Many discoveries surround the unfolding of the human mind to observation. Some relate to organic function, some to thought, will, and personality. Several pieces of knowledge, and some serendipity, provided the idea here - printboards.

Because of the creative nature of my work, and daily observation of creative clients with whom I work, I regard a recording whiteboard (printboard; thermally printing, dry-erase board) as a million dollar idea to anyone who owns one. It provides several invaluable benefits. 

First, it saves everyone time. Have you ever considered the very real cost of ten people (or two) waiting for a total of 10 to 30 minutes during a meeting while the contents of a whiteboard are copies before each erasure? Or, who copies the board after a meeting?

Second, it promotes creativity, by minimizing interruptions of creative mental processes. Hit the print button and move on. The figure is there to see from now on. One need not feat running out of board space, either; just relax and think.

Third, it promotes creativity by supporting drawing. Rather than forcing speaking or writing. Creativity can be shackled by forcing translation of ideas into words at the very time of creation oro interactive, joint creativity.

Fourth, it can easily provide a dated, signed copy of everything done on it. Ideas are not lost, and evidence of invention is simple. The very real legal cost of proving what the printboard could have, will likely be a hundred times the cost of the printboard. That is just for that one issue, in one case.

Fifth, regular communication is often much faster and clearer using pictures than words. Painting a picture with words is possible. It often takes more work and time than a sketch to communicate the same information.

Yes, we still talk, but not as a low-bandwidth means to creativity. Talking is used to describe concepts already illustrated, to clarify and explain.

I discussed these ideas with a manager in a client software company. He knew exactly what they meant. Our discussion consolidated and reinforced his own observations. He ordered a large, electronic whiteboard that very day. His programmers and engineers were ecstatic. They told me so. He may be a visionary.

In developing a counter measure launcher for use in a submarine, our engineers had developed a sophisticated mechanical launcher. The mechanical launcher created no gas or exhaust bubbles, created very little noise, required no chemical motors, explosions, or the like, and was designed to launch a small counter measure device out through a penetration in the hull of a submarine into the surrounding open sea. I came into the project late, assigned by my manager to assist in developing a computer model for performance of the counter measure launcher.

By the time I was involved, prototypes had been constructed from initial designs, and simulated launches had been tested. However, no computerized analysis or modeling had been performed. Whatever analysis occurred was done one equation at a time, based on a set of assumptions.

Working with basic principles, I developed a system of equations I believed represented the physical events controlling the launcher. The equations reflected the behavior of each key piece. I used the manufacturing drawings to determine the particular shapes, sizes, weights, forces and so forth of all the components acting in the launcher.

When I began exercising the model, running the computer to calculate and chart out the simulated launch of a counter measure by this launching device, I was surprised and disappointed. According to my computer, the miniature torpedo projectile initially accelerated, then speed leveled off as acceleration tapered off. After power to the projectile ended, according to the computer, the projectile reversed direction. It was sucked back into the tube inside the submarine. Of course the tube would be sealed against any water going back into the submarine, but the projectile was sucked back through the penetration, coming to rest inside the tube from which it had been launched. It went nowhere !

I scratched my head and went back through all my code with a fine toothed comb. I went through all of my assumptions. I went through all of my equations. I went through all of my data. I could not match the performance that the prototype had achieved in the test.

The testing data indicated that the projectile should have come up to speed, launched out of the tube and proceeded into the open water. My computer model predicted that the counter measure immediately returned back into the launch tube as soon as the power source was terminated. I could find no errors. I came up with a theory that explained by model, but the data were otherwise. What was I missing?

I interviewed engineers who worked on the prototype. To my surprise and consternation, one said that the velocity and position shown by my computer model were actually the same behavior the launcher system originally exhibited during the initial testing. He said that before the “stand pipe” was connected, that is exactly how the device behaved.

When I inquired about the stand pipe he said that because the counter measure device kept being sucked back into launch tube, the engineers connected a stand pipe to the back of the launcher tube, opposite the countermeasure exit. The stand pipe let the launcher draw in ambient air into the back of the launcher tube, replacing water pushed out with the projectile (counter measure) device.

I pointed out that a submarine at strategic depths was not capable of opening a stand pipe through the hull to draw in atmospheric air to backfill behind the launched counter measure module. Once the tube was sealed, no additional water or air was available to draw in behind the counter measure.

What my model had demonstrated was the absolute reality. The mechanical launch mechanism was producing so much force behind the counter measure module that it actually forced the counter measure projectile out the tube like a piston. The launcher was creating a vacuum bubble behind the counter measure due to the inability of water to pass around the nose of the projectile to refill or re-flood the tube behind it as it moved out during launch. Therefore, the vacuum bubble, once it was no longer being driven by the force of the launcher, immediately collapsed back into itself. As the bubble collapsed, the shrinking volume behind it sucked the projectile like a piston back into the tube.

The engineers who added the stand pipe had never considered that they had added a physical component to the system that would be impossible to provide in the actual strategic submarine. They had physically modeled a scenario that could never be reality.

In dealing with factors that must be considered, remember that they may affect our designs positively or negatively. Factors are realities. If we believe they are obstacles, we must find a way to remove them or avoid them. If we believe they are opportunities or benefits, we want to find a way to cause them to benefit us.

Factors include issues, but the word “issues” tends to be thought of as a negative. Issues are often those circumstances we would like to change, and must somehow resolve. However, “factors” is a broader class. Factors will include all the realities (opportunities and obstacles) of all types along our path that will eventually be navigated. That path through them becomes our strategy. Failing to accurately perceive and deal with all significant factors will lead to a strategy that is impossible of performance.

Likewise, ships and submarines have been illustrated in movies wherein they seek to evade detection by the weaponry of enemy craft. We have a submarine diving deep to escape depth charges dropped over the side of a destroyer. Likewise, we see imagery of submarines changing course dramatically in order to maneuver faster than an attacking destroyer is capable of responding. Likewise, we see stories of boats and ships equipped with machinery that supports evasion of detection by silencing motors, silencing the propellor screws, and so forth.

The task at hand was “counter measure launchers”. Torpedoes may be placed into a large empty tube at the front or rear of a submarine. The tube is sealed off and flooded. The torpedo is started and swims out of the tube. The torpedo travels under its own power out of the tube toward a target. Counter measures may likewise be placed in a much smaller tube. The penetration (opening) through the hull of a submarine for a torpedo may be a couple of feet in diameter. By contrast, counter measures are often sent out through a penetration of only five or even three inches.

Counter measures have various responsibilities. For example, some devices are sensors detecting conditions and contacted by telemetry devices to send back signals showing surface conditions, depth monitoring information, and so forth. Likewise, counter measures may send out electronic information or dis-information to deceive torpedoes, detection equipment, and the like from ships and aircraft seeking to attack a submarine.

Don was responsible for obtaining a development contract for a counter measure launcher suitable for installation on a submarine. Don got along well with the program manager who was a civil servant for the Navy. Under the contract we were working on, we were obligated to deliver certain prototypes, tests, and reports on performance. Don also had in mind several “whiz-bang” developments he wanted to present to the “customer”.

What Don did not understand is that we had to meet the contract objectives first. He kept insisting that he was tight with the program manager from the Navy, and that the program manager wanted him to do the “whiz-bang” add ons. Nevertheless, I understood that meeting the contract objectives was a government contract requirement. All the extra “whiz-bang” features might be of benefit, but did not themselves meet the basic, simpler, contract requirements. They were all optional after meeting contract requirements. Thus, when Don began directing the team toward meeting the “whiz-bang” requirements at the expense of contract requirements, I was considerably concerned.

Sure enough, the day finally came when the program manager was transferred from the Navy office to a new post. The new program manager was not chummy with Don. That manager invited Don to a review to discuss the milestones under the contract. Instead of finding himself performing pet projects of interest to the project manager, Don found himself out of compliance and behind schedule on his contract performance. The contract was closed out. No further work was forthcoming, and the working relationship with that Navy laboratory was destroyed.

The counter measures project may not have been a favorite of the new program manager. There may have been nothing Don could have done. However, by not meeting the contract objectives, Don was out of compliance, and had no justification for the continuation of the contract or for any follow-on contracts. Not withstanding some projects can be somewhat political, there is no substitute for meeting the contract objectives.

Having a local military installation nearby, we periodically hear news of misconduct such as military and civilian personnel selling equipment or stealing equipment for their own use. I learned the story of one soldier who was smart enough to figure out how to steal a rocket motor from an installation.

He was not smart enough to calculate the physics of its use. He perceived that he would be able to make his automobile perform some feats of speed otherwise unattainable if he were to mount a bracket under his automobile to use the motor of a small rocket.

Again, he was bright enough to design a bracket to hold the rocket. He was not trained well enough to know how to calculate the physics of specific impulse, thrust, and the burning time of the rocket.

He figured out how to mount and ignite the rocket and set about on his project. The military officer who described the scene told me that the path of the car proceeded down a paved road. Clearly the rocket motor burned very powerfully and exceeded the speed that the driver of the car could negotiate. By the end of the ride, the car had left with the tires skidded to shreds along a large extent of the path, the tires burning up. Meanwhile, the brakes on the vehicle had been completely burned up. The vehicle eventually became airborne. The car had achieved such speed that it had been launched off the road destroying the car, the driver, and the future of an errant soldier.

People are fascinated with the concept of super powers. Connecting a rocket to an automobile is hardly a super power. Yet the management and handling of that power is terrifying. True, cartoons show all kinds of clap-trap and humorous concoctions of devices. However, those are cartoons. The actual equipment is very real, is governed by very real laws of physics, and is not handled except on principles of engineering appropriate for the task. Why people long for super powers when they are so incapable of handling the limited power already available to them is beyond me. Clearly, we do not understand all consequences that would result if we had the power to change many of our mundane circumstances.

If you have ever had occasion to service a common, household, washing machine, you have seen a comparatively small electric motor that drives the mechanical motion of the tub and agitator. On an advanced torpedo, we were working with a motor of similar but security-classified design, and security-classified performance. Suffice it to say that a motor about the size of a washing machine electric motor was turning out the kind of horsepower automotive engines produce. Meanwhile, an electric battery was designed to literally consume itself during the tactical operation time designed for this torpedo.

The premise of the advanced torpedo was a helicopter launch. The chopper, from the deck of a ship, could navigate through air much faster than a ship through water. With appropriate sonar and other gear, shipboard and airborne target detection equipment would identify a threat water craft, such as a submarine. A helicopter would be launched to pursue. Eventually the helicopter would drop an advanced torpedo into the ocean in the vicinity of the targeted threat.

The torpedo would do a short loop as it scanned, acquiring the target, and would then race toward the target at an unprecedented speed to deliver a “shaped charge” warhead into the hull. This was not the technology of “Run Silent, Run Deep.” Here the ship was no longer a gun; the submarine was no longer an aiming platform for precision aiming of the torpedo. In this case, the torpedo was a “fire-and-forget” self-guiding, seeker and destroyer.

On one occasion a test motor was installed in a test fixture, a tank in a laboratory at the facility developing the motor and power system. However, someone had not secured the bracketing hardware. Again, this was no toy. This was a full-sized, tactically capable, motor section for a very powerful and fast torpedo. When the test device (torpedo motor section) was initiated, it came to life in a spectacular way, shooting forward through the tank instead of churning water past its stationary test-fixture position.

Freed from its brackets, it actually traveled with tremendous speed and power. The torpedo engine section and power module together raced to the end of the tank and plowed right through the barrier, launching through the wall at the end of the laboratory.

Much like the checks and balances we talk about in government and other organizations, a tremendous amount of power, unleashed, can do a lot of destruction. Whether kept in check by one’s own personal values and administrative limits, or by those of others, power must be harnessed to be useful. Unharnessed , it is typically useless and destructive.

I recall being a comparatively younger engineer and reporting to Howard on the hydrodynamics of a towed array-sonar system. At first I was taken aback by his blunt, confrontational style of conversation. Nevertheless, I realized that I was the expert on the topic he was inquiring into. Accordingly, I responded to his questions, and came back at him with justifications for my approach. Howard immediately became content with that aspect of the project, realizing that it was on solid technical ground. His technical concerns had already been addressed in the performance factors analyzed.

I have realized since that facts are facts. One cannot avoid them. Often they are in the past or otherwise unchangeable. As patent attorneys, we deal with a broad range of inventors and technologists. We also work with a curious set of non-technical judges, attorneys, and others. Still, facts are facts. Facts are not as easily proved to people who are not trained in the laws of physics. However, once they see facts clearly, most people, probably even the overwhelming majority, want to deal with them rationally and abide by the truth.

One can see that the entire boat is itself like a very large gun, with the torpedo as the projectile. The crew must identify a target, position the boat, and load and launch the projectile (torpedo) as efficiently and effectively as possible. The unreasoning precision and speed required by the captain are at first considered overly demanding by the crew.

However, over time they come to realize that their lives are in the balance. That speed, in combination with that precision is required to survive as they approach their mission in the “Bongo Straits”, a shipping lane where allied ships are meeting inordinate attacks.

Ultimately the submarine crew finds out the nature of their enemy, and it is not what they supposed. The speed and precision of their drills are not a whit in excess of the actual needs. Many survive, but not unscathed.

A sense of entitlement leads to failure and destruction. Reality will not be throttled back when we whine about unfairness. Nature is absolute. Physics yields the same result every time for the same conditions. Even human nature has a degree of predictability. Nothing and no one can guarantee entitlements. Perhaps only a fool or a charlatan relies on them or promises them.

First, one can bore it into ceding control. Second, one can relax it by exposure to relaxing activities such as camping, backpacking, hiking, boating or other activities. Three, one may engage in some collateral, creative activities such as music, painting, or the like. These collateral activities although directed to music, art, painting, drawings, or the like are also intense, consuming and actually boring in their own right.

Thus the logical side of the brain that insists on order, simplicity (yes simplicity!) and such accoutrements to survive, cedes control to the creative side of the brain which can then handle the nearly infinite levels of complexity and frustration.

It is also important to load the brain with problem. I have found that gathering up information, studying the laws, rules, principles, and other governing parameters, as well as applying the same to solve the issues at hand is a very important, albeit frustrating, exercise.

Thereafter, engaging in any exercise that will foster the creative portion of the brain taking control of the problem will result in a successful transition in the mind. Solutions often do not come quickly. Many times, solutions to complex problems come weeks later. I have found it not uncommon to be almost finished with writing a patent when my mind comes up with several new and clever approaches. The mind creates these out of its background thinking. They usually are elegant, innovative, and utterly superior to what I was thinking before.

It is my observation that the creative portion of our brains can handle, tolerate, and thrive in nearly infinite levels of complexity. By contrast, the logical portion of the brain passes judgment on creative solutions, and pronounces them simple enough to execute, self-consistent, and within the capabilities of the linear, limited, logical brain to fulfill. Thus, elegant solutions do not appear to originate in logic, but to originate in creativity. Upon analysis, they are deemed elegant by the linear, limited, left side of the brain.

Most of the tasks of business are not an automatic turning of a crank to output a predictable, almost immutable result as an output from a hopper full of standard inputs. Rather, priorities must be established, influences of various factors must be considered, outcomes must be evaluated and analyzed, data must be accumulated and reduced, and judgment must be exercised.

Producing parts by the millions from a stamping machine is reasonable in mass production. Some things are more routine than others. Nevertheless, in your life and its legal consequences, even determining an appropriate solution is a decision that cannot be bypassed. Even if execution were a standard task, determining what standard tasks should be executed is still another decision entirely.

The idea persists among some that a lawyer’s opinion is like a box of generic cornflakes on a shelf, wrapped in a label. The box can effortlessly be taken from the shelf and delivered across a counter. Such an attitude is utter nonsense. As well an individual might go to an engineer and ask for a blueprint, any blueprint off a shelf, and proceed to build any building to that blueprint. What if that blueprint is a fast food restaurant, and one needs a business high rise tower? What if that blueprint is a sewage treatment plant and one needs a restaurant?

One reason licensed professionals exist as doctors, attorneys, CPA’s, engineers, and the like is because they have learned to use a set of tools to gather ambiguous information, evaluate it, and establish probabilities of risk and reward. Their solutions will obtain results within a certain probability. Engineers may be the most fortunate in predicting their results with the most accuracy. Nevertheless, doctors have historical probabilities they can rely on for outcomes. CPA’s likewise understand the probabilities and the absolutes within their profession. Attorneys, often times have “black letter” law to rely upon. In other aspects, they have only probabilities with associated risks and rewards. Those must be navigated by a client, according to their appetite for risk and reward.

In summary, well established, predictable, routine tasks having a known output can provide many consumer products at inexpensive prices. That is not the model for unique, unpredictable, uncertain situations. A first step toward accurately assessing risk and reward is to see facts, and to see those facts clearly.

For one thing, we can typically tolerate that which we understand. We appreciate those who seem to understand us. Moreover, we typically respect that which we understand well. Also, we appreciate that person who assists or benefits us in our time of stress. Negative feelings from being under that stress, and the turmoil involved, create an unpleasant memory and feeling. However, the “go to guy” who has consistently delivered solutions is someone we value and still want to deal with.

So the solution is not to criticize all persons of a particular class, in general. It is to find the person that will hear us out and accommodate our concerns. That one becomes our attorney, our congressmen, our spouse, our car dealer. By the same token, that listening ear and understanding voice should never be taken for granted.