One of Lake County’s most noted, if not famous, inventors was Elisha Gray of Highland Park, who had the misfortune of getting to the patent office a few hours behind Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 with basically the same invention: the telephone. We all know the result; Bell got the credit, but Gray did well for himself anyway, founding what was to become Western Electric.
Lake County still has its share of inventors. There are the creative geniuses who labor daily behind curtains of secrecy for such companies as Abbott Laboratories and Baxter Healthcare, the pharmaceutical giants. And then there are those who simply had a great idea and are making a go of it on their own.
For example, it should be no surprise in a county named for water that excess liquid can be a problem. Flooding gave rise to two solutions from local thinkers: a superfast sandbagging machine and a backup power supply for sump pumps.
Stacey Kanzler, 38, of Wauconda was watching a televised report on flooding in 1993 when her brainstorm came.
“I was watching them fill sandbags on the news, and I just couldn’t believe that they were filling sandbags by hand, that they didn’t have a machine for that. I envisioned what (a sandbag filler) would look like and how it would work.”
Her 3-year-old Sandbagger Corp. has sold about 100 of her compact-car-sized rectangular hoppers across the country. “My sales are in Louisiana, Florida, California and just a couple in Illinois,” she said. “That’s the strangest part, because Illinois has the most river frontage of any state in the union.”
She made an emergency sale to Lincolnshire last spring, however, when the Des Plaines River again overflowed its banks.
She has two models: a motorized version that can fill 1,600 sandbags an hour. That one sells for $15,000. A slower gravity-operated model sells for $7,000.
Kanzler, a mother of two sons, said she helped her husband, Jim, run an earth-moving business for 18 years before she invented the Sandbagger. Her life hasn’t been the same since.
“My husband says I’ve created a monster,” Kanzler said. “I think to myself: `I could have sat at home and baked cookies. Why did I want to do this?’ “
Now she runs the operation, handling sales and marketing and monitoring production, which is farmed out. In other words, it’s work.
But Kanzler’s enthusiasm is rekindled when positive feedback arrives in testimonials about the Sandbagger, she said. Officials of the West Jefferson Levee District in Marrero, La., wrote to say that her invention increased sandbag-filling production by 500 percent.
The Army’s 1140th Engineer Battalion in Perryville, Mo., wrote that the Sandbagger “could do the work of 40 people with shovels and bags (and) pay for itself with its use in a major flood.”
Flooding also prompted an idea from Alan Schulman, 51, of Highland Park. He formed a company called The Basement Watchdog, which markets and distributes his anti-flooding invention, which is manufactured for him by another company.
“Eight or nine years ago I was a battery distributor,” Schulman said. “I got complaints when people used my boat batteries on their backup sump pumps.”
Because a battery-operated backup system may sit idle for months or years, the battery runs down, he explained. When the pump is needed, there is no power because people forget to check the condition of the battery.
“The question came up,” Schulman recalled: “Is there not a system that would automatically check all these (factors) and sound an alarm?”
The answer at the time was no. So after 2 1/2 years of research, Schulman developed The Basement Watchdog, which consists of a pump that fits into the same hole as the main sump pump and is fitted with a computerized controller about the size of a bread box, complete with colored lights, alarms and a custom battery.
“Our pumps have operated off and on for days,” Schulman said, or they will run continuously for seven hours. If (the battery power) gets down to three hours or less, an alarm sounds.”
Since 1989 Schulman has sold tens of thousands of his three models, ranging from $129 to about $500. Batteries are extra, ranging from $65 to $100.
Not all inventions have to be lifesavers or even property savers. Tom Scarnato, 73, of Barrington simply invented a way to keep a cool head.
Scarnato holds more than 40 job-related patents from his former position as product-development engineer for Navistar, a farm-equipment company in Chicago. After he retired, he came up with some personal patents to help make day-to-day living easier. His favorite is a golf cap that has little moisture-absorbent pads along the band to allow air flow.
“I’ve sort of solved that problem of keeping my head cool,” he said. “My caps are not stained like they used to be.”
Scarnato came up with his cap invention on the golf course. He wears a hat to shield himself from the hot sun, but the band of a normal hat fits snugly against his forehead and doesn’t allow him to perspire.
“A person’s forehead is one of the most temperature-sensitive parts of the body,” he explained. “If you can keep that person’s forehead cool, then they are very comfortable.”
With his cap, four pads of moisture-absorbent sponge material line the inside of the band, leaving spaces for air flow. Unlike some inventors, Scarnato doesn’t envision starting his own company to produce his golf hats. But he is working to get his idea licensed to a manufacturer.
Another problem Scarnato decided to tackle was soda pop that loses its fizz. “Let’s say I didn’t want to consume all of the contents and I decided that I wanted to cap the bottle,” he said. “Later if I went back, the contents would be flat. That’s because the carbonation inside can be lost in the open space (of the bottle).”
So he invented a collapsible container that can be folded down to the level of liquid left inside. There’s no extra space, so the fizz remains.
“I have a patent on it, but my big problem is finding a manufacturer that is willing to make it and place it in the open market,” he said.
Scarnato also came up with a dripless bottle that has a spout shaped like the edge of a spoon so liquid doesn’t run down the side of the bottle.
Many inventions that are being produced may never be seen by most people. Such is the case with Allen Siblik, 48, of Wadsworth, who holds two patents, one for an improved hose tube door for tank trucks and the other for forged nuts for a closing device used on 55-gallon drums. His Hallen Products Ltd. manufactures and distributes both products.
“I’ve always had what I call a gift (to see) a better way of doing something,” Siblik said. “A little later we will have another product that will knock your socks off.”
In development for four years, Hallen’s new product should be unveiled next April, Siblik added.
“I don’t need Space Age ideas,” Siblik said. “There’s enough easy stuff out here . . . to make life a little easier for the ordinary guy who’s busting his butt every day.”
Siblik knows that getting a patent is not like winning the lottery. It’s more like being handed the key to the front door of your own restaurant, for which you have done a location study, obtained financing and laid all the bricks. When you finally turn that key and walk through the door, there’s still a lot of work to do.
Mark Berch, 33, of Deerfield-based Sequel Security Systems Inc., invented the Electronic Cop, an anti-theft device for automobiles that plugs into the fuse box. He and his partner launched Electronic Cop as an install-it-yourself device, and they recently developed another model to market to both new-car and used-car dealers.
His device disables a car’s engine through the fuse box and engages power locks on the doors until it is disarmed with a small remote control.
He came up with the idea after he removed fuses while working on his car one day. Later, when he tried to start the engine and couldn’t, he remembered the fuses and reinstalled them. Varoom! That’s when he got the idea for the Electronic Cop. To date he has sold about 100,000 units, the current model selling for $89.95. The devices are manufactured elsewhere under contract.
Berch said he likes Siblik’s restaurant analogy, but he would go farther.
“I think that for a person who gets a patent, it’s even tougher than the person who opens a restaurant,” Berch said. “At least with a restaurant, you know what you have. When you invent something, you really don’t know what it’s going to do in the marketplace.”
Deerfield patent attorney and engineer Michael McKenna agreed.
“It’s difficult to judge whether a product is going to be successful,” McKenna said. “The product may have substantial merit but still be unsuccessful; it may be a matter of timing or saturation of the market, or it may be the economy.”
Although market research takes time or money, or both, getting a patent for a product that may not sell at all would cost a minimum of $2,500, McKenna said.
Berch lined up financing for his Electronic Cop right from the start.
“The amount of money that it would have taken to do the search and the patent application by the law firm and to start this business up without Harvey Kinzelberg, it would not have been possible,” Berch said. “He had the ability not only to finance it but to be active in the business.”
Kinzelberg is president and CEO of Sequel Capital Corp. and chairman of Elek-Tek, a computer retailer with several stores in the Chicago area.
Berch said that after he and Kinzelberg did extensive projections of all the costs connected with his idea, the reality was shocking.
“It ended up costing five times that,” Berch said. “Without the financing for something like this, it would have been short-lived, kind of an infant-mortality situation.”
More than 90 percent of all patented products die at birth and never get on the market, according to Donald F. Moyer, founder of the Inventors Council in Chicago.
Since 1983 Moyer has been helping inventors by conducting free workshops, currently held at Chicago’s Harold Washington Public Library on the second Saturday of every month. The workshops include calculating the value of an invention, increasing its value, reducing the risk of having an idea stolen, getting professional help at the best price and getting the best patent.
Moyer recommends that inventors do their own market research before they spend money on a patent.
One inventor who went solo in filing her patent application is Roberta Frush, 54, of Winthrop Harbor, a school psychologist in Zion.
In 1990 Frush came up with the Doggie Doorbell Housetraining System, which trains dogs to nudge a row of bells hanging on a doorknob when nature calls.
She said her dogs Sasha and Samantha couldn’t get her attention when they wanted to go outside and often had “accidents” near the back door.
Frush said she did a lot of studying at local libraries and checked out self-help invention books to complete her application. She conducted her own patent search in one day at the Milwaukee Public Library to make sure she was not infringing on another patent.
She also got help from the Chicago office of the Service Corps of Retired Executives and the Center for Economic Development at the College of Lake County.
“I knew nothing about advertising or the legal aspects,” Frush said.
She sold “a couple thousand” of her bells and accompanying training instructions at $24.95 each, Frush said, but she was careful to have her patent application filed first. Her first sales were made at the Lake County Fair and by mail through Dog Fancy magazine.
The components are manufactured elsewhere and assembled at the North Point Achievement Center in Zion.
“The fun is coming up with the idea and refining it until you get it to work, and doing the research,” Frush said. “Marketing and selling take a lot of time.”
And come to think of it, her idea can prevent flooding too.
