Fun_People Archive
15 Jul
R.I.P. - Lorne Welch

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 98 22:25:19 -0700
To: Fun_People
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Subject: R.I.P. - Lorne Welch

X-Lib-of-Cong-ISSN: 1098-7649
Forwarded-by: "pardo@cs.washington.edu" <pardo@cs.washington.edu>
From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)

    If you are a baby-boomer guy in America, then much like me, one of your
favorite assigned reading books in high school and movie was the "Great
Escape".  Last month, papers reported that Lorne Welch, designer of the
ventilation system for the tunnels used in the prison breakouts, died.  Even
more inventive than the ventilation system, was an escape invention he
helped design at the Colditz prison, which had been created to hold
incorrigible escape artists.  There, he and others, constructed a
full-sized, two man 32-foot wingspan glider made of bed slats covered with
millet-treated sleeping-bag cloth, which was to be launched by a catapult
powered by the five-floor drop of a concrete-filled bathtub.  Some inventing
heros never got patents or royalties.

                              ====================
Greg Aharonian
Internet Patent News Service

© 1998 Peter Langston