Midwest Grows Wheat, Corn, Inventors

Vernon Unruh was getting too old to push a lawn mower around, so he started shopping for one he could ride. When he learned he would have to spend about $6,000 for the machine he wanted, he decided to build his own. So what if he was 83?

For his trouble, the retired farmer recently received a patent for his mower, which uses a series of belts rather than an expensive hydrostat transmission with pumps and fluids.

Unruh is part of a strong tradition of inventing in Kansas and other Midwestern states. He’s among those whose creative energies would seem more likely to be stifled by their environment--dusty, remote towns far from the intellectual bustle of both coasts.

But the Midwest is fertile soil for new ideas. Inventors like Unruh grew up around tractors, combines and other machinery that they stripped apart and reassembled. Tight budgets and the distance from town forced them to solve their own mechanical problems.

The quality of inventions from farm states has impressed Jerry Udell, executive director of the Center for Business/Economic Development at Southwest Missouri State University. “There’s a tradition in the Plains states: If you have a problem, take care of it,” said Udell, whose Springfield, Mo.-based center evaluates products for inventors.

He said the quality of inventions from Kansas and Texas is especially high because the states have well-organized groups that help inventors. “When inventors have a source of help they get farther than they would when they’re muddling along on their own,” Udell said.

Clayton Williamson founded the Kansas Assn. of Inventors in 1986 and runs the group out of his garage in Hoisington. The association has about 780 members nationwide, half from Kansas. The group helps inventors find patent attorneys, conduct patent searches and find manufacturers, among other things.

Williamson has his own theory on why Kansas is a good place for inventors: People in farm states have plenty of time to think about solving problems. “We have a large farm population, and people spend hour after hour sitting on a tractor or combine with nothing to do but think,” Williamson said.

In 1971, Williamson received a patent for a trailer that attached to a half-ton pickup and allowed farmers to haul up to 250 bushels of grain. The trailer saved farmers from hiring trucks to transport their harvest. Unfortunately, the product never caught on.

“I was damn good at building,” Williamson said, “but I was damn poor at selling.”

Perhaps the state’s most famous inventor is Jack St. Clair Kilby, who invented the microchip while working for Texas Instruments in 1958. He was introduced to electronics through amateur radio, a boyhood hobby that helped him connect with the bigger world. He developed an interest in engineering by tagging along with his father on trips around the state for the power company his father ran.

For some inventors, finding investors and manufacturers is the hardest part of turning an idea into a product that sells.

Abilene inventor Jack Talbert, 30, has met mostly frustration in trying to interest major auto makers and the Department of Energy in a device he says boosts a car’s fuel efficiency by 300%.

Talbert said the small device, which attaches to a car’s fuel line and intake manifold, changes gasoline from a liquid to a gas. The fuel burns more efficiently in a gaseous state, Talbert said.

Before anyone will take the invention seriously, he said, he has to fund an independent study of the product--an expense he can’t afford. “The Department of Energy was interested as long as I used their research group, which charged a $12,500 research-testing fee,” Talbert said.

The setbacks don’t seem to discourage Talbert. He said he has several other projects in the works, including electric engines that don’t require charges; recycling centers that will make landfills obsolete; and air conditioners that don’t need harmful chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs.

Although Talbert has no prospects for any of these projects, he keeps plugging along, hoping that investors will appear someday.