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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "+//ISBN 0-9673008-1-9//DTD OEB 1.0 Document//EN"
+  "http://openebook.org/dtds/oeb-1.0/oebdoc1.dtd">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/x-oeb1-document; charset=utf-8" />
+<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/x-oeb1-css" href="DrBillBio.css" />
+<title>Bill Wattenburg’s Background: Patents</title>
+</head>
+
+<body>
+
+<h1>Patents and Inventions</h1>
+
+<p>Wattenburg holds patents on ideas as diverse as computer design, medical diagnostic
+instruments, power line communication systems, tennis training devices for handicapped people,
+movable traffic barriers for multi-lane highways, and home alarm systems. Asked which one he was
+most proud of, he singled out the home alarm systems he invented in 1964 when he was a young
+professor at U.C. Berkeley. This invention (patent 3,460,121, Signaling and Communication
+System, 1965) has saved thousands of lives over the last twenty years. Hundreds of thousands of
+home fire and smoke alarm systems based on his patent were installed in homes in the U.S.,
+Canada, and Europe.</p>
+
+<p>He holds the original patent on the use of existing electrical house wiring as a means for
+communicating alarm signals from sensors, such as smoke detectors, to receivers placed
+elsewhere in the building. His inexpensive design was the first that eliminated the need for
+separate wiring to connect multiple alarm devices to remote receivers far away in the same
+building or even outside the building on the same power line.</p>
+
+<p>His home and building alarm systems were originally marketed by the Heath Company
+(Heathkit) in Benton Harbor, Michigan. They were able to sell smoke and fire alarm systems to
+protect all areas of a home for less than $100. The technology in his original patent is now used
+by many companies all over the world for a wide variety or electronic and alarm devices that plug
+into power receptacles and use the power lines to communicate electrical signals. He also
+invented one of the first inexpensive smoke alarms for homes which was installed in hundreds of
+thousands of homes throughout the U.S. beginning in 1967. His two inventions allowed several
+hundred thousand homeowners to have reliable fire and smoke alarm systems that would
+otherwise have been too expensive by the old procedure of installing special wiring for an alarm
+system.</p>
+
+<p>Since this was his first patent, we asked him what it was like and how did he come up with
+the idea. He said that a friend of his was going to have to pay over twenty thousand dollars to
+have a standard fire alarm system put in a warehouse that he owned. Wattenburg said that he
+asked his friend if he could have half that much if he could find a cheaper way than having to put
+special wiring in the whole building. He shrugged his shoulders and told us: “Well anyway, I
+needed some money for more important experiments that I wanted to do about that time. I had
+no choice.”</p>
+
+<p>We asked him if it made a lot of money. He answered: “Oh yes, about twenty times what
+I needed in those days. It carried me over until I got some really expensive ideas.”</p>
+
+</body>
+</html>