>
> More than half of them weren't even filed until after his death (by his
> wife, filing on his behalf), by which time they were mostly a matter of
> asserting intellectual priority and property rights, because others had
> already developed many of the same ideas independently.
If this link is credible
http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/AERO/goddard.htm
then his ideas were worth at least US$1,000,000
(1960) not something I'd give away for free!
> There are several accounts by/of people who *tried* to get Goddard
> involved in joint ventures and information exchange, and gave up after
> concluding that he simply wouldn't. See, e.g., the one in chapter 18 of
> Wulforst's "The Rocketmakers", an account of Guggenheim trying to twist
> Goddard's arm in 1938 to get him cooperating with the military, Caltech,
> and the N.A.C.A., without any real success.
Understandable, he didn't want to be a govmint worker
nor institutionalized, his ability would have been severely
stifled in either case, and likely his data classified!
Recall Mass. govmint banned him, in that state, govmint
sucks, it always works to stifle individual initiative.
> (On the spot and under pressure from his main sponsor, Goddard conceded
> that perhaps Caltech might work on a problematic LOX pump for him... but
> although he supplied data on the pump, he refused all requests for
> information about related hardware that affected the problem. Moreover,
> although the division of labor was supposed to help him, he quietly
> continued work on the issue himself, and eventually told von Karman that
> he'd solved the problem and there was no further need for Caltech to
> pursue it. In response, von Karman told Guggenheim that trying to work
> with Goddard was pointless.)
What did Goddard have to gain? It would have been
a one way information flow, for low pay compared to
it's established value that was proven by patents.
Look at Goddard from the perspective of an inventor
businessman and his *agreement* with Guggenhiem,
given they got $500,000 for $50,000 invested.
Hope that helps.
Regards
Ken S. Tucker
| 
XML Sitemap