Trailing Edge

Sounding an Alarm in the Sky

  • March 1999
  • By Technology Review

A "ridiculously simple" device keeps airplanes aloft.

   

Airplanes are largely the toys or transporters of the middle and upper classes. But one man's childhood of poverty paved the way for a clever gadget that helps pilots keep their planes in the air.

Born in New York in 1918, Leonard M. Greene was the youngest in a family of five caught in the post-World War I depression. Living on $20 a month, the family had no money for toys, so a 5-year-old Greene began to invent his own playthings. He rejuvenated spent batteries in salt water, built a lighted wagon, salvaged a sewing-machine motor-all with a "trash-can set" of a children's encyclopedia for reference and inspiration.

 

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