OCR Text |
Show 2 SALT , FCCRUAHY, 172 5 iockh vmmo Gmtoost by R. Goldberger SALT LAKE CITY When his parents took him to see the Utah Inventors Exposition in Salt Lake, City, little Nick Zuzuclies had high hopes of lunching 'with Gyro Gearloose, but to his dismay, he took home part of an invention with him in the way of tearful metal splinters redevice. leased from a new-fangl- ed There are many success stories here, said Charles R. Gibbs, argument, on the technology of ' cleaning draperies. States Mountain director of The I dont care who you are, Ive Inventors Exposition, as he point- cleaned drapes for thirty years. ed to the multiplicity of man and Strange words to hear at an invenmachine, each moving in an al- tors fair, but inventors are somemost perpetual line throughout what strange themselves. To wash the exposition hosted in Salt or to dry, that is the rub, argued Lakes famous Salt Palace. Halbert C. Stewart, while Dirk Young Nick might now have; Baker, representing Sunshine second thoughts about entering Cleaners, championed the dry that real world where even Gyro cleaning of drapes. The argument' Gearloose would fear to tread, ended abruptly with Mr. Stewbut for others, the exposition was arts comment, I would not have a trip into the magical realm of my socks dry cleaned as they Rube Goldberg. smell better when washed. He should have played Jump-aroSpeaking of smells, Lawrence said Arvil Davis, who Boyer of Colorado had an invencaught the audible plight of tion that hastened the end of young Mr. Zuzuclies. Davis, who floating garbage. Sharleen Christhails from Blackfoot, Idaho, and ensen felt that a garbage can with in his young eighties coaxed his teeth had merits. The exposition saw John Olgrandchild Becky Sue to once demonstrate of sen the demonstrate how to tear it joy again more than down without tearing it up, and jumparooing. Nothing an inner tube around a pole, it Utahna Young from Bountiful was in fact Becky Sue who indemonstrated her husbands a as she used the for transistor radio invention, spired to jump on grandaddys favorite reception inside buildings. Dr. chair, making it hard for both John Cook had an interesting in-- , chair and grandaddy. Production vention that consisted of a wall for the time being is limited to bracket to which was attached Arvils back yard, where prospec- soft rubber spheres, the outside of tive customers can try their feet which was covered with rubber at jumparoo. protutions a sensuous looking Bouffanted but beautiful device to ease an aching back. Jeanne Smith admired the water Going away is the best part, Olsen as Bob Lamont Young of commented skeeter, explained Farr to her date the virtues of taking a West, Utah, who was trying snowmobile to sea. Better than a to find two lost children as well fish, added his lovely wife Don- as some aspirin for his wifes na, who couldnt help noticing a headache. If only he had worn a large crowd gathering around. Kool Hat, observed a pretty girl Had Donna looked across the modeling a new type of water aisle, she would have noticed the cooled cap for warm days and hot crowd was intently taking in an tempers. . o, port-a-tenn- lee CDv: Her of llmnta by Richard Menzies On March 11th, 1884, Wallace A. Clay was bom at Promontory Summit, Utah, only a few yards from the spot where the nations first transcontinental railroad was completed just fifteen years earlier. The son of a telegrapher and agent for the Central Pacific, young Wally grew up in the company of frontier railroadmen and coolie section gangs. He learned Morse code like a first language, and from watching passing trains absorbed the principles of steam locomotion with the facility of a mechanical prodigy. When he was only eight, an engineer offered him a ride on a helper engine and then jokingly asked if he wanted to drive. Sure, was the reply, and to the engineer's surprise, young Wally handled the controls like a veteran. Concerned about his sons formal education, Clays father later moved his family to Ogden, where Wallace quickly passed the required courses and qualified as an almost normal schoolboy. At age fourteen, he was still in love with trains, and when his father purchased a health spa in north Ogden, Wallace got a job running n a pusher engine for the Ogden Hot Springs and Sanatorium Railroad. That same year, 1898, he made his debut as a young inventor with no less a device than a perpetual motion machine. Almost perpetual, tlat is, for despite months of careful re-little-know- finement and special lubrication, the wonderful machine kept running down. Not so Wallaces enthusiasm for inventing. The father of numerous patents, Clay early invented an automatic automobile transmission, almost before Ford invented the automobile. A tingle vision three dimensional viewing device brought him twenty-fiv- e thousand dollars, but perhaps his most singular innovation was that of the worlds first drive-i- n movie, which he claims to have invented way back in 1914. With the drive-i-n movie, Clay had his chance to alter the course of social history; his only regret, fifty-eigyears later, is that he didnt know at the time exactly what it was he had invented. ht It all came about when Clay, who incidentally had designed a movie projector, decided to brighten the lives of all the neighborhood kids by opening a show-housAt the time, it cost twenty dollars to rent a film reel, so everyone would chip in a dime or a nickel until the amount was raised. Since money was tight, Clay usually had a large crowd on hand for the Saturday night feature. And since Clay's living room served as the theater, the seating arrangement tended to be intimate, especially during summer months, with limited air circulation and heavy popcorn fumes from Mrs. ClayS kitchen.' Ithap- e. pened on one such night, in a characteristic stroke of imagination, that Clay decided to move everything outside' For a screen. Clay stretched a giant movie promotion poster between two poplar trees, projecting the moving picture on the plain back tide. Chairs and cushions were placed on the lawn, but for additional seating neighbors parked their cars in front of the screen. At the time, Clay owned a huge Mitchell Phaeton touring car, and the rows of tiered seats offered a close approximation of a theater balcony. Unfortunately, it wasnt until many years later, in the early 1940s that Clay hit upon the commercial possibilities of such an arrangement. Eagerly, he began to construct a scale model of the first drive-i- n theater, appropriately to be called The Pioneer. Very much like todays drive-iClays early model also featured an ampitheater for pedestrian movie-goerand a menagerie for the amusement of children. With great care, Clay carved wood miniatures of his and the neighbors cars, slowly filling up the model with tiny cars and trucks. At tiie same time, unknown to Clay, other inventors in New Jersey and California were busy beating the same bush, and so it turned out that Clay barely lost the footrace to the patent office. n, s, Today Wallace Clay is only slightly slowed by age and pursues life with the same inventiveness and unsated curiosity as ever. The lively octagenarian, whose idea of a good time was to rope his eight children behind him and set out for a juant over the Wasatch mountains, still hikes up the mountainside to get a dean drink of water. Secretary of the Ogden Hot Springs Company, each morning he descends to a subterranean mineral bath, there to steep in bliss. Wallace claims it thaws out his 98-degr- brain. KYou know-h- ee e says,-Fve- - come up with some of my best ideas, just sitting here in this tub. A careful diet also helps keep Clay in top shape. He skips condiments and seasoning in food, eats little, and swears to the salubrious effects of peanut butter. In a nearby greenhouse he grows hydroponic tomatoes, using water pumps of his own design. The father of three successful scientists, one of whom helped build a solar recorder that rests today on the moon, Clay is known by, his associates as the Patriarch of Utah Inventors, and among his neighbors as the Sage of Sagebrush Hills. A familiar right to passersby in his striped overalls, Clay still lives, by choice and habit, only a few yards from the railroad tracks. . ADVERTISE IN THE SALT FLAT NEWS CALL 485-210-1 DON W. OHMS Advertising Director |