Stone Quarry solution

Just inside the front door of my house is a picture I took in the garden of The Goat, a good hotel in Snowdonia where we were on holiday. It shows Ann pushing a swing on which are James and Linden. I would estimate the date to be about 1957. We had driven there in our Phantom 1 Rolls-Royce and met Henry Bristowe with his wife and son Richard who was about my son William’s age. We became friends. The Bristowes had come in their Bentley, which was Henry’s joy. They had come from Christow, not far from Exeter. Henry managed a stone quarry near Christow. He had a problem there and asked me if I could suggest a solution. Like all stone quarries the stone crusher fed a revolving drum divided into sections each of which has different sized holes in it allowing stones of the same size through into a funnel which takes them – via a belt - into the main hopper. When a contractor phones for some – say – ¾" stones it is important to know if the quarry can supply. It is important to know how full the ¾" hopper is and the only way the quarry owner could determine this was to send someone up to the hopper top to have a look. I thought of a better method which consisted of a bob-weight controlled by a loose belt driven by a geared-down electric motor with an eccentrically fixed pulley-wheel. If the motor is geared to, say, 1rpm the belt will tighten once every ½ minute and leave it slack for the rest of the minute. Tested on a model with a bucket of sand it was amusing to watch it working once every minute the bob weight would appear at the top of the sand and remain there until some more sand was added when it would quickly rise to the top again. If most of the sand was removed (contractor removing some of the hopper contents) then bob-weight would drop to the new level. A firm in Slough said they would market it, but I never followed it up. I expect a modern solution would be electronic. So all I have got left of this adventure is the picture of Ann and two of my children in their early years. I hope you enjoyed another facet of my unusual life, which is still continuing - but no more inventions I assure you!

Solar Coil Solar Panel

I designed this about 1975 and it was just in time for the wonderful summer of 1976 when we used them to heat our recently built 30’ x 15’ swimming pool and found they raised the temperature to well over 80º F. Sales went well. They were made in two sizes, approx 1 sq metre and the smaller ‘solar kettle’ which was often used on the roof in houses to augment their hot-water tank. They were water filled and required a pump for operation and they were expensive to make. But they came out top when compared with other solar panels available at the time.

Only one of my other ‘inventions’ made me any money. This way my strawberry frame which made it possible to grow about 24 plants on a ground area of 3ft x 2ft and they were bird-proof, slug proof and could be watered from the top. I have four of them on my patio today – some 35 years old and still in good order. I believe there would still be a good market for them today – perhaps made in plastic rather than the galvanised steel of the originals. They would appeal to suburban householders with limited garden space.

The Verdik Petrol Economiser

I invented this during one of the many cross-country flights with pupils which were part of my duties as an EFTS instructor. With the pupil doing most (or all) of the actual flying my mind had plenty of time to wander. In those days all cars had carburettors metering the petrol/air supply to the engine and the petrol jet would start to wear and so let through more petrol than the ideal 14/1 air/petrol mixture. One could buy an extra air control for £1 or so. This was only a rubber tube from the engine inlet manifold between the carburettor and engine and a tap fixed to the dashboard. As soon as the engine had warmed up one opened this tap just enough to improve the engine performance. The trouble with this method was that the tap must be closed every time one came to rest (traffic lights etc) or the engine would stop running. How to achieve this automatically? The answer came to me on one of these flights during which I was asking myself “What happens at tick-over that is different when the engine is running at 10 mph or more/” The answer is “the battery is being charged”. So a solenoid can do the work of opening and closing the extra air tube. Thus the Verdik Economiser came into life. It was given a good report by “The Motor” whose chief engineer was Laurence Pomeroy with whom I became friendly, and it was sold by a number of garages, Boon and Porter amongst them. But I never made any money out of it. I have no flair whatsoever for marketing anything. In any case carburettors were soon becoming out of date and alternators were replacing dynamos.