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diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BART.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BART.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..48bb9216 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BART.html @@ -0,0 +1,323 @@ +<?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: Fixing BART Safety</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Fixing BART Safety (Bay Area Rapid Transit System)</h1> + +<h2>(1972–1974)</h2> + +<p>Wattenburg’s two-year running battle with the BART agency appears to be the first time +he publicly confronted a government agency as a scientist. We found over fifty-five +press reports with his name involved with this subject during the period 1972 to 1974. Some of +the history we summarize below comes from a U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) internal +report we obtained from a congressional staff member. DOT was evidently funding BART and +concerned about Wattenburg’s highly publicized criticisms of BART management.</p> + +<p>The State of California asked Wattenburg to fix the electronic train control problems that +plagued the new Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART). BART and Westinghouse Corp. +engineers who designed the system insisted that there were no problems and essentially told the +State of California safety officials to go to hell. BART claimed that the state safety officials were +needlessly preventing Bay Area commuters from getting full benefit of the BART system.</p> + +<p>With the encouragement of exasperated state officials, Wattenburg, acting only as a taxpayer, +confronted the local BART managers at their bi-weekly public meetings for two years running +while many of his public predictions of safety problems came true. BART management was +eventually fired, and the State demanded that Wattenburg’s clever design modifications be +installed before the BART system could run full service. The press confirmed that Wattenburg +refused all payment from BART and the State for his efforts.</p> + +<p>During this nationally publicized battle, Wattenburg first described many of his design +improvements for BART to the press and over KGO Radio in terms that the lay public could +understand. It became a popular game for his listeners to know more—and sooner—about BART +design problems than the BART engineers. He generated press headlines the next day for months +on end. His radio shows and the subsequent press stories each week carried his predictions of the +next problem or accident that would occur on BART—and they invariably happened on schedule. +He literally intimidated the incompetent BART management out of office with the power of talk radio.</p> + +<br /> +<p><b>Here is a summary of the sequence of events:</b></p> +<br /> + +<p>BART as an independent agency experienced some early safety problems with a new +electronic train control system built by Westinghouse Corp. One train ran away during trial runs +of the new BART system. BART and Westinghouse engineers insisted that this was a “one in a +hundred-million failure that could never happen again.” BART would not cooperate with state +agencies that wanted to investigate these problems before giving BART approval to operate the +trains.</p> + +<p>The noted California legislative analyst, A. Alan Post, enlisted U. C. Berkeley Professor +Bill Wattenburg to evaluate the design of the BART automated train control system designed by +Westinghouse. Wattenburg subsequently testified at a state senate committee hearing that he had +found some serious design flaws in the Westinghouse design and warned that the system was +unsafe to operate. Westinghouse and BART both protested vehemently that Wattenburg was +unqualified in the field and that he was “just a headline grabbing radio talk-show host and only a +junior faculty member at Berkeley looking to impress his students.”</p> + +<p>Wattenburg was the sole expert witness for the state. Seven senior Westinghouse and +BART executives told the confused state senators that Wattenburg was wrong.</p> + +<p>A flurry of front-page stories report that Wattenburg then responded by offering a list of +the most probable dangerous failures that would occur in the BART system that could lead to +collisions between high-speed trains. He even estimated the time periods for when these failures +would likely occur. BART and Westinghouse engineers were furious. They denied that any of +these failures could ever happen. Both BART and Westinghouse threatened to “take legal action +against Wattenburg if he persisted in making inflammatory statements that destroyed the public’s +confidence in the BART system.”</p> + +<p>Wattenburg’s answer to the BART threats was to give a quote to Herb Caen, the most +widely read columnist on the west coast. The item appeared the next day in the San Francisco +Chronicle. Wattenburg said that if the BART train control system was not fixed, it would be “the +world’s most expensive, computer-controlled, track-mounted pinball machine.” The battle lines +were drawn. Bay Area readers who were riding BART were shocked by the front-page stories +that appeared the next day.</p> + +<p>The first of Wattenburg’s predictions actually occurred the following week as the +California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) inspectors were monitoring the BART operation. +They discovered that trains disappeared at certain times from the master control panel. Central +controllers didn’t know where some trains were on the tracks for several minutes at a time. This +meant that the automated train control system could be telling one train to speed right into +another train parked ahead—a train that it didn’t know about. This is the most dangerous +situation that can happen on any railroad.</p> + +<p>Naturally, the PUC and the press swarmed all over Wattenburg to explain why he was able +to predict that this would happen. He told them he could only show them with “a little +experiment”, and that BART would have to cooperate to let him demonstrate the cause of the +problem. BART objected. The PUC threatened to shut BART down completely unless BART +could identify the problem or prove it was corrected immediately. BART allowed Wattenburg to do +his experiment.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg led everyone to a section of unused BART track early on a foggy morning. +He pointed to the rusty surface on the normally shiny track. He motioned for a waiting train to +move forward. He told a PUC inspector to call his colleagues waiting at BART central. +Wattenburg said: “I’ll bet they can’t see that train right now.” The reporters watched the PUC +inspector get the word from BART central and then nod that Wattenburg was right.</p> + +<p>Next, Wattenburg ordered the train to run back and forth over this stretch of track several +times. He announced: “Now they can see the train.” The PUC inspector on the portable phone +confirmed that he was right again. Then Wattenburg gave them the answer and how he was able +to predict the problem.</p> + +<p>He explained that he had first noticed that the Westinghouse designers had used very low-voltage (less than a volt) to shunt a current across the rails through the steel wheels and axle of a +train. This shunt signal is what tells central control that a train is at a given location. Standard +train control systems use a much higher voltage, like 15 volts. He explained how this low-voltage +scheme probably worked very well in the nice, clean Westinghouse factory where they tested their +new design. But it doesn’t rain inside the factory. When it rains, or there is heavy fog, the shiny +steel rails take on a thin layer of rust very quickly. The rusty surface has a much higher electrical +resistance that clean rails. The low voltage cannot drive a current through the rusty surface on +the rails. Hence, there is no signal of where the train is on the tracks.</p> + +<p>Then, according to the press reports, he made another seemingly arrogant prediction. He +told them that a train would only disappear when:</p> + +<ol> + <li>The track had not been used for several hours during rain or heavy fog, and</li> + <li>The missing train would be the first or second train to use the track after the + unused period during which the track had been exposed to rain or fog.</li> +</ol> + +<p>“Other than that,” he said, “the BART system was marginally safe and +riders shouldn’t worry.”</p> + +<p>The PUC inspectors rushed to check their records of past missing trains. BART public +relations issued a press release saying that Wattenburg was trying to “dazzle the press with +scientific hocus-pocus.” The Bay Area papers all included the BART accusation in their stories.</p> + +<p>The PUC confirmed that Wattenburg was right two days later. Trains had only disappeared on the BART tracks in the early mornings after it had rained or been very foggy the +night before, and it was almost always the first or second train over the tracks. But, there was one +case in which a third train had been missing for short intervals as well.</p> + +<p>BART public relations next tried to suggest that everything that Wattenburg said shouldn’t +be believed because he had not been accurate about how many trains were required to clean the +tracks so that BART could run safely. When the press asked Wattenburg for his comments on this, +he said: “Well, I guess I screwed up on that third train. I’ll have to take back what I said. The +system is not as safe as I thought it was.”</p> + +<p>BART soon announced that it had solved the missing train problem by installing special +“scrubbers” on its trains. (The scrubbers were nothing more than pieces of metal dragged along +the track to scrape off the rust.) BART would run special “pilot” trains every morning to make sure +the tracks were clean before passenger trains moved onto the tracks. Their press release stated +that no one could have predicted this problem because “the special rails that they had ordered for +this futuristic system had never before been tested.”</p> + +<p>Wattenburg countered with his usual stinging sarcasm: “This is really a futuristic system, +alright. I wonder if anyone ever reminded them that in the eighteen hundreds the cities used to +hire boys to walk along behind horse-drawn carriages to scoop up the horse manure so it wouldn’t +blow in the citizens’ faces?”</p> + +<p>He then announced his next challenge. He said that he had had his electrical engineering +students at CAL design a simple battery-powered electronic package that any BART rider could +carry along with him on the train to make sure that the train control system knew where the train +was at all times. “I mean these are my undergraduate students. They don’t know enough yet to +design anything fancy. So, it’s cheap and it works great. Just ask the PUC inspectors. I’ll bet they +were wondering why train number 102 never disappeared this morning even though it rained last +night.”</p> + +<p>A reporter hinted that one of Wattenburg’s students had been on that train. The story +reported that the device his students had built was nothing more than a radio frequency noise +generator that messed up the normal train control signals in the track immediately below the train +wherever it went. This caused the train control error detection circuits to report a problem at +that location. This created a moving problem indicator with the train number on it to appear on +the central control screen. Hence, the error indicator told central control where the train was at +all times.</p> + +<p>Westinghouse engineers immediately complained that this scheme would disable their +error detection circuits and endanger the whole BART system. Wattenburg countered with: +“Why in the hell do you need error detection electronics when you know the whole damn system +is broken down all the time anyway without even asking? Why not put these unemployed circuits +to work so that we can get some people to work for a change?”</p> + +<p>The PUC wanted to test the device immediately. BART threatened to have Wattenburg +arrested if he took any electronic device on a train that interfered with the train control system. +Wattenburg offered the press an estimate of how long it would be before the BART track +scrubbers would cut so much metal off the rails that they would have to be replaced. A later story +suggested that the PUC did test Wattenburg’s device and BART agreed to use it so long as the +PUC ordered BART to do so and Wattenburg agreed to say no more about it. However, +Westinghouse notified BART that all its warranties would be voided if any foreign device was +installed or used without their permission. It’s not clear what happened thereafter, but the missing +train problem did suddenly disappear—at least from the press coverage.</p> + +<p>After this episode, the press evidently began to believe that Wattenburg was for real. The +stories that followed looked into both his background and the qualifications of the Westinghouse +designers.</p> + +<p>A reporter discovered that NASA had hired Wattenburg in 1963 to 1967 to do extensive +design work on the electronic control and computer systems for the Apollo man-to-the moon +project. Westinghouse and BART had earlier claimed that their engineers had worked on the +Apollo project to support their claims to the state senate committee that they were “the world’s +experts on advanced automated control systems of this nature and that no one else was qualified +to evaluate the BART train control design.” Press stories verified that the Westinghouse +engineers who were later assigned to the BART project had actually worked several levels below +Wattenburg’s design responsibility in NASA. (Evidently, Legislative Analyst A. Alan Post had +known this when he first contacted Wattenburg for help.)</p> + +<p>When one irritated reporter asked Wattenburg why he had not told the press for months +about his NASA experience, he answered: “You should have asked me. I noticed that you print +every handout that the BART bullshitters give you, so why should I bother to tell you the truth.” +This newspaper later ran an editorial which indirectly apologized to Wattenburg for some of the +snide stories about him that their reporter had filed after he first challenged BART before the +state senate committee.</p> + +<p>After the dramatic sequence of events described above, the PUC refused permission for +BART to operate their trains at designed speeds until all of Wattenburg’s technical objections +were investigated. More state senate hearings were called. Wattenburg appeared at the next +hearing with alarming data from some more experiments that he had done on his own. BART and +Westinghouse again protested that he had interfered without their permission. Wattenburg +described how he had given his engineering students who ride BART some simple instruments +that measured BART train control signals without interfering with the operation in any way. +Then he described several more design changes that should be made to the train control +electronics to make the system safer.</p> + +<p>At this dramatic hearing, he gave his new design documents to the state senate committee +and the Legislative Analyst and asked them to hand these documents to the irate BART General +Manager, Billy Stokes, who was sitting in the hearing room with a group of Westinghouse +executives. One story reported that Wattenburg turned to Billy Stokes and announced: “Here’s a +present for you. Be my guest. That’ll fix the hundred million dollar screw job you guys have +given the taxpayers.”</p> + +<p>The public standoff escalated when the BART District Directors were told by their +General Manager that Wattenburg was part of a political conspiracy to discredit the District and +this was the only reason he was trying to embarrass the BART and Westinghouse engineers. This +made headlines. Wattenburg appeared at the next public BART board meeting and requested to +speak as a taxpayer. One group of concerned BART directors demanded that he be allowed to +speak at all meetings as a public representative and rebut anything he felt was not accurate in what +the general manager and the BART engineers were telling the directors.</p> + +<p>The state officials could not direct BART to take any specific action to correct the +alleged problems, but through the California PUC they could and did withhold permission for +BART to operate their trains at full speed until the safety problems were resolved. A majority of +the BART directors refused to allow Wattenburg to test his ideas or order Westinghouse to make +the simple changes that Wattenburg had specified. The argument was that this would violate the +warranties in the Westinghouse contract and open up BART to lawsuits from both Westinghouse +and the taxpayers. Almost weekly front-page stories in the San Francisco Chronicle and other Bay +Area papers detail how BART was forced to operate their new trains under severe restrictions +that guaranteed that trains could not collide if the train control system malfunctioned.</p> + +<p>More serious problems and near accidents did occur over the next six months. These were +witnessed by PUC inspectors stationed in BART central control. Some of these were on the list +that Wattenburg had originally given to the state senate committee and A. Alan Post. Wattenburg +appeared at every BART board meeting and battled with the BART and Westinghouse engineers. +Wattenburg challenged the credentials of three successive chief engineers at BART. All of them +left or were fired. These confrontations became the media event of the week for the press as the +controversy raged.</p> + +<p>The matter finally came to a head when BART ran out of money and had to appeal to the +state for financial assistance to operate the system. The State Senate Transportation +Committee +headed by Senator Alfred Alquist demanded that Billy Stokes be fired as a condition for approval +of any state funds. Wattenburg was in attendance. A story reports that he stood up and +announced to Mr. Stokes: “I told you that the truth would catch up with you, you lying bastard.” +(Wattenburg had earlier called Stokes a liar at several public BART meetings when Stokes and his +chief engineers gave engineering reports to the board members that Wattenburg proved were false +or incomplete. Stokes had been forced to apologize for these +“oversights”. The chief engineers were replaced shortly thereafter.)</p> + +<p>The state legislature finally passed a law that required elected board members for BART +as a condition for state financial assistance. All the Billy Stokes supporters on the BART board +were replaced in the election. Wattenburg refused requests that he run for the board or agree to be +the new general manager (two papers editorialized that he should serve). The new board +immediately ordered BART engineers to incorporate Wattenburg’s design changes into the train +control system. Wattenburg recommended that BART hire the University of California Lawrence +Berkeley Laboratory to supervise the design modifications. BART hired Hewlett-Packard +Corporation to build and install the equipment.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg issued a press release in which he stated that he had done all he could and that +he wanted nothing more to do with BART other than ride the trains when they could “safely +move faster than he could walk.”</p> + +<p>Hewlett-Packard and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory were paid over two million dollars +for their work over the next two years which consisted mostly of installing improved versions of +the train control design changes that Wattenburg had originally specified. There were press +reports that Hewlett Packard engineers later insisted that all the new design changes were their +own ideas and that this created some friction between them and Lawrence Berkeley scientists who +claimed otherwise. Wattenburg refused to get into the argument or comment to the press. His +only comment was that he “never wanted to hear about BART again.”</p> + +<p>The new BART board filed suit against Westinghouse after the design changes proved to +solve the missing train problem and other safety problems. The PUC allowed them to run trains at +design speeds for the first time in five years. Wattenburg agreed to testify for BART if requested. +Westinghouse settled the suit for a reported sixteen million dollars.</p> + +<p>When the press inquired whether Wattenburg had received any payment for his services +over two years, he gave them the following statement: “Hell, if I had even asked for a free ride on +their silly trains somebody would have claimed that I did it just to get a handout. The taxpayers of +the State of California gave me a great education. All I want is for them to know that I paid them +back in full.”</p> + +<p>Some BART directors suggested offering Wattenburg $50,000 for his services after his +solution to the BART train control problem was adopted. He declined, saying that he might have +to criticize them again in the future if they didn’t do their job.</p> + +<p>The Department of Transportation internal report points out that another real beneficiary of +Wattenburg’s efforts is the Washington D.C. Metro system. All of Wattenburg’s design +improvements were incorporated into the Metro system before it was opened. As a consequence, +the Metro did not suffer the long delays and safety problems that BART suffered. The author of +this report notes the curious fact that Westinghouse had to have been making some of these +changes in the Metro equipment they delivered to Washington even while they were still insisting +that Wattenburg’s changes were not necessary in the BART system. Otherwise, there would have +been long delays in starting operation in Washington. The writer suggests that DOT might +consider some sort of recognition to Wattenburg for his contribution to the mass transit industry +in the U.S.</p> + +<p>It is not surprising that such recognition never came. We talked to a long-time BART +employee who was on the scene at the time all this happened. He said that the new general +manager selected for BART was none other than the former Secretary of Transportation who had +given some support to Billy Stokes during his battles with Wattenburg, and that Billy Stokes +himself moved upstairs as the new Director of the Urban Mass Transit Association +(UMTA) representing such companies as Westinghouse. The UMTA and DOT officials work very closely +together.</p> + +<p>During our visits to this KGO radio show in October 1990, several callers to his show +wanted to talk about the most recent problems with the BART system. He absolutely refused to +discuss the subject on his show. He said to one caller, “I’ll tell you what though, why don’t you +ask me about my first wife?”</p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BART.html.annot b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BART.html.annot new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BART.html.annot diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BART.html.i b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BART.html.i new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ea893f60 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BART.html.i @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +15 pages +size 400 562 +length 22832 +408 2 11 body html +0 +1503 2 30 body html +34 +2772 2 49 body html +136 +4665 2 75 body html +34 +6253 2 97 body html +34 +7896 2 117 body html +34 +9056 2 137 body html +136 +10974 2 163 body html +34 +11997 2 177 body html +238 +13838 2 201 body html +170 +15608 2 225 body html +85 +17088 2 243 body html +136 +18478 2 262 body html +221 +20407 2 288 body html +102 +21936 2 309 body html +119 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BentSub.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BentSub.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..26fd4925 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BentSub.html @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +<?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: Downhole Drillbit</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Downhole Drillbit</h1> + +<h2>(1990’s)</h2> + +<p>We were told by some Livermore engineers in November 1992 that Bill Wattenburg has +been working on a device for drilling oil wells that could save enormous amounts of money and +improve the safety of drilling if he is successful. Neither he nor they would tell us what it was. +They would only tell us that everyone else has failed for fifty years to achieve this “driller’s +dream”. They said that some company with a lot of money bet Wattenburg that it couldn’t be +done. They said that his first experiment failed. Because of that alone, they figured he would +have it solved before long. <q>That’s how he gets warmed up.</q></p> + +<hr /> + +<p><i>[Note: Bill did succeed in this task, and has since received two patents +on the resulting invention—PKS]</i></p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BentSub.html.annot b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BentSub.html.annot new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BentSub.html.annot diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BentSub.html.index b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BentSub.html.index new file mode 100644 index 00000000..46de60f1 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BentSub.html.index @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +1 pages +size 400 562 +length 1245 +407 2 11 body html +0 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BlueWater.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BlueWater.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..438e87b0 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/BlueWater.html @@ -0,0 +1,293 @@ +<?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: Blue Water Contamination</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Blue Water (Copper) Contamination in Homes</h1> + +<h2>(1991)</h2> + +<p>This is the latest of Wattenburg’s bizarre escapades reported in press stories all over the +country. We contacted many of the people who were on the scene to get interesting parts of +this story that were not covered by the press.</p> + +<p>Hundreds of expensive new homes in the affluent area of Danville, California, had suffered +serious copper contamination (blue water) for several years. Lawsuits were filed in all directions +because homeowners had to use bottled water, children in schools had become sick, and home +values were dropping. Neither the water company (EBMUD) nor the home builders would take +responsibility. Both had spent over $5,000,000 on water corrosion experts and lawyers who were +investigating the problem.</p> + +<p>A professor of civil engineering who was on the project at times has told us that he could +show us hundreds of technical reports on blue water from around the world in the last fifty years +where corrosion experts have been unable to completely explain the cause of “blue water”. He +told us: “In many cases the problem just mysteriously goes away for reasons that ‘corrosion +experts’ cannot adequately explain, although most take credit for doing something the solved their +local problem. However, each one claims he found a different solution that does not seem to +work everywhere else.”</p> + +<p>We called Wattenburg to tell us why and how he solved the problem in Danville. He +cautioned us immediately that he did not completely solve the problem, in spite of what the +newspaper and technical journals reported. He said: “It is one thing to isolate a problem and then +make it go away. I do that with obnoxious people all the time. But it is another thing to explain +why they came around in the first place.” (This may have been a message to us, but he softened +up after that.)</p> + +<br /> +<p><b>Here is his story:</b></p> +<br /> + +<p>He said he got involved when some Danville home owners called him on his KGO radio +show in May 1991. They pleaded with him to help them because they were losing their life +savings in the value of their homes. They described the blue water problem to him on the air. +They told him that there was conclusive proof that the contamination was copper hydroxide. +They told him that the only copper pipes were the water pipes in their homes. He says he “shot +his mouth off and told them that good scientists should have no problem finding the problem very +quickly if they did the proper experiments.”</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“They asked me how much I thought it should cost. I stupidly said that it shouldn’t cost +more than a few thousand dollars for a good scientist to make the right measurements. I told +them to call the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory which is right near them. The next day, +I got a call from the Livermore Lab saying they were getting calls from people pleading with them +to help, and the newspapers were asking them why the laboratory didn’t help solve this serious +problem. Livermore said they couldn’t get involved because there was litigation going on and the +water company was a public agency that had not requested their services. I got the picture, but I +was stuck. I went out there the next day to take a look.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>A civil engineering professor who was working on the problem as a consultant to the +homebuilders told us the story we summarize below:</p> + +<p>He says that Wattenburg quickly made a startling discovery right in the faces of the water +corrosion experts who had been working on the problem for a year. They had been studying +only the corrosion characteristics of the water in the house pipes. They had expensive water +chemistry testing laboratories set up in the garages of two blue water homes supplied by the +builders. Wattenburg walked out of one of these laboratories while they were still telling him +about all their experiments. He got some things out of his car. Then he stuck some small copper +rods into the ground at various points around the house and measured the voltages between these +points with a little voltmeter that he carried in his pocket. They thought he was a little strange.</p> + +<p>He found electrical voltages of about half a volt in the ground all around the homes and +between the ground and the water pipes in the homes. “He did this within about twenty minutes +after he arrived. The gadgets he had in the trunk of his car looked like an electronics laboratory. +He then told us to go to the hardware store and buy all the small copper wire we could find, I +remember the driver asking him how much? He calmly said: ‘Oh, about a mile of it, if you can.’ It +was rather amazing what we did all the rest of that day.”</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Wattenburg made some more measurements around and inside several more blue water +houses. Then he told all the corrosion consultants who were gathered around that the problem +probably wasn’t in the houses or in their copper water pipes. The real cause was most +likely coming from the power lines or EBMUD water mains somehow. At that point, most of them +walked away shaking their heads. Wattenburg told me that he was surprised that these guys were +corrosion experts. He said that the corrosion was most likely happening because there was +electrochemistry going on in the copper pipes. He said that they obviously hadn’t worried about +what was producing the ‘electro’ part of the electrochemistry they thought they were studying. +It made sense to me after I thought about it a while. …</p> + +<p>“I remember one of them asking him what degrees or credentials he had as a corrosion +engineer. I’ll never forget what Wattenburg said to the guy. He asked the guy how long he had +been working on this problem. This very huffy guy said he had been working on the project for a +year. Wattenburg told him: ‘Where I went to school. we don’t give degrees to engineers who +can’t solve a problem in a year.’</p> + +<p>“Fortunately, I knew who Wattenburg was. I remembered what he had done to a lot of +big-time engineers on the BART project many years earlier. I found it best to just help him and +see what would happen. …</p> + +<p>“The water company, EBMUD, claimed that Wattenburg’s theory was nonsense. The +water mains leading into the houses were plastic lines. They said these lines couldn’t possibly +feed electrical current into the house water pipes. Wattenburg asked them to explain the electrical +voltages he found in the ground and between the houses. They pointed the finger at the power +company, PG&E. I remember Wattenburg smiling as he told us: ‘Well, that will get PG&E out +here to help us in a hurry, won’t it?’</p> + +<p>“The next thing he did was cut all the electrical power off from the test houses and measure +the voltages again. The voltages in the ground and on the house water pipes were still there. I +saw him go down the street opening manholes to the water mains all over the place while +suspicious EBMUD employees got on their mobile phones and called their office.</p> + +<p>“Over the next few weeks, Wattenburg used his long copper wires to measure voltages +along the large steel water mains which were buried deep underground. The water company had +told him that there was no way they would dig up the lines at various points so he could measure +them. So, he figured out a very clever way that no one had thought about before. The water +mains were protected by devices called sacrificial anodes which are connected to the lines below +ground. But electrical wires attached to these devices are brought up to the ground at various +places along the lines, about every half mile. This is why he wanted the mile of copper wire. We +stretched the copper wire between the anode stations and he measured the voltage from one to +the next. In this way, he mapped the voltages on the steel water mains all the way to the water +storage tanks where the lines began up on the hills.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The home builders assigned one of their construction superintendents to help Wattenburg. +Here is what he observed: </p> + +<blockquote> + <p>“The Power company, PG&E, was real happy to help him. He was getting them off the + hook for ten million dollars of liability. I remember one day he calmly told them to cut the power + off of a whole area in Danville because he had to be sure that these water main voltages were not + coming from the PG&E power lines. I couldn’t believe it when a whole goddamn shopping center + went dead right before my eyes about fifteen minutes later. … He only wanted it off for a few + minutes. … Hell, they’d have put me in jail if I had even cut their power accidentally.</p> + + <p>“It really became a circus after that. The water company, EBMUD, realized what he was + doing. They refused to give him permission to measure the voltages on their water mains at + places where their lines were behind fences and near their pumping plants. Wattenburg just told + us to get more copper wire. PG&E sent out two more line crews that very day and they helped + stretch the copper wires around these areas for a mile or more while EBMUD employees stood + guard at their gates to make sure he didn’t trespass on their property. It was like two armies + facing off each other on the battle line. It was ludicrous. These are two companies that are + supposed to be public utilities. …</p> + + <p>“Wattenburg’s answer was to call the newspapers and tell them to come out and watch + what was happening. The reporters showed up in droves. It was on the TV news for several + days. Finally, the general manager of EBMUD threw in the towel and asked to see Wattenburg. + Wattenburg told him to come out where he was working. They had a private conversation while + Wattenburg continued to make measurements along the water mains. EBMUD announced that + they were going to join the investigation the next day. The EBMUD gates and all the pumping + plants were opened for Wattenburg.</p> + + <p>“A PG&E engineer told me that an hour after Wattenburg walked into the first EBMUD + pumping plant, I think it was called the New Scenic East Plant, he found a major problem that + EBMUD engineers had told the newspapers just couldn’t possibly happen. I remember this + big-shot from EBMUD saying on television that all the EBMUD water mains and their pumping plants + were completely isolated from the power lines. He said that they had double-checked that there + was no electricity getting into their water mains or plants.</p> + + <p>“Wattenburg got PG&E to cut off the power to the plant for a few minutes and he did + some measurements that even the PG&E engineers didn’t understand. They objected as well as + the EBMUD engineers. However, the PG&E manager ordered them to do what Wattenburg + wanted. I think the PG&E manager’s name was Walt Musso from Walnut Creek. Wattenburg + then showed EBMUD that they had a major electrical short across the water mains leading into + and out of the plant.</p> + + <p>“This hit the newspapers the next day. The EBMUD public relations people were eating + crow. EBMUD construction crews were working for the next month digging enormous holes + around the plant to find and fix the short in the water mains that were supposed to be isolated + from the PG&E lines.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>He told us a funny story that happened next:</p> + +<blockquote> + <p>“Wattenburg casually told the EBMUD construction foreman one day that they should not do something he had observed them doing + with a big backhoe near this enormous water main that led into the pumping plant. The foreman + said that he had been operating backhoes for twenty years and he had never broken a water line + yet. He said that he was going to dig out all the dirt around the large main line for about a + hundred feet. He bragged that they wouldn’t even have to turn off the water pressure in the line + and interrupt service to their customers while they were doing it. Wattenburg told them that that + was what he was afraid of. Wattenburg did a quick calculation of the pressure forces in the + curved pipe they were exposing. The foreman laughed and said that EBMUD engineers had done + their own calculations, or something to that effect.</p> + + <p>“Wattenburg told the PG&E crews working with us that they should get the hell out there + for a while. About an hour later, while we were having coffee at the Blackhawk Cafe, the water + main burst and it looked like Niagara Falls had appeared on the hillside above Danville. + Wattenburg didn’t even look surprised when we hollered at him to come see what had happened. + He didn’t even look up from the newspaper he was reading…”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>A PG&E lineman remembered:</p> + +<blockquote> + <p>“Wattenburg did most of his work at night for the next two months. He would show up + sometimes at two in the morning and work until dawn. PG&E would send my crew out to help + him whenever he wanted us.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Finally, Wattenburg put the word out that he had located the source of the blue water +problem. There was a big news conference. Wattenburg showed the press some maps of how he +had traced the electrical voltages all over the maze of water mains in the +Danville–Blackhawk area. The voltages all followed one new water main that EBMUD had installed a few years +earlier, the New Scenic Line, I believe. This was one of the new super-insulated water mains that +was wrapped with a thick plastic coating so that no electrical current from the ground could get +into the line and corrode it. Wattenburg explained that this also turned this new water main into +a very good insulated electrical power line that could carry small electrical currents for long +distances without the current being dissipated into the ground. Older water mains that are not so +well insulated quickly lose any current that gets onto them.</p> + +<p>Walt Musso, the PG&E manager who was assigned to work with Wattenburg tells about +the dramatic meeting that he attended with Wattenburg the day before the press conference:</p> +<p>They met the engineering and operations managers from EBMUD at a PG&E office in +Dublin. Wattenburg had asked them to bring their maps of the entire EBMUD water system in +the Danville area with them. The EBMUD engineering manager had been very defiant toward +Wattenburg all along. He had been insisting to the press that Wattenburg was just on a wild +goose chase and a publicity stunt.</p> + +<p>Musso remembered that Wattenburg began the meeting with a short discussion of what +happened to all the top BART engineers years earlier when they had refused to tell the truth about +technical problems in the BART system that endangered many people. Then he pushed a map +across the table to the EBMUD managers. This map showed that the voltages he had measured +all centered around one new water main that Wattenburg had tracked for so many days and +nights. Wattenburg let them study the map for a while. The EBMUD engineering manager said +this was “all a lot of bullshit.”</p> + +<p>“Wattenburg turned to the EBMUD operations manager and told him very sternly: +‘You know damn well that all the blue water houses are served by just this one new water main, don’t +you?’ The engineering manager got up and walked out. The others wouldn’t answer for several +minutes. Wattenburg confronted the operations manager: ‘You’ve known this all along, haven’t +you? God-damn-it, I’m giving you a chance to keep your asses out of a lot of trouble. Now make +it quick, or I’m going to turn all of my maps and yours over to the district attorney. I notice on +your new water service maps that you carefully didn’t show which water mains all the blue water +houses are connected to, but you show the connections for all the other houses in the +area.’</p> + +<p>“The operations manager nodded sheepishly and admitted that Wattenburg was right. That +is all he would say for a few minutes. We just sat there looking at each other in disbelief. Finally, +Wattenburg demanded: ‘Is it true that you have known all along that the blue water houses are all +fed from this one new line?’ One EBMUD guy tried to say that the new and old water mains are +crisscrossed all over the area such that one house may be connected to an old line and the house +next door is connected to the new line. Wattenburg snapped: ‘Yes, and that is why some of the +poor bastards put their life savings into a house they thought was safe because the neighbor didn’t +have blue water. They had no way of knowing that their dream house was connected to your +new water main. How long have you known this?’</p> + +<p>“The operations manager pulled out a map that they had not shown us at the beginning of +the meeting. He said they had just made this map ‘a few weeks ago.’ Wattenburg looked at it. It +confirmed what he had discovered in all his work. This crude EBMUD map showed that all the +blue water houses were connected to the New Scenic East Line. Wattenburg told them he hoped +that they could convince a judge that they had just discovered this and hadn’t known it for all the +time that EBMUD had been blaming the home builders and letting homeowners suffer and spend +million of dollars… .</p> + +<p>“Wattenburg asked them why they hadn’t told anybody about this. The operations manager +said that EBMUD engineers and attorneys didn’t consider it significant because it didn’t prove +what was really causing the blue water. It just localized where it was occurring. They still insisted +that the only copper was in the copper water pipes in the homes and that the EBMUD water lines +couldn’t be the problem no matter how the homes were hooked up. Wattenburg told them that +they weren’t sending the copper into the houses. EBMUD’s new water main was clearly sending +something worse that was making the copper come off the water pipes in the blue water houses. +‘And you guys had better find out what it is. I’m sure as hell not going to do it for +you.’</p> + +<p>“The EBMUD engineering manager came back to the meeting and didn’t say a word. He +picked up their maps and they left. Wattenburg commented as we left: ‘You want to bet that +even the FBI won’t be able to find that one map anywhere tomorrow?’ We went over to a +nearby bar for lunch. He curled up in his car afterwards and went to sleep.”</p> + +<p>Wattenburg quit the investigation after the newspapers announced his discovery of the +“Blue Water Pipeline” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 19, 1991, page A17). He said that he +had done his part and he didn’t want to get involved in litigation. EBMUD’s New Scenic East +Line became known as the ’Blue Water Line’ after that. EBMUD didn’t deny it any longer. They +organized a multi-million dollar task force to solve the problem. Later press reports say that they +and the homebuilders are working together to try to cure the problem with the water line.</p> + +<p>Our professor contact says that he is surprised that Wattenburg didn’t continue with his +research and publish the results of his investigation in the technical journals somewhere. He +points out that blue water is still a serious problem around the world. He feels that maybe +Wattenburg didn’t want to be associated with “corrosion engineers” whom he often described as +“guess-work artists”. He says that Wattenburg was the only one who wasn’t paid by one side or +the other in the controversy. He said he once asked Wattenburg whom he was working for and +Wattenburg answered: “Me. That way I don’t have to go to court. This is what happens to you +when you shoot your mouth off at the wrong time.”</p> + +</body> +</html>
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+<dc:Title>Bill Wattenburg’s Background</dc:Title>
+<dc:Type>Biography</dc:Type>
+<dc:Identifier scheme="none">DrBillBackground</dc:Identifier>
+<dc:Subject>background report</dc:Subject>
+<dc:Publisher>PetesGuide.com</dc:Publisher>
+<dc:Contributor role="edt">Peter K. Sheerin</dc:Contributor>
+<dc:Date event="creation">1992</dc:Date>
+<dc:Date event="electronic publication">2000/09</dc:Date>
+<dc:Rights>This work was provided to me by a government agency.</dc:Rights>
+<dc:Language>en-us</dc:Language>
+<dc:Coverage>Biographical background on Dr. Bill Wattenburg</dc:Coverage>
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+<reference type="other.ms-firstpage" title="First Page" href="TitlePage.html" />
+<reference type="foreword" title="Foreword" href="foreword.html" />
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\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/ExecutiveSummary.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/ExecutiveSummary.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6e3d219b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/ExecutiveSummary.html @@ -0,0 +1,97 @@ +<?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: Executive Summary</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Executive Summary</h1> + +<p>Bill Wattenburg is one of the most interesting, if not bizarre, media +personalities we have ever researched. Most professional broadcasters would be +jealous of the high celebrity Bill Wattenburg has gained on the West Coast. He +is a ruggedly handsome and athletic man with a brilliant mind. He has both a +voice and a presence on the air that is the envy of many in radio and +television. He switches easily between serious intellectual and humorous +entertainer as the occasion demands. <i>But he seems to deal with his media role +as if it is just a pleasant hobby.</i> An ABC executive in San Francisco told us +that he will only do radio and television shows on weekends. This position may +be explained by his other activities and accomplishments. He is a well-known +scientist of some notoriety in the public eye. He presently holds the title of +research scientist at California State University, Chico, where he works during +the week.</p> + +<p>A news organization may have some difficulty in forcing him to confine +himself to reporting the news instead of trying to make the news. He has +displayed considerable news-making desires in his very public dealings with +government agencies. This should be of concern to a network news organization +that must protect confidential relationships with high-level contacts in the +government. This observation is supported by his confrontational tactics +reported in the section <a href="confrontations.html">Public Confrontations</a>.</p> + +<p>We do believe, however, that he would be a very effective and popular +network news commentator or show host. Both his credibility and integrity appear +to be very high.</p> + +<p>Our contacts in the media have told us that since 1988 he has turned down +numerous offers to host major radio and television shows in Los Angeles and New +York as well as San Francisco. One LA radio station executive said that he +offered Wattenburg three times his KGO Radio salary and he turned it down. +Contacts at a major movie studio say he also passed up another movie role that was +offered after his <a href="movies.html">appearance in two Clint Eastwood movies in 1988 and +1989</a>, saying that he did not have the time.</p> + +<p>Our general impression is that it may be difficult to convince him to expand +his media role because of his interests in his scientific work and other +activities. From what we were able to observe of his considerable financial +resources, it would appear that money will not be a big factor in what he +chooses to do in the near future.</p> + +<h2>Our Recommendation for Executive Negotiations with Bill Wattenburg</h2> + +<p>For those who do not have time to read this lengthy report in full, we +suggest three sections in particular that we believe provide the best analysis +of his talents, his personality, and his style in dealing with professional and +business associates. These sections are: <a href="TalkRadio.html">Talk Radio</a>, +<a href="colleague.html">A Colleague’s Observations</a>, +and the <a href="BlueWater.html">Blue Water project</a>. We suggest careful review of his other +projects on the <a href="creditcards.html">Magnetic Credit Cards</a> and +<a href="GoldMine.html">the Gold Mine</a> before any contract negotiations of +a legal nature with him.</p> + +<p>An astute reviewer of this report who specializes in resolving executive +conflicts in major corporations has offered this observation:</p> + +<blockquote>“His behavior appears to be iconoclastic in his dealings with other +professionals in their own fields if they challenge him in some arrogant or pompous +manner. This behavior pattern and an obsessive desire to maintain independence +seem to be common elements in all his public exploits. He seems to enjoy his +accomplishments in very private ways and is not driven by a desire for career +advancement or immediate monetary rewards. However, this may be deceiving. He +has obviously achieved great notoriety and professional respect in his own ways. +This may have been financially rewarding beyond what most professionals might +achieve in a conventional manner. In dealing with him an any business or +professional situation, one should be on guard to not unnecessarily challenge +his competitive instincts unless there is a major mutual objective to be +accomplished.”</blockquote> + +<p><b>We strongly recommend that you see him in action <i>when he is live on the +air in the studio</i> before making any appraisal of his media talents. In +private interviews, he is very laid back. He responds with vigor only when you +aggressively challenge him on some subject. Otherwise, he displays very little +of the brilliance and wit that he delivers when he is on the air. We doubt that +he will sell himself in an executive interview. In our interviews with him, he +didn’t mention any of his many exploits detailed herein until we brought up the +subjects and asked him to comment on the press reports and interviews with +others. His attitude seems to be that if you don’t already know something about +him, why should he tell you. He will try to deflect a conversation toward the +interviewer (Who are you? Where are you coming from? What do you like to do?) +This is complimentary, but often evasive.</b></p> + +</body> +</html>
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He declined to volunteer anything about this period during our two interviews with him in +1990. However, we picked up some information on this period during our 1992 interview with +him at his ranch in Plumas County, California. People in the town told us that he was working on, +of all things, a gold mine in 1985. They told us that this venture became the largest industry in +the area for the unemployed loggers and construction workers in Plumas County. We left one of +our staff in the area for a week to learn about this activity. The story we got suggests that +Wattenburg had an almost complete change of lifestyle for these two years, as well as a purpose +in what he was doing. He returned to the profession that he learned from his father when he was +young, that is, operating heavy construction equipment. He took on another strange challenge at +the same time.</p> + +<p>The following individuals can confirm the events that we summarize below: Clifford Gibbs was the +general manager on the job for Sunbelt. Earl Arlin, was the Sunbelt chief engineer. James Moak and +Bill Pinkston were the job supervisors that Wattenburg hired. Attorney John Burghardt, of the law +firm of Marshall, Burghardt & Kelleher, Chico, California, was Wattenburg’s attorney who set +up Wattenburg’s mining company called Wattexco and handled his later negotiations with Sunbelt +Mining Company.</p> + +<br /> +<p><b>Here is the story, with references to the individuals who confirmed it for us:</b></p> +<br /> + +<p>The logging and lumbering industry in Plumas County began to fade away in the early +eighties. Many skilled equipment operators and mechanics in the area were unemployed. Bill +Wattenburg’s classmates from high school and his father’s old friends were among them. They +had asked Bill Wattenburg to help them find some new industry for the town.</p> + +<p>The Sunbelt Mining Company from New Mexico was planning to open a large gold mine +near Bill’s ranch. It was called the Calgom Mine. Sunbelt had discovered an +enormous body of low-grade gold ore under a mountain top at five thousand feet elevation. Sunbelt was going to +put the work of extracting and transporting the gold ore out to bid to several large mining +construction companies from Nevada and Utah. These companies typically brought in their own +employees and their own equipment for such jobs. The idle construction equipment owned by the +local people would not have been used by an outside mining contractor. The locals had no way +of bidding for the job because this required posting a $2,000,000 performance bond and +substantial operating capital that they did not have available.</p> + +<p>They appealed to Bill Wattenburg to get the job for them somehow when he was vacationing +at his ranch in December 1984. Wattenburg studied the specifications for the job and +the manner in which the standard mining companies normally did such work. He concluded that +there was a much less expensive way to do the job using a lot of the surplus logging equipment in +the area. But, Sunbelt did not believe that this could be done.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. He agreed to a penalty clause in the +contract whereby he would pay Sunbelt for any loss of projected productivity based on the +estimates that Sunbelt had made for the progress that standard mining companies should achieve. +Furthermore, he would start the work immediately that winter (December 1984), whereas the +other mining companies would not start until the snow melted in the spring. Sunbelt agreed to let +him try it.</p> + +<p>The rest appears to be typical Bill Wattenburg. Local workmen and supervisors at the +Calgom mine told us numerous stories of the unorthodox and “absolutely crazy” things that +Wattenburg organized with the local workmen and their equipment that winter.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg used his own bulldozer and personally built a road to the top of the mountain +during the Christmas week of 1984. He then put out the call for all the locals who wanted to go to +work with their equipment, Several workmen told us that they all got a lecture when they first +arrived. Wattenburg told them that they had no damn business even trying to beat the big mining +companies at their own game. But if they wanted to try, he had a plan. He told +them, “Of course, if you don’t think it will work, you can always go back home where it is nice and warm +and slowly go bankrupt.” The workmen told us that everybody stayed.</p> + +<p>The first task was to cut 2,000,000 tons of “overburden” dirt and rock off the top of the +mountain and move it a half mile away where it was dumped into a deep canyon. Overburden is +the dirt and rock on top of the ore body beneath it. The gold ore body was at a depth of a two-hundred +feet below the surface. Mining companies use very large off-highway trucks for this kind of +job where the dirt has to be moved some distance. They dig the dirt with enormous excavators +and load it into the trucks that haul it away. These machines typically cost $200,000 to $400,000 apiece. +The loggers had no such equipment. All they had were medium-sized bulldozers and small loaders.</p> + +<p>They said that Wattenburg told them: “Well, if we can’t haul the damn dirt, I guess we’ll +just have to push it where we want it to go.” The problem was that a bulldozer is only good for +pushing dirt very short distances. The dirt falls away from the bulldozer blade if you try to push a +blade-full of dirt more than a few hundred feet. But Wattenburg showed them how to do it +anyway.</p> + +<p>Here is how one seasoned operator described it: </p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“He dug a big trench starting from the top and all the way down the side of the mountain to the canyon. This trench was about six feet +deep and just the width of a bulldozer blade. We stood around wondering what the hell he was +doing. We thought maybe he was going to run water down this trench to carry the dirt away. +But then he put maybe five or six of us on bulldozers to start pushing dirt on the mountain top +into this trench, up at the top of the trench. Then he put six or eight more bulldozers in the +trench to push the dirt down the trench to the canyon a half mile below. He lined them up one +right after the other in the trench. He had to teach a lot of us how to keep a load of dirt in front +of the bulldozer blade without loosing it all on the way down. You know, his daddy taught him +how to give you a shave with a bulldozer blade if you sit still. … When the dozers reached the +bottom, they just climbed out of the trench and went back up another road to get another load of +dirt at the top. We thought it would be tough trying to push dirt with a dozer down that trench +that far, but it was easy once you got the hang of it. Hell, in a couple of days we were moving +20,000 tons a day. That’s more than you can haul in trucks that cost three times as much to own +and operate. … Some of the guys had dozers that were so old and worn out that they could hardly +climb back up the mountain. It was pathetic. But Bill just told the others guys with new +equipment to give the old boys a push back up the mountain. The old dozers did just as good as +the new ones when they were pushing dirt down the hill. … Bill fired one guy with a new Cat +who was complaining about helping the others. He told this asshole that he could go back home +and wait by the fire for the bank to come and repossess his new bulldozer. … The guy should have +realized that Bill’s father always had to work with beat up old equipment. He never could afford +a new piece of equipment in his life.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The former Sunbelt chief engineer, Earl Arlin, told us that his bosses from Sunbelt +headquarters came out and saw what Wattenburg was doing and got unhappy as hell. He was +moving the dirt with loggers and cheap equipment for less than half the cost that Sunbelt had +estimated it would cost a mining company using regular loaders and big trucks. And they had +agreed to pay Wattenburg what they were going to pay the other contractors. Wattenburg and +the loggers were obviously making a killing.</p> + +<p>Mr. Arlin remembers that the Sunbelt executives called Wattenburg into a meeting where +they tried to get him to modify their contract. Wattenburg asked them what they would be saying +if they had discovered that he was behind on schedule instead of ahead of schedule. Arlin says +that they just looked at him and smiled. They admitted that they would be fining him for lost +productivity. At that, Wattenburg told them that he appreciated honest men and he +would consider reducing the amount they were paying him because he was moving the dirt for much less than +even he thought was possible. He offered to reduce his payments by ten percent. They wanted +him to reduce it by twenty percent. They settled on a fifteen percent reduction. The Sunbelt +executives went home to New Mexico very happy. They told Wattenburg that he could have all +the work he wanted in the future. Mr. Arlin suggests that he knew something was wrong. +Contractors just don’t give up money. They usually sue you for more.</p> + +<p>Mr. Arlin laughed as he told us: “By the next week, Wattenburg’s crazy crew was moving +30,000 tons a day down the mountain, not 20,000! Hell, they were now making more money than +they were before he gave Sunbelt back the fifteen percent reduction. Some of the +poor loggers were making more money in a week than they made all year when they were starving to death +working in the logging woods with their equipment.”</p> + +<p>Wattenburg paid each of the loggers a percentage of the total income he received so that +the more dirt they moved the more money they made. One workman told us that most of them +were fighting over who could work two shifts a day. He said that he made as much as $1000 +dollars a day. He was able to pay off the loan on his bulldozer in two months. He said they were +working in four feet of snow most of the time that winter, and yet they were as happy as a bunch +of kids playing at a ski resort.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg’s job supervisors James Moak and Bill Pinkston told us that the one who was +having the most fun was Bill Wattenburg. “He couldn’t be on the job during the day because he +had to be at the university in Chico during the weekdays, but he came up and worked the +graveyard shift most nights. He loved to get on a big Cat and push dirt. Everybody else got their +asses in gear when he was there. The two daytime shifts had to go like hell to keep up with the +graveyard shift. Chico was only an hour away. Some of the equipment operators lived down +there. They would pick him up at 11pm and get him back to Chico in the morning by 9am. We +had our management meetings with him on weekends.”</p> + +<p>Wattenburg’s crew finished the first phase of the job in April 1985. This was a month +earlier than the other companies could even have started. Apparently, his company, Wattexco, +made so much money that he was able to buy a new fleet of bulldozers and earth movers (called +scrappers) for the second phase of the job.</p> + +<p>The second phase was to start digging the gold ore out of the enormous open pit they had +made at the top of mountain and then transport the ore to the processing plant two miles down +the mountain. His contract with Sunbelt included this work at a predetermined price which, +again, was based on what other mining contractors normally charged. Sunbelt was soon very +unhappy about this, according to those on the scene we talked to.</p> + +<p>Supervisors Moak and Pinkston told us that Wattenburg again figured out a way to do +this next job for about half the estimated costs. Instead of using big trucks to haul the ore down +the mountain, he told them that they were going to use the rubber-tired Cat earthmovers +(scrappers) they already had. Wattenburg told them that this way they wouldn’t have to use +extra loaders to dig the ore and load big haul trucks—and they didn’t have to buy ten of the +$200,000 trucks either. He argued that the scrapers could load themselves with bulldozers +pushing them. Once they were loaded, they could go straight down the road to the plant. The +equipment operators protested that no one in his right mind would do this because these big +earthmovers are not designed to go long distances downhill with a load of fifty tons of dirt. They +don’t have enough brakes to keep from running away. Everyone told him it was suicide.</p> + +<p>They said that Bill Wattenburg got on the first scrapper and showed them how to do it. +They recall that he made all the nervous scrapper operators walk alongside the loaded scrapper +and watch what he was doing as he slowly took it down the hill. An hour later, they were all +going down the mountain in their scrappers with fifty-ton loads.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg’s scheme was something that no decent equipment operator would ever do. +He told them to drag their scrapper blades on the dirt road surface as they went down the +mountain. This would give them the braking power they needed. (The scrapper blade is what +digs the dirt up as a scrapper is being loaded.) Any operator would be fired on a normal +construction job if he ever let his scrapper blade dig into the road he was running over after he +was loaded. This would tear up the road as well as wear out the expensive steel cutting edge on +the scrapper blade.</p> + +<p>But this wasn’t a normal job, Wattenburg told them. Supervisor Moak remembers that +Wattenburg told them: “I am the one who pays for the scrapper blades, and who cares about the +goddamn road! So you cut the surface level of the road down ten feet over the next year? So +what? I could have built that damn dirt road ten feet lower to begin with. When we’re through, +I’ll put it back where it was when we began. You guys just get your asses down that road with +all the ore you can haul, and I’ll worry about the rest.”</p> + +<p>One of Wattenburg’s equipment mechanics told us that he hired two more unemployed +mechanics to work every night to replace the worn-out blades on the scrappers. He said that a +truck load of new scrapper blades worth about ten thousand dollars was delivered to the job each +week. “Normally, you wouldn’t use this many scrapper blades on a job in a year.”</p> + +<p>The Sunbelt manager on the job, Mr.Gibbs, said that he soon figured out what +Wattenburg was doing. The ten thousand dollars worth of scrapper blades each week was only +about one-tenth of the cost of the only other alternative, that is, using conventional haul trucks to +do the job the way that mining contractors would do it. He realized that Wattenburg was making +a killing again. He was probably digging and hauling the ore for about 60 percent of the normal +cost of $1.40 per ton. There was at least 4,000,000 tons of ore to be hauled. Wattenburg was +being paid $1.50 per ton under his contract. That meant that he was going to make about sixty +cents a ton profit instead of the usual ten cents a ton. It wasn’t long before the Sunbelt executives +from headquarters in New Mexico wanted another meeting with Wattenburg.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg agreed to a ten percent reduction in what they were paying him to deliver the +ore. But Wattenburg made them agree to give him the third phase of the job which was to build +the biggest part of the gold processing plant, the buildings and the laboratory. They gave him the +job on a time and materials basis plus ten percent profit because they had learned their lesson with +this guy and they figured that he already knew some way to do this job at a lot less cost. The +local Sunbelt building supervisor objected like hell because he had his own favorite contractor +from New Mexico already lined up to do the job, but the headquarters guys insisted that they had +just cut “a hell of a deal with Wattenburg that would save the company six hundred thousand +dollars.” Arlin told us:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“I knew this guy Wattenburg had something up his sleeve again.”</p> + +<p>“Sure enough, the next week the place looked like a flea market with all the characters +who showed up in beat-up old pickups with a hammer or a saw in their hands. Wattenburg hired +just about every unemployed carpenter and small building contractor in the county. He gave +them all a piece of the action and turned them loose. They had the damn buildings up in about +half of the time we expected. You know, this meant that he got paid for what the contractors +charged to do the job, plus he got a ten percent profit on top of that. But nobody in headquarters +complained. He got the job done for about ten percent less than we expected.</p> + +<p>…</p> + +<p>“Later one of our engineers sat down and figured out how much lumber we paid for on +that building job. It turned that we paid for about twice as much lumber as they used in the +finished buildings! Right then we realized that these hick contractors who built the buildings for +us probably were building something for themselves somewhere else at the same time. Where +else could that much lumber have gone?</p> + +<p>“When we asked Wattenburg about this, he said: ‘I sure as hell don’t need to steal lumber. +But you corporate guys have got to realize that life is pretty rough for these people who have to +make a living up here nowadays. Most of their families never dreamed of having a home. What +are you bitching about? They saved you a lot of money, didn’t they?.’ We dropped the subject.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The Calgom Mine was in full operation by August 1985. They began producing +3,000 to 4,000 ounces of gold a month. Wattenburg was building one of the biggest fleets of dirt moving +equipment anywhere to deliver the ore from the mountain top to the processing plant. He bought +every used D9 Cat bulldozer and Cat 631C scrapper he could find on the west coast, according to +Mr. Al Pissetti, Dillingham Construction Co., Benicia, Ca., and Mr. Roger Ash +of Wershow, Ash and Lewis, Equipment Auctioneers of Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon.</p> + +<p>Mr. Pissetti told us that Wattenburg once called him up in the summer of 1985 and +bought two of Dillingham’s used D9 bulldozers, sight unseen, for $50,000 apiece. But +Wattenburg wanted them delivered to the mine site the next day. Pissetti said he had never heard +of anything like that before. He said that Wattenburg told him on the phone: “I believe you +when you tell me that the bulldozers are in good shape. If you’re lying to me, you’ll find out who +I am quick enough.” Pissetti said that he called the bank and found out that Wattenburg had +already wired the money to the Dillingham account—and the banker told him who Wattenburg +was. He said he found some truckers to haul the bulldozers to Plumas County that afternoon. +(Our staff saw pictures in the bars and restaurants in the area in 1992 which showed +Wattenburg’s enormous fleet of equipment working at the open pit mine in 1985).</p> + +<p>Wattenburg was employing 100 equipment operators by that time to run the equipment +around the clock, seven days a week. He even rented a restaurant to feed them. We were told +that the reason he did that was too encourage the operators to show up on time. Loggers and +construction workers are evidently notorious for having hangovers on Monday mornings. He +gave them free meals if they showed up on time before the shift started. If they were late, they +didn’t get any free meals for a week after that.</p> + +<p>After the mine had been in full operation for only six months, Sunbelt Mining Company +executives decided that it would be to their advantage to buy out Wattenburg. He was making +more money than they were, and they owned the mine.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg gave us permission to talk to his attorney, John Burghardt at the law firm of +Marshall, Burghardt, and Kelleher, Chico, California. Burghardt handled the final negotiations with Sunbelt for him. Burghardt told us that Sunbelt first said that they were +going to get another contractor who could deliver the ore at a lower price. Bill Wattenburg’s +answer was, “be my guest”. Evidently, Sunbelt couldn’t find another contractor at a lower price +than they were paying Wattenburg. Burghardt said that he then realized why Wattenburg had +earlier given them the reduction in price that he, Burghardt, had opposed. He said that +Wattenburg must have known that this would eventually happen and that no one else would be +able to do the job any cheaper. But Wattenburg was still making a good profit. By not being +too greedy, Wattenburg had put Sunbelt in a real bind.</p> + +<p>They negotiated for several months. Wattenburg said that he just wanted to keep on +working because the job was providing employment to so many local workmen. Sunbelt +finally offered to keep most of Wattenburg’s employees if he would sell. Wattenburg agreed to a +deal whereby Sunbelt would buy his company, Wattexco, and as much of his equipment as they +needed to operate the mine, but it would have to be all cash.</p> + +<p>Burghardt told us about the scene when he appeared with Wattenburg at the Sunbelt +office to sign the papers and collect the cashier’s check that Wattenburg had demanded:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“The Sunbelt representative came with several lawyers and accountants in three piece +suits. Wattenburg was in his boots and greasy Levis. At the last minute, the Sunbelt boss +announced that they had thought it over and determined that Wattenburg’s equipment was not +worth what they had earlier agreed upon. He pushed a cashier’s check across the table to +Wattenburg. It was for $200,000 less than what it was supposed to be. But it was still more +money than I had ever seen. My heart started pounding. I nudged Wattenburg to take it, and let’s +get out of there before they change their minds completely. But, Wattenburg just +slid the cashier’s check back across the table and told them that if they were a little short of money, he +might be interested in buying out their interest in the mine. They had a meeting in the next +room for a while and finally came back with another check for the missing $200,000. +Wattenburg handed me the check, we shook hands with them, and he motioned for us to go. +There was no more conversation. That was it—It was all over.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Burghardt told us he was sweating when he left. Wattenburg said to him later:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Don’t feel bad about leaving without sticking around for small talk. Those Wall Street lawyers always +pull that bullshit of bringing two or more checks to a closing to see if they can get an anxious +seller to chicken out at the last minute and take less money. They figure most suckers are so +anxious to get a few million dollars cash in their hands that they will always take a few hundred +thousand less. That way they can go back to headquarters and brag about how much money they +saved the company. But when you call their bluff, they feel sort of stupid on the spot. It’s best +not to rub it in by sticking around too long. You might have to deal with them again someday.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Attorney Burghardt said that this was his trial-by-fire in corporate mergers. Burghardt +admitted that he didn’t realize what Wattenburg really knew about big business until after this was +all over. Much later he learned that “this guy in greasy Levis” had built and sold two high-tech +companies to the Wall Street crowd before he got in the dirt moving business. He said that he +later realized that Wattenburg had been playing a chess game with them all along, but that +Wattenburg was always about three moves ahead of them. “I was his attorney, but he never +really told me what he had up his sleeve.”</p> + +<p>In terms of how much money Wattenburg made, Attorney Burghardt would only volunteer: “He did all right, but he didn’t walk away with what he could have by any means. He +got his capital back with a decent profit and he created thirty million dollars of business in the area +and a lot of jobs. I’m sure he could have made a lot more money doing other things for the time +he put in.”</p> + +<p>Calgom Mine chief engineer Earl Arlin, now retired, was on the job every +day supervising the mining operation. He probably saw more of this story first-hand than anyone. +He was an engineer on major mining jobs for thirty years. His analysis of the scene may be the +best overall:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“I knew who this fellow Wattenburg was. I listened to him on the radio for years. It +was always hard to believe that he was up there running a bulldozer or fixing a piece of broken-down equipment in the middle of the night. It was not +surprising what he did. I knew he wouldn’t do things in ordinary ways. I sort of felt sorry for my own company +every time they negotiated a contract with him.</p> + +<p>…</p> + + <p>“He gave those old loggers their moment of glory and the chance to do one big job. I + think he wanted them to know that they could be somebody … that they could do better than the + big-city contractors with all their new equipment. … He was reliving his childhood. I don’t think it + was just the money. I think he had been dreaming about going back and doing something like + this in the construction business that would have made his father proud.</p> + +<p>…</p> + +<p>“When a man drives his new Mercedes up a dirt road with greasy tools in the back seat, he +is not there because he has to be. … We had calls coming into the office for him all the time from +important people in San Francisco and Hollywood and Washington. He wouldn’t come down off +the mountain to call them back, and he wouldn’t use the portable telephones we gave him +either. … He left a lot of his money on the table to take care of the people who worked with him. In the +deal he made with Sunbelt, they didn’t buy all of his equipment by any means. But he agreed to +leave some of his extra equipment on the job for us to use, I mean big bulldozers and scrappers. +He let us use that equipment for free so long as we employed some of his old-timers from +the area to operate the equipment. They had jobs for the next two years … some of those old +boys were running new bulldozers that they never before in their lives even dreamed of touching +All the next year, he would stop by the job whenever he was in town and just watch his old +crew working on the mountain. He’d climb on a Cat and do a little work while the crew was +having lunch or he’d give some suggestions to the mechanics working on a piece of equipment +that broke down. He never came in the office to tell us how we ought to be running the +operation.</p> + +<p>…</p> + +<p>“We had one real emergency in the winter of 1986. Heavy rains for two weeks almost +washed out our cyanide ponds. The mine would have been out of business if the cyanide had +washed into the river below. Wattenburg showed up with a truckload of big water pumps that +we hadn’t been able to rent from anybody because everybody in northern California was being +flooded. He stayed up there to help us day and night for almost a week. We asked him later +where he found the pumps we needed. He told us that Dillingham Construction Company, the +big contractor in Benicia, owed him a favor. He never sent us a bill.”</p> +</blockquote> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldMine.html.annot b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldMine.html.annot new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldMine.html.annot diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldMine.html.i b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldMine.html.i new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bc7f9689 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldMine.html.i @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +19 pages +size 400 562 +length 27915 +403 2 11 body html +0 +1423 2 28 body html +102 +3201 2 54 body html +0 +4386 2 71 body html +136 +6172 2 95 body html +35 +6172 2 95 body html +595 +8711 2 126 body html +221 +10645 2 151 body html +102 +12119 2 171 body html +136 +13973 2 195 body html +51 +15711 2 217 body html +0 +16511 2 227 body html +262 +18082 2 252 body html +119 +19539 2 270 body html +170 +21599 2 297 body html +0 +22887 2 315 body html +0 +23693 2 327 body html +187 +24997 2 345 body html +249 +24997 2 345 body html +799 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldMine.html.index b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldMine.html.index new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b2dbd99c --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldMine.html.index @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +19 pages +size 400 562 +length 27949 +403 2 11 body html +0 +1423 2 28 body html +102 +3203 2 54 body html +0 +4388 2 71 body html +136 +6182 2 95 body html +35 +6182 2 95 body html +595 +8721 2 126 body html +221 +10655 2 151 body html +102 +12129 2 171 body html +136 +13987 2 195 body html +51 +15729 2 217 body html +0 +16529 2 227 body html +262 +18102 2 252 body html +119 +19559 2 270 body html +170 +21619 2 297 body html +0 +22907 2 315 body html +0 +23713 2 327 body html +187 +25025 2 345 body html +249 +25025 2 345 body html +799 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldenGate.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldenGate.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a424df66 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldenGate.html @@ -0,0 +1,68 @@ +<?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: Golden Gate Bridge Traffic Barrier</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Golden Gate Bridge Traffic Barrier</h1> + +<h2>(1982–1984)</h2> + +<p>Another series of newspaper articles in 1982–1984 describe how Wattenburg did the +“<a href="BART.html">BART story</a>” again on the over-confident Golden Gate Bridge +engineers who insisted that a moveable +anti-collision barrier could not be designed that would fit between the traffic lanes on the bridge +and meet the requirement that it be moved twice each day to allow reallocation of the lanes for +rush hour flow. The Bridge’s private engineering firm was being paid over a million dollars a +year to advise the bridge district. Numerous fatal head-on collisions had made this a very +controversial subject. A frustrated bridge director called on Wattenburg to find a solution. A few +weeks later he came up with a design that stunned the confident engineers—and evidently +fascinated the press and the public because it was so simple.</p> + +<p>His solution was to use sections of large-diameter (24″) round steel pipe which are strung together +on a strong steel cable like a spaghetti necklace. He later proved that the steel pipe is as strong as +conventional concrete lane dividers. The steel pipe can be rolled from lane to lane quite easily to +change traffic flow patterns. Once Wattenburg had proved that the problem could be solved by at +least one inexpensive scheme, two other companies quickly came forth with alternate designs of +their own. Internal politics over where and how money should be spent on bridge improvements +has delayed installation of any of these anti-collision barriers to date. However, other bridges +around the world have installed movable traffic barriers which are renditions of Wattenburg’s +patented design that he offered to give the Golden Gate Bridge District free-of-charge.</p> + +<p>The head of one embarrassed engineering firm working for the bridge district attacked +Wattenburg’s credentials to be doing work for the district without having a license as a +professional engineer (he evidently assumed that Wattenburg must be getting paid). Wattenburg’s +terse response to the press was: “I don’t take public money for exposing high-priced fools who +pretend to be competent engineers.”</p> + +<p>Bill Wattenburg and his son, Eric, who was an engineering student at California State +University, Chico, were issued a patent on their movable pipe barrier design in 1987. His son +had designed the mechanism that automatically rolls the pipe barrier from lane to lane while +keeping it tied down securely to the bridge deck or roadway at all times. Wattenburg said that he +was about to give up on the pipe barrier idea because he hadn’t solved this problem. Eric picked +up the problem one weekend and found a clever solution that made the whole scheme practical. +Eric built a fully operational scale model that he demonstrated to the Golden Gate Bridge +Directors.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg told us that movable pipe barriers are still the cheapest and best traffic barriers +that can be quickly installed around many places that could be attacked by vehicles carrying +bombs or terrorists, such as government buildings, embassies oversees, and troop encampments +in hostile places. “The military will get around to it someday, after we lose another few hundred +of our people.”</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><i>Note: It took until late 1998 before anyone paid serious attention to +Wattenburg’s idea of using the barrier to protect against truck bombs. The San +Francisco Chronicle reported +on the successful testing performed by Lawrence Livermore National Labs (October 8, 1988). +Unfortunately, the device still has not been used to this date.—PKS</i></p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldenGate.html.annot b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldenGate.html.annot new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldenGate.html.annot diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldenGate.html.i b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldenGate.html.i new file mode 100644 index 00000000..826faa1b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/GoldenGate.html.i @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +3 pages +size 400 562 +length 4104 +424 2 11 body html +0 +1348 2 28 body html +136 +3318 2 53 body html +0 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/HelicopterMinesweeper.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/HelicopterMinesweeper.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7c8ec094 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/HelicopterMinesweeper.html @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +<?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: Helicopter Minesweeper</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Helicopters to Clear Minefields</h1> + +<h2>(1990)</h2> + +<p>His most recent invention is a new device for clearing minefields out of war zones during +the Gulf War. He designed a thing called a “chain matrix” which is pulled by a helicopter over the +ground to dig up the mines and explode them without endangering people. The story (San +Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 1991, front page) picked up the human interest side because he +had used a small blacksmith’s shop in a farming town to build the first prototypes and local +farmers to test the devices when major defense contractors would not move fast enough to please +him.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg really didn’t want to talk about it beyond what was disclosed in the many +press stories about his helicopter minesweeper. He told us to contact the Livermore National +Laboratory for anything more we wanted to know. He mentioned that some parts of his design +were now classified and that the full details of the design were not disclosed to the press for +obvious reasons. He did say that the version that was tested at the Yuma Proving Grounds was +“not quite as clumsy and contained things a little more sophisticated than what the newspaper +stories showed.”</p> + +<p>The Livermore Lab spokesperson would not comment beyond the press stories. He did +say that Wattenburg would soon be issued a patent on the unclassified portions of the +minesweeper design. He said that this device also appears to have great application in farming +operations in areas where the ground is very rocky. He said that Livermore engineers were +already in contact with manufacturers of agriculture equipment. He laughed when he told us that +“Wattenburg says that the last thing he ever wants to see again is a farm.”</p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/MeasuringOilTanks.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/MeasuringOilTanks.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..fce323c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/MeasuringOilTanks.html @@ -0,0 +1,76 @@ +<?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: Don’t Call the FBI!</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Don’t Call the FBI!</h1> + +<h2>(1974)</h2> + +<p>This next story amused our staff to no end when they found the first of the newspaper +stories. Wattenburg seemed excited himself when we showed him how widely the story had been +publicized around the world. He said that he hadn’t realized it at the time.</p> + +<p>In 1974, Wattenburg again embarrassed government scientists and bureaucrats alike. He saved +the country millions of dollars during the first oil crisis when he showed that he could measure +how much oil was in oil refinery storage tanks by simply pointing a special infra-red camera at the +tanks from a distance. This story was first reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, February 6, +1974, with the headline: “How to See Inside Their Oil Tanks”.</p> + +<p>During the oil crisis, Energy Department officials announced that they were going to use +a thousand FBI agents to crawl into all the oil tanks in all the refineries of the country to see how +much gas and oil the oil companies were hoarding. Embarrassed officials in Washington quickly +cancelled their plans to use FBI agents after the story of Wattenburg’s feat was carried by the +wire services all over the country.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg treated the viewers of the ABC network to a dramatic film that showed how he +stood back at a distance and measured the oil levels in all the storage tanks at the Richmond, +California, Chevron Oil Co. refinery—without really trying! As his special TV-like camera +scanned the tank farm, the screen showed the surface of each oil tank glowing brightly up to the +liquid level in the tank. The empty upper portion of each tank showed black. The liquid levels of +a hundred oil tanks in the distance could be measured to an accuracy of 5% just by looking at +their images on the camera screen.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg had made the film in a few minutes using a commercially available infra-red TV +camera—from a distance of a mile away! He showed that the government could easily measure +the oil in all the refinery tank farms of the country. He proved that they could do this in a day by +simply flying over the tank farms with military reconnaissance aircraft that carried the same infra-red camera. </p> + +<p>This is the story he gave one reporter at the time:</p> + +<blockquote> + <p>The idea came to him when he remembered that water tanks on the farms near where he + grew up often had a very visible dew line on them early in the morning because the portion of the + tank filled with water stayed at a warmer temperature overnight than the empty upper portion that + was cooled down by the nighttime air temperature. Conversely, the sun warmed the upper + surface more quickly than the lower surface in the afternoon. This meant that the portions of oil + tanks filled with oil would be warmer in the morning and cooler in the evening than the empty + portions which followed the local air temperature. This temperature difference is easily measured + and displayed by infra-red TV cameras of the kind Wattenburg borrowed for his dramatic + experiment (Thermovision by AGA Corporation). This technology was first developed for satellite + reconnaissance of rocket launchings (Wattenburg worked on this as a consultant to Lockheed + Missiles and Space Co. in 1965–1968.)</p> + + <p>The congressional subcommittee that had initially insisted that the Energy Department use + FBI agents later asked Wattenburg to testify at a hearing in Washington. They wanted to + investigate why the Energy Dept. had not thought of his idea. He wrote the committee staff a + widely publicized letter in which he gave them complete instructions on how to do it themselves + and where they could find a suitable infra-red camera in the Pentagon! He suggested that this + would save the taxpayers his airfare—and that “they would really find it a lot more fun to do it + themselves.”</p> + +<p>The subcommittee staff insisted that he appear. Then he wrote back that he would be + delighted to appear because he had “just discovered something else that your subcommittee has + told a government agency to do that is even more foolish than using FBI agents to crawl into oil + tanks.” They evidently cancelled the hearing.</p> +</blockquote> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/MeasuringOilTanks.html.i b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/MeasuringOilTanks.html.i new file mode 100644 index 00000000..97b47af8 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/MeasuringOilTanks.html.i @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +4 pages +size 400 562 +length 4646 +411 2 11 body html +0 +1614 2 33 body html +0 +2685 2 48 body html +147 +2685 2 48 body html +697 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/QuotesAboutBill.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/QuotesAboutBill.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2d8c62fe --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/QuotesAboutBill.html @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +<?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: Quotes About Bill Wattenburg</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<html> + +<h1>Quotes about Bill Wattenburg</h1> + +<p>From a well-known scientist who once worked with Wattenburg:</p> + +<blockquote><q>If anyone has spent $10 or $20 million on a difficult technical problem and not +found a solution, they probably should have asked Bill Wattenburg First.</q></blockquote> + + +<p class=pagebreak>Said to Bill by a woman who pulled up next to his Mercedes 280SL in traffic (his licence +plate read “PILL”):</p> + +<blockquote><q>Hey, thanks for reminding me!</q>—<i>SF Chronicle, Aug. 16, +1974, p. 25, in Herb Caen’s column.</i></blockquote> + +<p class="pagebreak">From a colleague at the Nevada nuclear weapons test site:</p> + +<blockquote><p><q>He was always looking for the simple solution that everyone else had + overlooked. His favorite saying was: <q>A smart cowboy just wouldn’t work + this hard to make things so goddamn difficult.</q> Then he would throw up his + hands and go off to tease the ladies in some local bar down the highway + while the rest of us were working our butts off.</q></p> + <p><q>You are always wondering when he is going to make a fool out of + you, and do it in some simple way or with some crazy experiment that + forces you to stand and applaud your own ignorance.</q></p> + <p><q>But if you want to know what I really think of him, I’ll tell + you. If I am ever trapped in a spaceship and everyone says it is hopeless, + I hope he is still around, and near a telephone…</q></p></blockquote> + +<p class="pagebreak">From a U.S. Forest Service Supervisor in Plumas County, Calif.:</p> + +<blockquote><q>There are not many old pros like him left anymore who can chase a forest fire on +a bulldozer in the night over mountains so rugged that you can’t walk on them. I mean fire crews +won’t go where he takes a bulldozer. This guy attacks a fire just like it was trying to kill his +kids. We called him once when he was on the radio in San Francisco—we just needed his equipment +on the fire. He was on the fire <i>himself</i> four hours later.</q></blockquote> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/QuotesFromBill.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/QuotesFromBill.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2b79db6a --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/QuotesFromBill.html @@ -0,0 +1,82 @@ +<?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: Quotes From Bill Wattenburg</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<html> + +<h1>Quotes From Bill Wattenburg</h1> + +<p>In response to a California state Senator asking his opinion of BART management:</p> + +<blockquote><q>I’m still looking for the front end of the horse.</q>—<i>SF Chronicle, +Nov. 19, 1973, p. 29 in Herb Caen’s column.</i></blockquote> + +<p class="pagebreak">To the Maitre d’Hotel (while slipping him $20) after his date made him take back a bottle of +wine—but one of many complaints:</p> + +<blockquote><q>Take <i>her</i> away!</q>—<i>San Francisco Chronicle, Apr. 19, 1974, +p. 27, in Herb Caen’s column.</i></blockquote> + +<p class="pagebreak">Describing BART General Manager Billy Stokes at a Commonwealth Club meeting:</p> + +<blockquote><q>The extraction by some farmers of methane gas from manure piles is interesting, +but how can you top a genius who is trying to run a subway system on pure bullshit?</q>—<i>San +Francisco Chronicle, Mar. 29, 1974, p. 29, in Herb Caen’s column.</i></blockquote> + +<p class="pagebreak">On why he hasn’t written more books:</strong></p> + +<blockquote><q>You can sometimes beat the pros at their own game once. But they don’t often let +you get away with it a second time. It’s much easier to find another field.</q></blockquote> + +<p class="pagebreak">A favorite saying at the Nevada test site:</p> + +<blockquote><q>A smart cowboy just wouldn’t work this hard to make things so goddamn +difficult.</q></blockquote> + +<p class="pagebreak">In response to a fellow scientist asking if he had been in an accident:</p> + +<blockquote><q>No, some women just like to make their cowboys jealous. I guess it makes him better +in bed after she takes him home and patches him up.</q></blockquote> + +<p class="pagebreak">Describing the BART train control system in the 1970s:</p> + +<blockquote><q>…the world’s most expensive, computer-controlled, track-mounted +pinball machine.</q></blockquote> + +<p class="pagebreak">On why it was so easy for him to find a easy, reliable way to duplicate the +early BART magstripe tickets (and thus credit cards, until he helped the banks find a more reliable +encryption design):</p> + +<blockquote><q>It’s not my fault. When engineers have too much money, they usually +think only of the most sophisticated ways they can spend it. No one asks them to play devil’s +advocate and think of the obvious until it’s too late.</q></blockquote> + +<p class="pagebreak">In response to an allegation that he was working for the Golden Gate Bridge district +(designing a traffic barrier to prevent head-on collisions that the bridge engineers said could not be designed) +without a professional engineer’s license:</p> + +<blockquote><q>I don’t take public money for exposing high-priced fools who pretend +to be competent engineers.</q></blockquote> + +<p class="pagebreak">In response to a corrosion engineer who had been working on the EBMUD blue water problem +for a year:</p> + +<blockquote><q>Where I went to school, we don’t give degrees to engineers who can’t +solve a problem in a year.</q></blockquote> + +<p class="pagebreak">Upon being asked why other talk show hosts don’t follow his format of welcoming callers +on any subject:</p> + +<blockquote><q>If you do, you’d better be ready to spend three hours on the air +admitting your ignorance. You’d better be prepared for what smart people will ask +you.</q></blockquote> +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TalkRadio.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TalkRadio.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..430aad61 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TalkRadio.html @@ -0,0 +1,117 @@ +<?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: Talk Radio on the West Coast</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Talk Radio on the West Coast</h1> + +<p>The ratings for Bill Wattenburg’s night-time talk show “The Open Line To +The West Coast” on KGO Radio (ABC), +San Francisco, have been three to four times above the average of the next best-rated +shows (AM and FM) in the market for at least the last eleven years running (since 1982). +His show gains 11 to 20 shares in his time slot compared to 3 to 4 shares for his closest competitors. +He has been a regular on KGO talk radio since 1972. His nighttime radio shows +reach the entire west coast from Alaska to Mexico, as he announces when he comes +on the air. Based on his Bay Area audience ratings, we estimate that at least +1,200,000 in the eleven western states and Alaska hear some part of each of his +three-hour, 10pm to 1am KGO shows on weekends. We estimate that at least +13,000,000 on the west coast have listened to him at some time in the last three +years on radio and recognize his name or his voice. Out-of-market numbers say +that his total listening audience in southern California is substantially larger +than in the Bay Area in the 10pm to 12pm time slot.</p> + +<p>Our staff evaluated tapes of sixteen of his KGO Radio shows and three of his +TV shows picked at random for the period January 1988 to December 1992. He +allowed us to observe him in-studio during four of his live KGO radio talk shows +in October 1992. A recent feature story on his KGO radio performances appeared +in the Capitol Cities/ABC employee magazine. We believe this to be a fair +analysis of his radio performances.</p> + +<p><i>[The story from the employee magazine, <i>ABC Ink</i>, is not included here because +ABC does not grant permission for this content to be reproduced electronicly, but it is quite +interesting.—PKS]</i></p> + +<hr /> + +<p>We picked up some sour notes however, from one KGO Radio producer who has +been with the station for many years. This producer said that Wattenburg almost +never takes guests on his show and that he ignores advice from producers who +offer him important material and topics for his shows. We asked this producer to +give us an example. The producer mentioned that Wattenburg ignored some news +stories during the Gulf War that reported the danger of nuclear material being +scattered all over the desert, or that the Iraqis could have retrieved a nuclear +warhead and used it against us. We asked the producer if he/she knew that +Wattenburg was probably very familiar with the safeguards on our nuclear weapons +because he worked on the design of nuclear weapons at one time and was an +advisor to the Air Force. The producer said that he/she did not know that +Wattenburg had ever done that.</p> + +<p>As to the second complaint—no guests on his shows—we politely asked if +anyone could explain why Wattenburg’s ratings were more than twice as high as +the top-rated daytime KGO shows that specialized in interviewing guests booked +on the shows by producers. The answer we got was that it was easier for him to +hold high ratings in the nighttime slot at 10pm to 1am than during the daytime. +We pointed out that all the other major radio shows on the west coast in the +same time slot had much lower ratings that Wattenburg. And, we asked why +Wattenburg still had higher ratings when he did the KGO daytime shows in the +seventies.</p> + +<p>The last response we were offered by this senior producer was: “Well, +he’s been around for twenty years, you know. All the rednecks listen to +him.”</p> + +<p>Another KGO producer who works Wattenburg’s shows commented that some of the +older KGO producers don’t like Wattenburg just because he won’t take guests that +they try to book on his shows. “They get a lot of flak from their public +relations friends in New York who want to book authors on Wattenburg’s shows. +Wattenburg won’t take even his own best friends on his shows. Why should he take +theirs? … The younger producers here fight to work Wattenburg’s shows. It’s a +lot of fun, and it’s sort of satisfying. And it’s a snap. … He tells us to take +every caller who calls on his show. We get a lot of really bright young kids who +call his show late at night. He gets a little mad if you even refuse to let a +drunk on his show. He says a lot of drunks make more sense than the sober ones, +and people love to hear them on the air because if you work them right they will +tell the whole world the truth that they will be sorry about tomorrow. … It’s +sort of nice to start a show when the switchboard is already full of calls +before he goes on the air … our biggest problem is when people start to call +before the end of the previous show and only want to know if Wattenburg is going +to be there later. The host on that show gets mad at you if he is pleading for +callers and he sees calls coming in, but none of them are for him…”</p> + +<p><b>We verified that Wattenburg started and promoted two major environmental +campaigns on his radio shows. These were: stopping the giveaway of the Tongass +National Forest in Alaska to foreign-owned (Japanese) interests, and saving the +old-growth redwoods in the Headwaters Forest owned by Pacific Lumber Company.</b></p> + +<p>He began alerting his west coast audience to these dangers in 1989, well before +national environmental organizations were on the bandwagon. He first warned that +the takeover of Pacific Lumber by a Houston investor in a junk bond deal would +lead to the cutting of the last of the privately-owned virgin redwoods. State +and federal officials didn’t believe him until Pacific Lumber’s new owners filed +for a logging permit the next year. Major public campaigns and legislation have +since stopped the cutting for the near future.</p> + +<p>For two years, Wattenburg’s audience bombarded congress with protests over +the fifty-year contracts given to foreign-owned lumber companies to cut the +virgin forests in the Tongass Forest for as little as a few dollars a tree. Most +members of congress admitted that they didn’t even know that this country’s +largest national forest existed, let alone where it was. Wattenburg’s favorite +ploy was to remind politicians that they were hypocrites for complaining about +the cutting of rain forests in other countries while they allowed the +clear-cutting of this country’s only temperate rain forest.</p> + +<p>The U.S. Forest Service finally modified the contracts extensively in 1992 +and set aside large areas in the Tongass that can not be cut. Wattenburg still +delights in reminding the environmental lobbies that they only later got +interested in this problem to get contributions to save a forest that was +actually rescued by his audience on KGO Radio.</p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TitlePage.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TitlePage.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e1a1495e --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TitlePage.html @@ -0,0 +1,21 @@ +<?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</title> +</head> +<body lang="en-us"> + +<h1 class="title">Bill Wattenburg’s Background</h1> + +<p style="text-align: center">Originally compiled in 1992</p> + +<br /> + +<center><img src="DrBill.tif" /></center> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TitlePage.html.annot b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TitlePage.html.annot new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TitlePage.html.annot diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TitlePage.html.i b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TitlePage.html.i new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1878c4d4 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TitlePage.html.i @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +1 pages +size 400 562 +length 586 +400 2 10 body html +0 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TitlePage.html.index b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TitlePage.html.index new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1878c4d4 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/TitlePage.html.index @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +1 pages +size 400 562 +length 586 +400 2 10 body html +0 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/about.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/about.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..86a73a1d --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/about.html @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +<?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: About This Report</title> +</head> +<body lang="en-us"> + +<h1 class="title">About This Book</h1> + +<h2 class="title">Peter K. Sheerin</h2> + +<p class="title">I received the report from a government agency that wanted more people to know more of Bill +Wattenburg’s interesting and varied background.</p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/awards.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/awards.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..700d0705 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/awards.html @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +<?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: Awards</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Awards</h1> + +<p>Wattenburg received a Certificate of Merit from the Secretary of Defense in 1970 for his +service on the U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board from 1966 to 1970. Members of this +Board were authorized by Congress to oversee and advise the Secretary of Defense and the +President on the strategic defense programs of the Air Force. Members are given the equivalent +military rank of General and the authority to request briefings from the staffs of any Air Force +command concerning the defense programs and forces at their command.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg served on a sub-committee headed by Dr. Edward Teller which reviewed and +evaluated this nation’s nuclear defense and missile capability. Wattenburg proposed +significant defense strategy changes which are recorded in still classified documents from this period.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><i>I also found out that Bill was named a Distinguished Alumni of Chico State +for 1999, in the College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology.</i>—PKS</p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/awards.html.annot b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/awards.html.annot new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/awards.html.annot diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/awards.html.i b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/awards.html.i new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6df06ff2 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/awards.html.i @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +1 pages +size 400 562 +length 1429 +396 2 11 body html +0 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/background-education.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/background-education.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..61689a1e --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/background-education.html @@ -0,0 +1,114 @@ +<?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: Education</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Background and Education</h1> + +<p>Bill Wattenburg’s academic training explains some of the technical tricks he has pulled off +in the public domain. He has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and physics from +U.C. Berkeley, and he has kept up very successful careers in science and business throughout the entire time he +has been doing radio, television and publishing.</p> + +<h2 id="Hometown">Hometown</h2> + +<p><i>(The following comes from KGO Radio promotional material.)</i></p> + +<blockquote><p>Bill Wattenburg was born in Chico, California, on February 9, 1936. He grew up in the +mountains of northeastern California in the lumber industry and ranching areas of Plumas County. His +mother died when he was nine. He and his younger sister were raised by +their father. They often lived with family friends when their father was away seeking work as a +logger, road builder and mechanic. When he was nine to thirteen years old, Bill lived and worked +with an old gold miner friend of his father’s most of the time. The family friend had a mining claim +and cabin twenty miles from the nearest town and located at 7,000 feet in the Sierra. They were +snowed in several months each winter and Bill got his education from books, a short-wave radio, +and correspondence courses supplied by the school district.</p> + +<p>When asked how he got where he is today, Wattenburg says it began shortly after he +graduated from high school when he was 15. His father walked up to him one afternoon on their +logging job and told him to get off the bulldozer he was operating. He said that he had told his +father that he wanted to work as a logger instead of going to college. His father then threatened +to “knock him on his butt” if he didn’t get on the Greyhound bus that very night and go to +U.C. Berkeley where he had been offered a scholarship. He had never been out of the mountains of +northern California except for a few trips to nearby Reno to buy school clothes. His high school +science teacher had insisted that he take a National Science Foundation examination before he +graduated. This teacher helped him apply to several universities. He had never opened the +letters that came back from the universities. But his father, who had not finished high school, had +opened the letters and seen the scholarship offer from U.C. Berkeley.</blockquote> + +<h2 id="Education">Education</h2> + +<p>Bill Wattenburg enrolled at Berkeley as an engineering major and finished his freshmen year +with honors. The following year he moved to California State University at Chico because it was +closer to home and his father needed help to support the family in Plumas County. He worked +in the logging woods and as a ranch hand. He commuted to college at Chico during the week. +His records at Chico State show that he played football and boxed on the Chico State teams for +three years.</p> + +<p>Young Bill Wattenburg evidently had some trouble with the law in his home town +in Plumas County. Some of the local people we interviewed remembered that Bill was +involved in some fights in local bars around the county when he was eighteen or nineteen. The +other men involved had reputedly threatened or attacked Bill’s father while Bill was away in +college. These were disgruntled former employees whom his father had given jobs when no +one else would hire them.</p> + +<p>However, the Plumas County Sheriff’s Department and the local newspaper have records of +only one incident in 1955 involving a man who was formerly convicted of assault with a deadly +weapon. Bill’s father had given him a job while he was on probation, but later fired him over +some disagreement. This man later got in a fight with Bill and then filed assault and battery +charges against Bill. The charges were dismissed after witnesses said that the man threatened Bill +with a hunting knife. The news story quoted witnesses as saying that Bill approached the man in +a local bar and asked him: “Would you like to point that knife at me the same way you did +my father?” The man was returned to county jail after he was released from the county hospital +with a cast on his broken right arm.</p> + +<h2 id="GraduateSchool">Graduate School</h2> + +<p>Bill Wattenburg graduated summa cum laude from California State University, Chico, +with a double major in electrical engineering and physics. He returned to Berkeley as a graduate +student on a National Science Foundation scholarship in 1958. There he studied electrical +engineering under Professor Harry D. Huskey, who was intimately involved in some +of the world’s first digital +computers <i>[and was the president of the Association for Computing Machinery +in the early 1960s—PKS]</i>. Professor Edward Teller (known to many as the “father of the +hydrogen bomb”) was one of his physics teachers. He was awarded a Ph.D. in electrical +engineering and physics at Berkeley (summa cum laude) in 1961, after only three years in +graduate school. He was immediately offered a position as Assistant Professor of Electrical +Engineering on the prestigious Berkeley faculty.</p> + +<p>The following year he was captivated, he says, by President John F. Kennedy’s call for an end +to atmospheric nuclear testing and the development of cleaner underground testing procedures. +He took a leave of absence from Berkeley and moved to the Livermore National Laboratory +where he worked in the physics division on the design of nuclear devices and the first +underground nuclear tests. He then spent six months at the Nevada nuclear test site.</p> + +<p>A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory official confirmed that he was the +inventor of still-classified nuclear test measurement and diagnostic procedures that are essential to +our nuclear test ban treaty verification technology today.</p> + +<h2 id="AcademicWork">Academic Work</h2> + +<p>He returned to teaching and research at the University of California, Berkeley campus in 1964 +where he continued his research in the design of digital computers systems and supervised a large +group of graduate students. He taught the main graduate courses in digital computer design and +programming at Berkeley for the next five years. Many of his graduate students are today high +level executives in major American computer and communication companies. He also continued +his work in nuclear weapons testing at Livermore as a part-time consultant and became a +consultant to IBM, General Electric, and Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in various +defense and space projects at those companies from 1964–1970. He was a member of the U.S. Air +Force Scientific Advisory Board from 1966 to 1970.</p> + +<p>From 1961 to date, he has published over twenty scientific research papers and technical +articles and has been awarded six U.S. and foreign patents. <i>[The total is now +eight U.S. patents—PKS]</i></p> + +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/background-education.html.i b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/background-education.html.i new file mode 100644 index 00000000..85fe11cb --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/background-education.html.i @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +6 pages +size 400 562 +length 7245 +399 2 11 body html +0 +886 2 24 body html +227 +2747 2 46 body html +0 +3742 2 62 body html +153 +5472 2 86 body html +68 +7020 2 108 body html +0 +AcademicWork 4 +Education 1 +GraduateSchool 3 +Hometown 0 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/bloodbanks.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/bloodbanks.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ca16108e --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/bloodbanks.html @@ -0,0 +1,83 @@ +<?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: Blood Banks</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Blood Banks</h1> + +<p>Bill Wattenburg’s first reported entry in the public domain happened when he was a young +assistant professor at Berkeley. The Director of the Alameda County Blood Bank, Dr. David +Singman, a pathologist at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, came to him in 1965 with a problem at +the Alameda–Contra Costa Blood Bank that was costing a great deal of money and loss of life +around the country. In the traditional way that blood banks distributed blood to local hospitals, +up to twenty percent of the blood was being lost because of “outdating”. This spoilage +occurred because the blood sat in refrigerators in the hospitals past the thirty-day limit during which it +could be safely used somewhere else. Once a unit of blood was sent to a hospital, it was usually +cross-matched and set aside for a particular patient. Even if the patient didn’t need it later, this +particular unit of blood was seldom ever sent to another hospital before it became outdated and +had to be thrown away.</p> + +<p>Dr. Singman knew that Wattenburg was designing computers at U.C Berkeley at the time. +He told Wattenburg about this problem and asked him if he could solve it.</p> + +<p>On his own time, Wattenburg first designed a method to positively identify each pint of +blood by a special code before it left the blood bank. He then designed a computer system to +track each pint of blood as it went into hospital inventories. Frustrated with writing proposals and +waiting for government money to buy the computer equipment he needed, Wattenburg convinced +Lockheed Missiles & Space Co. in Sunnyvale to contribute time on one of their large defense +computers during nighttime. Wattenburg had earlier helped design this computer for an Air Force +project. He made a deal with Lockheed—He promised to show them how to save at least an hour +of computer time a day on the Air Force project in return for the fifteen minutes at night he +needed for the blood bank.</p> + +<p>Next, he devised a scheme to hook up all hospitals and the Alameda Blood Bank to the +Lockheed Sunnyvale central computer over telephone lines. This was ten years before remote +data terminals for computers were commonly available.</p> + +<p>Finally, he designed the computer programs that allowed the Alameda blood bank to keep +track of every pint of blood in its inventory and sitting at the hospitals it served, His system +allowed the blood bank to order all blood units approaching outdating at the hospitals to be +located everyday and sent to other hospitals where they were needed instead of sending new units +from the blood bank while the old units went to waste in hospital refrigerators.</p> + +<p><b>His clever solution stopped the needless waste of ten percent of the blood supply in the Bay +Area in the first year it was used. The average age of transfused blood was reduced by ten percent, +and the need for outside donors was reduced by thirty-three percent. His system was quickly +adopted by the Red Cross nationwide. The results were published in The Journal of the American +Medical Association (JAMA), November 8, 1965, pp 583–586, “Computerized Blood Bank +Control”. Wattenburg’s design was soon adopted by most blood banks throughout the country.</b></p> + +<p>Dr. Singman has died, but we talked to a retired Red Cross medical advisor who knew Dr. +Singman at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley when he was working with Wattenburg on this +project. He remembers when all this happened twenty-five years ago. He says that some top +Red Cross administrators were defensive and annoyed over the attention that Wattenburg’s +innovation received in the press. “They were forced to admit that it was a great improvement and +that they would use it as soon as possible, but they were uncomfortable because his idea and the +JAMA article also brought public attention to the fact that large amounts of blood had been lost in +the past because they had not recognized something that seemed so simple.” He said he +remembers how he kicked himself when he saw it. He says that, for certain, hundreds of lives +have been saved in the twenty-five years since then because desperately needed blood has been +available were and when it is needed, and the cost of blood has been reduced significantly. He +remembers that Wattenburg was invited to a blood bank association meeting in San Francisco +shortly after the JAMA article appeared. Wattenburg announced that he was giving the rights to +his idea to any blood bank that wanted to use it, free of charge. However, Lockheed built a +substantial business supplying the computer programs and equipment to hundreds of blood banks +around the country.</p> + +<p>In one of our interviews with him, we showed Wattenburg the nice comments above and +said that he must be very proud of what he had done at such an early age (29). He displayed +some annoyance. He then told us that a U.C. Berkeley faculty promotions committee in 1966 +concluded that this work for the nation’s blood banks was “more in the line of public service than +university level scientific research worthy of promotion consideration.” He said that this +disappointment was the second time that, “This sort of thing happened to me, but I grew up after +that.” He wouldn’t elaborate on what the first time was.</p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/business.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/business.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d94fe08d --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/business.html @@ -0,0 +1,87 @@ +<?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: Business</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Business</h1> + +<p>In 1966, Bill Wattenburg and physicist Donald Glaser +(winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1960, for the invention of the bubble chamber) +formed a company called Berkeley Scientific Laboratories (BSL) which grew to a thirty-million +dollar a year enterprise within three years. Wattenburg served as president of the company until +1970. The scientific staff at BSL directed by Wattenburg received major NASA contracts for +work on the spacecraft guidance computer for the Apollo man-to-the-moon project and +Department of Defense contracts for the computer systems for the Navy’s Poseidon missile. BSL later developed +a number of very successful commercial products, including the first small medical data computer +systems used in hospitals around the world to automate and improve medical testing procedures +in clinical and radiology laboratories.</p> + +<p>Berkeley Scientific Laboratories was purchased by Tracor, Inc., a high-technology +conglomerate in Austin, Texas, in 1969. Wattenburg became a major stockholder in +Tracor. He resigned as president of BSL and sold his substantial interests in Tracor in 1970. Tracor stock +dropped considerably over the next few years. He later reinvested heavily in Tracor in 1975 +shortly before it entered a long and profitable growth period over the following ten years under +the leadership of president Frank McBee, a friend of Wattenburg’s. Wattenburg sold all his +interests in Tracor again when the company was taken over by Admiral Bobby Inman in the eighties.</p> + +<p><i>(The following comes from investment banker Faris Chesley, The Chicago Corporation, +Chicago, who has known Bill Wattenburg since 1967.)</i></p> + +<p>In 1969 Wattenburg and a group of physicians and medical specialists started a company +in San Francisco called Comprehensive Health Services (CHS), later renamed Comprehensive +Computer Systems, which developed health screening programs for professional groups such as +the California Teachers Association and operated a large clinical laboratory in San Francisco. He +joined the company as director of research in 1972 and developed another very successful product +line of medical computer systems for radiology which was marketed worldwide by General +Electric Co. CHS also acquired Bakte-Bennet Laboratories, a major supplier of growth media to +hospitals and clinical laboratories on the west coast.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg and his technical staff at CHS developed a unique system of “marked-sense” +Medical documents that allow a radiologist to report his full diagnostic findings by simply +marking a few spots on one of a series of special diagnostic reporting forms. We have attached +one of these “Raport” forms to this report. General Electric Medical +Systems division invested over eight million dollars in this development from 1972 to 1976.</p> + +<p>The reader will find the following explanation much easier to understand by first +examining the radiology report form and computer-generated radiology report attached.</p> + +<div class="image"> +<img src="raport.png" height="100%" /> +</div> + +<p>The computer-readable forms they developed cover the full human anatomy with pictorial diagrams +showing the areas of interest to a radiologist. Each color-code form also contains a set of +symbols that describe almost all qualifying statements that a radiologist would normally dictate in +a report of his examination of an X-ray film.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg cautioned us that the original idea for all this came from Dr. Richard +Mani, a young radiologist at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center who later worked +with CHS. Several major computer companies and the U.C. computer center staff had told Dr. +Mani that his idea was not workable.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg and his staff worked for two years to build the computer hardware and special +programs that could read the marked-sense documents and produce medical prose in the +computer-generated diagnostic reports that would be both accurate and pleasing to radiologists.</p> + +<p>General Electric sold hundreds of these small computer systems to major hospitals and +radiology groups around the world from 1975 to 1980. The product line was sold to National +Computer Systems, Minneapolis, in 1980.</p> + +<p>National Computer Systems bought Comprehensive Computer Systems CHS) from Wattenburg and his group in 1979. +National Computer Systems was the world’s biggest supplier +of marked-sense computer equipment and technology. (They still were in 1990. NCS supplies most +of the multiple choice forms and data processing for schools and educational testing services +world wide.) Wattenburg became a major stockholder in National Computer Systems.</p> + +<p>Wattenburg was doing <a href="TalkRadio.html">talk radio on KGO</a> and <a href="television.html">television +shows</a> on nights and weekends throughout this period from 1972 on.</p> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/business.html.annot b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/business.html.annot new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/business.html.annot diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/business.html.i b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/business.html.i new file mode 100644 index 00000000..083abec5 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/business.html.i @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +6 pages +size 400 562 +length 5301 +398 2 11 body html +0 +1275 2 26 body html +187 +3241 2 52 body html +34 +3417 2 55 body html +0 +3417 2 55 body html +562 +4148 2 69 body html +85 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/colleague.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/colleague.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8b520605 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/colleague.html @@ -0,0 +1,193 @@ +<?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: A Colleague’s Observations</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>A Colleague’s Observations</h1> + +<p>We interviewed a professor of engineering at a major California university who worked with +Bill Wattenburg at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site in 1962–1963 and at the Livermore +National Laboratory for some time after that. Like many of his former scientific colleagues we interviewed, +this man has followed Wattenburg’s public career ever since.</p> + +<p>His candid recollections give a good picture of Bill Wattenburg’s personality and style as a young +scientist. We believe these observations explain a lot about Wattenburg’s public activities and +personality in later years, as we have summarized it in the following sections of this report.</p> + +<p>These are the professor’s comments taped and included here with his permission:</p> + +<hr /> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Bill Wattenburg’s mind just doesn’t work the same way that everyone else’s does. He is +bored to death with complicated solutions to difficult scientific problems. He obviously +understands scientific fundamentals as well as any of the rest of us, but he is basically lazy. … He +was always looking for the simple solution that everyone else had overlooked. His favorite saying +was: ‘A smart cowboy just wouldn’t work this hard to make things so goddamn difficult.’ Then +he would throw up his hands and go off to tease the ladies in some local bar down the +highway while the rest of us were working our butts off.</p> + +<p>…</p> + +<p>“But, all too often, he would come back to wake us all up in our trailers in the middle of +the night and march us into the laboratory to see some Rube Goldberg solution he had discovered, +or a clever gadget he had built to do the same thing we had worked months to do.</p> + +<p>…</p> + +<p>“I admired the guy’s genius, but I have to admit that I came to simply dread working with +him for the first few months that I knew him. You are always wondering when he is going to +make a fool out of you, and do it in some simple way or with some crazy experiment that forces +you to stand and applaud your own ignorance. … He was always watching everything what +everybody else was doing. He seldom ever criticized, but you always had the feeling that he was +seeing something about your work that you didn’t realize yourself. It was very unnerving in the +beginning. … But I have to admit that now I try to teach my own graduate students some of the +things I learned from him.</p> + +<p>…</p> + +<p>“He was only twenty-five when I began working for him at the Test Site. It was hard to +believe that he was a nuclear weapons designer from ‘A’ division. Most of us were ten years +older and we were working for him. … The guy never slept. … A tennis game was the only thing +that seemed to hold his attention in one place for more than an hour … or maybe a cute cowgirl on +a barstool somewhere.</p> + +<p>“There was a problem with him on this score. Once in a while they would have to send +out the Test Site security guards to scout every country bar within 50 miles of the test site to find +him if a problem came up on a weekend. I remember once when they brought him back to the +trailers and he had blood all over his shirt. Someone asked him if he had been in an accident. He +said, ‘No, some women just like to make their cowboys jealous. I guess it makes him better in bed +after she takes him home and patches him up.’</p> + +<p>“Once when an underground nuclear test at Mercury was delayed and there was absolutely +nothing we could do for two days but catch up on our sleep, he kept busy tuning up every +secretary’s car in the parking lot, free of charge of course. We all knew what he was doing … he +always found a lady friend out in that god-forsaken desert somewhere who took real good care of +him. We would get hamburgers for dinner in the cafeteria and he would get a steak with all the +trimmings.</p> + +<p>…</p> + +<p>“He would try any damn thing that popped into his mind—even at +the very last minute before a nuclear shot. He was always pushing everybody to try add-on +experiments that he cooked up. He was always fooling around with your equipment in the test +shack in the middle of the night. You’d come back the next morning and something would be +changed. It was hard enough to carry out the main experiments that we were supposed to do. +And, he was supposed to be the group leader. But his attitude was that once he showed you how +to do something, and he was very good at that, it was all over as far as he was concerned. It was +of no interest to him whatsoever after that. I didn’t feel that he was a good manager in that sense, +but he made up for it in other ways that I’ll tell you about later.<p> + +<p>…</p> + +<p>We actually got to the point that we would hide any extra test equipment, like +oscilloscopes and cameras, and even dumb things like extra pieces of wire and signal cable. If you +didn’t, he would try to use them for some other quirky experiment that could be wired +up at the last minute before the shot. He always liked to find things he could add on to other +people’s equipments that we had been working on for months to get checked out. Most of the +other physicists made jokes about his ideas. But, on one underground nuclear shot in 1962, they +all got a real jolt of a different sort.</p> + +<p>“One of his ‘midnight’ experiments hit the jackpot. The results shocked all the experts. +And it was one that the bosses in ‘L’ division at Livermore had said could not possibly work. I +remember that he was really pissed off because they wouldn’t even let him use some spare test +equipment from the Livermore shops to do it. How he got permission and the equipment I don’t +know. Another physicist from ‘A’ division named Russ Duff worked with him, I recall. Yes, I +think it was Russ Duff who was showing everybody the surprising results of Wattenburg’s +experiment right after the shot. … I mean the pictures from the Polaroid cameras we used in those +days to record test results from a shot. They were all gathered around Russ Duff talking about it. +Someone asked Wattenburg at dinner that night in the cafeteria what he thought about his +experiment and he said something like ‘Yeah, I thought it would be interesting. Now maybe those +assholes will wake up next time.’ I think he was talking about the bosses at +‘L’ division who wouldn’t help him do it.</p> + +<p>“What Wattenburg discovered in this experiment really changed the way we instrumented +bomb tests after that. The report on his Nevada Test Site experiment was still classified for many +years after that for reasons that I never understood. I was going to talk about it in a classified +seminar I was going to give to new test engineers in 1975, and I discovered that his report was +still classified beyond my need to know, which I thought was fairly high at the time. I told the +head of the division that I thought it was a valuable example for new test engineers … which means +that I’m a hell of a hypocrite for what I said a while ago about Wattenburg’s crazy ideas. The +division head, I’ll leave his name out of this, told me that I shouldn’t discuss his report. He said it +was a “sensitive matter” that he didn’t want to have to get into right then. I dropped +the subject.</p> + +<p>…</p> + +<p>“A year or so later, I saw Wattenburg and asked him what was the big deal with his report +on the 1962 experiment. We all knew that the scheme he discovered—invented would be a better +description—was being used by everybody in the nuclear testing business since 1963. He just +shrugged his shoulders and muttered something like ‘It looks like everybody but me has made a +career out of being the real expert on that subject.’ I sensed that there was some annoyance on +his part over it, so I dropped the subject.</p> + +<p>“This wasn’t the only startling thing he did when he was at the lab by any means. After I +was no longer working with him in Nevada, I heard through the grapevine at the lab that he shook +them up a few more times in ‘A’ division, that’s the H-bomb design division. I heard a few of the +bomb designers say later that they were happy when he finally went back to teaching at +Berkeley. … But if he went back to Berkeley you’d never have known it. I saw him at +the lab at night for years after that. I would go in late at night or on weekends to check on one of my +experiments or a computer run, and I’d see him in the computer room or in the cafeteria, sometimes +at two in the morning.</p> + +<p>…</p> + +<p>“A guy in ‘A’ division told me a story about how Wattenburg learned to deal with the +bureaucracy at the Laboratory after his first successful experiment. He said that Wattenburg had +another idea and he desperately wanted money to do the experiment. He bragged that this idea +was so good that he was going to convince them to give him two hundred thousand dollars to do +this experiment. Everyone laughed at him. When he went to see the the bosses, they would only +agree to give him twenty thousand. He was happy as a lark when he came back to the physics +department. Some thought that he had gotten what he wanted. One of the physicists asked him: +‘Did you get the two-hundred thousand you wanted?’</p> + +<p>“He answered: ‘No. I got twice as much as I needed.’ ”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><i>(The professor now talks at length about other scientists at the Livermore lab that +Wattenburg used to pal around with, how he taught them to ride a horse in a local rodeo, shoot a +pistol, water-ski, go deer hunting in the Sierra, and some of his amusing escapades with women +at the lab. None of this is relevant here, but it is consistent with Wattenburg’s general playfulness +and hobbies that are reported elsewhere in this report.)</i></p> + +<br /> + +<p>He continues:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Bill Wattenburg’s latest hobby on radio and television is just the right place for him to show off what a clever +smart-ass he can be. … On the other hand, there are probably few good scientists who can explain complex technical things to the lay public as well as +he can. … He can cook up the most clever little experiments for people to do at home so that they +can explain science to themselves. He’s really good with bright kids. I’ve heard ten-year olds call +him on the radio at midnight. They love him … but that’s because he’s still just a kid at heart +himself.</p> + +<p>“I’m sure a lot of people are happy he is spending his time as a radio celebrity nowadays +instead of on their backs in the laboratory. … It’s probably a good thing that the crazy guy got +rich from his early inventions because the ordinary engineers of the world simply wouldn’t be safe +with him wondering around looking for consulting contracts to beat them at their own +game. …Anyone who has ever worked with him would never bet money that he couldn’t open a bank +vault with the manager’s own pocketknife.</p> + +<p>…</p> + +<p>“I think he has been away from the scientific laboratory too long now to still be up on the +cutting edge of scientific research. … That means he’ll probably walk into my lab any day now and +tell me how much he enjoyed reading my latest scientific papers. Then he’ll probably show me all +the simple things I overlooked.</p> + +<p>…</p> + +<p>“But if you want to know what I really think of him, I’ll tell you. If I am ever trapped in a +spaceship and everyone says it is hopeless, I hope he is still around, and near a telephone. …”</p> +</blockquote> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/confrontations.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/confrontations.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e044dbf9 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/confrontations.html @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +<?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: Public Confrontations</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Public Confrontations</h1> + +<p>The episodes that follow show that Wattenburg seemed to delight in exposing the failures +of over-confident engineers who managed public projects. His style, however, was not just to +criticize them. He typically offered them a better idea or a clever design of his own which he +then contributed free of charge to the public agencies in question. The trouble seems to have +started when they said that his ideas wouldn’t work or that he didn’t know what +he was talking about. (See <a href="BART.html">BART</a>, <a href="GoldenGate.html">Golden +Gate Bridge Barrier</a>, and <a href="BlueWater.html">Blue Water</a> projects described below.)</p> + +<p>We were rather astounded at what we found from database searches of newspaper and wire +service stories on Bill Wattenburg. At first, we were ignoring those on “Willard” +Wattenburg, “William” Wattenburg, “Professor W. H.” Wattenburg, +and “Ben Wattenberg” because we thought they were all different people. Then we +realized that all but “Ben Wattenberg”, the columnist, are Bill Wattenburg. He has used +“Willard” and “Professor W. H.” at various times and places for reasons +of his own. His most recent mention in the New York Times uses “Willard”. We asked him +why. He said that his driver’s license says “Willard”, so when he was out of the Bay +Area he told press people who might have wanted to check up on him that his name is Willard Wattenburg. +Sometimes the press was confused and used “William”. He said he never bothered to correct +a reporter. Apparently, the importance of building national name recognition as media personality Bill +Wattenburg did not occur to him.</p> + +<ul> + <li><a href="BART.html">Fixing BART Safety</a>(Bay Area Rapid Transit System)</li> + <li><a href="creditcards.html">Magnetic Credit Cards</a></li> + <li><a href="dial-a-ride.html">Dial-A-Ride Carpooling</a></li> + <li><a href="MeasuringOilTanks.html">Don’t Call the FBI!</a></li> + <li><a href="GoldenGate.html">Golden Gate Bridge Traffic Barrier</a></li> + <li><a href="BlueWater.html">Blue Water (Copper) Contamination in Homes</a></li> +</ul> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/confrontations.html.annot b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/confrontations.html.annot new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/confrontations.html.annot diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/confrontations.html.i b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/confrontations.html.i new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2e3447f0 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/confrontations.html.i @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +2 pages +size 400 562 +length 2593 +411 2 11 body html +0 +1096 2 23 body html +272 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/copyright.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/copyright.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..44a99dc9 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/copyright.html @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +<?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: About This Report</title> +</head> +<body lang="en-us"> + +<p>Text goes here.</p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/covert.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/covert.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..982a5a23 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/covert.html @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +<?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: Covert Activities?</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Covert Activities?</h1> + +<p>We could find no evidence that Wattenburg has ever been involved in government +intelligence or covert activities. We enlisted the services of an investigative firm in Washington, +D.C., whose staff is knowledgeable about the intelligence services. They have reported to us that +their inquiries indicated no knowledge of Wattenburg having any involvement with the services in +the past. However, they pointed out that knowledge of any covert activates would never be +disclosed by their contacts for obvious reasons.</p> + +<p>They reported that Wattenburg had been asked by one service to help correct a problem +with Soviet spying on our new embassy building in Moscow, but that Wattenburg had insisted +that anything he did would have to be made public because he was working for ABC. He +evidently made this activity public in the San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 1987, page 18. The +U.S. State Dept. did not seem too happy with his comments.</p> + +<p>We verified that he was in the country during the period 1985 to 1986 for which we had +no information in our 1990 report (see his work on <a href="GoldMine.html">The Gold Mine project</a>).</p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/covert.html.annot b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/covert.html.annot new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/covert.html.annot diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/covert.html.i b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/covert.html.i new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2cf28382 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/covert.html.i @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +1 pages +size 400 562 +length 1599 +408 2 11 body html +0 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/creditcards.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/creditcards.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..233757c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/creditcards.html @@ -0,0 +1,241 @@ +<?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: Magnetic Credit Cards</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Magnetic Credit Cards</h1> + +<h2>(1973)</h2> + +<p>We believe that this event lends some insight into Wattenburg’s integrity in honoring +contractual commitments and confidentiality agreements.</p> + +<p>The San Francisco Chronicle reported another of Wattenburg’s startling +technical tricks during the BART controversy in 1973. A subsequent story in +Business Week (August 11, 1973, page 120) stunned and sobered the nation’s +banking and credit card industry which was planning to convert all credit cards +to the same magnetic stripe system used in the new BART cards. Chronicle +reporter Michael Harris approached Wattenburg in his Berkeley laboratory and +asked Wattenburg whether it was possible to counterfeit the new multi-million +dollar, “fool-proof” BART ticket magnetic stripe designed by IBM. +This system was the first to use a magnetic stripe to record the value of a +transit rider’s ticket. BART officials, IBM, and the nation’s banks had all said +that “anyone would need at least $500,000 worth of specialized electronic +equipment to copy the magnetic stripe and fool their reading machines.” +(Anyone but Bill Wattenburg, as it turned out.)</p> + +<p>We located one of the technical people, now retired, who was on the scene in 1973 in +order to verify a couple of minor items about Wattenburg’s financial involvement in this +event. We got a lot more than we expected. We were able to get some of “the rest of the story” at this +late date that was not available to the press in 1973.</p> + +<br /> +<p><b>Here is the story from press reports:</b></p> +<br /> + +<p>On June 4, 1973, in the San Francisco Chronicle (page 22), reporter Harris described how +he was able to “boost” a 5-cent BART ticket to any value he wanted using an inexpensive scheme +that Wattenburg had invented in a few hours. Worse yet, Wattenburg devised a simple scheme +that any housewife could do in her kitchen! Harris described how the idea came to Wattenburg, +and how he, reporter Harris, was later able to give startled officials a private demonstration at the +Chronicle offices. The banking industry was about to issue the first of millions of credit cards +that could have been counterfeited “by any high school kid”, according to Wattenburg. IBM and +the banks went back to the drawing board for another year before they came up with a better +scheme (that Wattenburg said he couldn’t easily beat—see story below).</p> + +<p>When Wattenburg was later asked by the press and angry government officials how he +could so easily defeat the efforts of this country’s best engineers, he sent them the following +apology:</p> + +<blockquote>“It’s not my fault. When engineers have too much money, they usually think only of the +most sophisticated ways they can spend it. No one asks them to play devil’s advocate and think of +the obvious until it’s too late. I never would have bothered to think about the subject. It was none +of my business. Hell, I didn’t know that BART and banks all over the country were really planning +to use this silly scheme.”</blockquote> + +<p>He continued:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“All that happened is that this reporter Michael Harris, who is a very +clever guy by the way, came along and bet me that I couldn’t find an easy way to copy this +funny-looking BART ticket with a magnetic stripe. I thought it was just someone’s prototype idea. But +he said that IBM had bragged that no one could do it for less than a half-million dollars. Now, +that kind of gets a scientist’s juices flowing. I mean I didn’t interrupt my serious scientific work at +Berkeley, but his challenge was on my mind for a few hours.</p> + +<p>“Suddenly, I remembered an obscure little thing about the physics of magnetic materials +that most scientists don’t bother with very often. This phenomenon had given me fits in an +experiment that I had done as a graduate student. Even my professor at the time didn’t believe it +until I showed it to him. I thought, ‘Oh my God, the IBM guys couldn’t possibly have +overlooked that! They’re the world’s experts on magnetic recording.’</p> + +<p>“I did a quick experiment with some magnetic tape that I bought at lunchtime in a music +store on Shattuck Avenue, and damned if I wasn’t able to make a good copy of the BART ticket +magnetic stripe that Harris had left with me to play with. I didn’t even have time to go to a BART +station and see if my counterfeit ticket worked. When Harris came back the next day, I gave him +the materials he would need and showed him how to do it in his kitchen at home. Well, you know +the rest of the story. …”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Wattenburg recently told us that he believed that the 1973 Business Week story contained +some half-truths to steer thieves in the wrong direction. The press reports show him copying a +credit card with another piece of magnetic tape. But the stories don’t explain that this was no +ordinary piece of magnetic tape. He said that the 22 other ways discovered by Cal Tech students +were all too clumsy or unreliable to be any threat. He believed that IBM and the banks didn’t +really care if thieves concentrated on these. He said that the banks wanted the Business Week +story written that way. He agreed to go along with the story for the sake of all the innocent +people who could have lost their money, but it wasn’t pleasing to him to know all the things that +were not disclosed to the press.</p> + +<p>He told us ruefully:</p> + +<blockquote><p>“At least I didn’t say anything dishonest to Business Week. They came around to +see how I did it and I showed them the mechanics of how it could be done, They +didn’t ask the right questions and I didn’t volunteer anything more. I hoped they would go out and +try to copy a card with a piece of ordinary iron oxide magnetic tape, the way Michael Harris did. +They would have discovered in a hurry that the scheme required something else special. But they +didn’t. I was really surprised that they wrote the story without checking that. … That was the last +time I ever took money to keep my mouth shut. I needed money at the time to do a lot of +important scientific experiments that were on my mind, and I had a lot of good graduate students +who needed support. The bankers were the big boys. Who was I to tell them what was ethical? +But you know, when I asked them to provide a few scholarships, they turned me down. That is +why it eventually cost them a hell of a lot more than a few scholarships.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>One of Wattenburg’s scientist colleagues whom we interviewed in August 1990 told us +what he thinks happened with the magnetic stripe. He said that obviously the whole thing was +hushed up very quickly because of the potential losses due to thieves learning how to copy the +magnetic stripe on the new bank credit cards. He said the rumor was that IBM or the +banks, or both, paid Wattenburg a very handsome sum to help them devise a better scheme. He said that +one of Wattenburg’s former Berkeley students who worked at IBM was asked to approach +Wattenburg and that Wattenburg agreed to help them under the condition that he work only +through his former student.</p> + +<p>This IBM engineer, Wattenburg’s former student, later went to work at Livermore. We +were told that he took great joy in telling the funny stories that happened when the banking +association attorneys tried to negotiate a deal with Wattenburg. He said they offered Wattenburg +a very large amount of money if he would help them design a new scheme that couldn’t be +counterfeited by anyone who did not have at least a hundred thousand dollars of specialized +equipment which they itemized in the agreement. And Wattenburg had to agree to never again +talk about or disclose to anyone how he had copied the BART card or anything about new +schemes that would be developed. He said that Wattenburg agreed that the payment they offered +seemed quite fair, provided there were a few minor changes. One change Wattenburg made to +the agreement he sent back was “by anyone other than Wattenburg” in the clause “couldn’t be +counterfeited by anyone”. The attorneys saw no problem with this because if he helped develop a +new scheme, obviously he would be one of the few who would know how to beat it as well. +They accepted the agreement.</p> + +<p>But then the bankers realized that Wattenburg could collect his money by only proving +that “other people” could not copy some new magnetic stripe that he helped them develop. They +protested that they already had a scheme that “other people” could not easily copy. They had paid +large sums to universities and major consulting firms to have it tested and no one could copy it +easily and reliably until Wattenburg came along.</p> + +<p>They demanded that Wattenburg change the language of the agreement. Wattenburg +responded: “Well, tell me how much it is worth to you if I take it out.” Before it was over with, +they had tripled the amount they first agreed to pay him. The former student said that Wattenburg +succeeded in beating the next two magnetic stripe recording schemes that they proposed until +they finally came up with one that he said he couldn’t beat without expensive equipment.</p> + +<p>Our contact laughed when he recalled what the former student often told his Livermore +friends about Wattenburg’s assurance that he couldn’t beat the latest magnetic stripe scheme that +is now used worldwide. He said: “I’ll bet that Wattenburg just got tired of fooling around with this +business and told them it was OK. But, do you want to bet what will happen if Wattenburg is ever +broke and he gets a hold of your credit card for a few hours?”</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>We later learned that some of the 1973 press stories were probably encouraged for public +consumption, and that maybe even Wattenburg left out a little of the story he told us—for a +proper reason.</p> + +<p>Since this was the only episode in Wattenburg’s public exploits for which he admitted +taking payment for his services, we decided to investigate it more deeply. In particular, we thought +this would be a good situation in which to explore how he handled the confidentiality of his +dealings with those who paid him in return for the same. We were able to locate the “former +student” mentioned above. Now retired, he was willing to tell us almost all of “the rest of the +story” since he felt that there was no danger at this late date.</p> + +<p>All of the above story is mostly true, as far as it goes. But there was more that the public +was not told, and for good reason. He said that in the contract that they wanted Wattenburg to +sign, he refused to disclose, even to IBM and the banks, the nature of the magnetic material he +used to copy the BART and bank cards. Wattenburg had made some magnetic strips that looked +like the ordinary Mylar-backed audio magnetic tape with the usual iron oxide magnetic surface, +but it really had been coated with another special material. Wattenburg gave the reporter Michael +Harris enough of this special magnetic tape to do his experiment at the BART ticket machines +and for Harris to later give another demonstration to various officials at the Chronicle offices. +They never knew for sure what the material was.</p> + +<p>He further explained that, unknown to Wattenburg, IBM and others had deliberately +arranged the competition with Cal Tech students to see who could counterfeit the BART cards. +But, the BART cards didn’t include all the coding safeguards that were used in the scheme that +was designed for bank credit cards. He says he believes that IBM knew that most anyone could +use simple magnetic tape reading equipment to read a BART card magnetic stripe and make a +copy, as the Cal Tech students and others quickly proved. But, they were confident that no one +could counterfeit the more valuable bank cards the same way because ordinary magnetic reading +equipment could not read the special magnetic coding that they intended to use on the bank +cards.</p> + +<p>In other words, he felt that the well-publicized student competition for copying the BART +cards and the 22 schemes they came up with was a ruse to cause potential thieves to go in the +wrong direction and frustrate themselves when the bank cards were issued. He said he learned +that the first thing that IBM had tested was to make sure that their magnetic coding scheme on +the bank cards could be not read by ordinary magnetic tape reading equipment. They were no +fools.</p> + +<p>But they did not count on Wattenburg coming along. He found a way to physically copy +the magnetic coding on the IBM stripe directly onto another magnetic stripe without using any +intermediate electronic read-write cycle. His scheme copied everything, including the magnetic +special coding on the bank cards that couldn’t be copied by inexpensive magnetic tape reading +equipment. In fact, they found out that Wattenburg’s copies had as much resolution (were as +good) as the original magnetic stripe that he had copied. This scared the hell out of them. This +meant that he could copy the new bank cards as well.</p> + +<p>He said that Wattenburg refused to tell IBM or the bankers what the material was that he +had used to make his special magnetic tape that could capture an image of their magnetic +stripes—and could be accomplished in the kitchen. This was the real sticking point in the agreement that +they wanted with him. Wattenburg insisted that if IBM scientists used their heads they would +soon figure it our on their own. He felt that he didn’t want to be the one who gave license to +thieves by being the first one to disclose it. He felt that the university would get a bad name. They +finally settled on an agreement with him to help them anyway. And, they had to pay him +handsomely to take out the “anyone other than Wattenburg” clause.</p> + +<p>He said that it became an obsession at IBM San Jose for the next year to figure out what +Wattenburg had done. He remembers engineers and scientists meeting at lunch time to compare +notes on their latest ideas and experiments. They even hired a guy from Livermore who had +worked with Wattenburg to help them as a consultant. They found all sorts of new ways, but none +of them could be accomplished with something so simple as a clothes iron the kitchen. He said +that the attorneys got very angry with Wattenburg. They essentially accused Wattenburg of +being a fraud and demanded that he disclose the answer or they would recommend that his future +payments due under their contract be stopped. Our contact says that he had to take these +communications to Wattenburg at the university. Wattenburg’s answer to the attorneys was that +IBM ought to be very happy that their engineers were discovering so many new ways on their +own that they never would have considered if they had not been trying to discover his way. He +offered to demonstrate his scheme again anytime they would like.</p> + +<p>He says that he never heard whether they figured it out on their own or whether +Wattenburg eventually told them. All he knows is that they eventually came up with a new scheme +that could not be easily counterfeited by Wattenburg, so he said.</p> + +<p>He told us that he was impressed that, for ten years, Wattenburg would never tell even +his best friends at Livermore who insisted that he could tell them his method under the strict +security rules that prevailed at this nuclear weapons laboratory. He heard one senior laboratory +official jokingly promise Wattenburg that he would personally stamp the document “classified” if +Wattenburg would write it down for them. He said that Wattenburg would not even confirm +what the answer was long after it had became generally known to scientists and engineers what +the special material was that he had used.</p> + +<p>Our contact said that he always respected Wattenburg for never violating the agreement +that he knew Wattenburg had signed with the bankers. But then he added: “if you knew how +much they paid him in real dollars today, you would not have taken a chance on losing it either by +opening your mouth just to show off.”</p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/dial-a-ride.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/dial-a-ride.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e9517278 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/dial-a-ride.html @@ -0,0 +1,76 @@ +<?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: Better Carpooling</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Dial-A-Ride Carpooling</h1> + +<h2>(1973)</h2> + +<p>Bill Wattenburg upstaged the government bureaucracies during the 1973 energy +crisis when the U.S. Energy Department proposed spending millions to organize +all the state departments of motor vehicles across the country to use their +files on motorists to match up citizens for carpools. They told Congress that +they needed at least fifty million to subsidize the state agencies so that they +could write the special computer programs required to do this within eighteen +months. Wattenburg announced that the telephone companies could do the same +thing immediately—at no extra cost to the taxpayers. And he proved it with a +simple experiment.</p> + +<p>The San Francisco Chronicle reported Wattenburg’s idea on December 22, 1973. +He pointed out that a person’s telephone numbers at home and at work were all +that was needed to match him up with the nearest other person who drove +approximately the same route. The telephone companies had all the address data +for every telephone number. Their computer programs were ready to do the job +with very little modification. All the government had to do was ask them. And, +it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers a dime.</p> + +<p>He suggested that a person who wanted a carpool partner could simply dial a +special “carpool” request code into his telephone and provide his work +number. The telephone company, for a small charge, could then send him a list of +all others who drove a similar route. Officials from Pacific Telephone Company +in San Francisco agreed that Wattenburg was right. They said they would do it.</p> + +<p>The czar of the energy department appeared to like the idea and promised to +implement it, but nothing official was announced. We asked Bill Wattenburg +whatever happened to this neat idea. He told us:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“All the state departments of motor vehicles were already counting the +millions they had been promised from Washington. Some powerful congressmen +complained that my idea was illegal according to the consent decree that +prohibited telephone companies from using their computers to process data. It +was stupid, but the Justice Department was never formally asked to waive the +prohibition. The federal pork barrel money was sent out as promised.</p> + +<p>“However, most of the state motor vehicle people realized that my scheme was a +lot easier and more comprehensive because the telephone company data is always +far more complete than address data in the motor vehicle files. So, they just +got the files from the telephone company that they needed and did the same +thing. Obviously, they used the millions they got from Washington to pay for +other things. The sad part is that most people still can’t simply use their +telephones to arrange carpooling with the ease that should be available to them +everywhere. But, California does this with a special 800 number.</p> + +<p>“As always, the state bureaucracies invented forms that people have to fill +out to make a carpool request. This discourages most. But it keeps a lot of +idiot bureaucrats busy. The people who could benefit the most from carpooling +are not going to allow themselves to be matched up with other people by the +government. And they avoid giving personal information to the government. +However, most trust the telephone company.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>We asked Wattenburg what he thought about not getting any official +recognition for this. His answer was: “Ah, what the hell. That’s the usual +case when you deal with bureaucrats. They know I made them do what I wanted. I +made them jump. That’s good enough.”</p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/dial-a-ride.html.annot b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/dial-a-ride.html.annot new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/dial-a-ride.html.annot diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/dial-a-ride.html.i b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/dial-a-ride.html.i new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0f59ee8a --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/dial-a-ride.html.i @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +3 pages +size 400 562 +length 4055 +407 2 11 body html +0 +1623 2 35 body html +0 +2229 2 45 body html +294 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/foreword.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/foreword.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ba05ed59 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/foreword.html @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +<?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: Editor’s Foreword</title> +</head> + +<body> +<a name="begin"></a> +<h1>Editor’s Foreword</h1> + +<p>I received this report on Bill Wattenburg from a government agency as a +public document, and am making it publicly available so that the public may learn of his many +accomplishments and some insight into his character.</p> + +<p>If this little report isn’t enough, you can follow Bill’s continuing exploits at +www.DrBill.org, which is a shortcut to a section of my main Web site, PushBack.com, that closely +follows his radio show and other exploits.</p> + +<p>As a means of introduction to this report, you can start with Bill’s <a href="resume.html">résumé</a>, +and some of the more interesting quotations that I are taken from this report +<a href="QuotesFromBill.html">from Bill</a> and <a href="QuotesAboutBill.html">about Bill</a>. They +are all interesting and provide a great introduction to Bill’s iconoclastic personality.</p> + +<p class="right">—Peter K. Sheerin<br /> +Webmaster and Editor-in-Chief, PushBack.com</p> + +<br /> + +<p>P.S. If some of what you read seems hard to believe, then this quote from a very well known scientist who +has worked with Bill should serve as a good introduction:</p> + +<blockquote><q>If anyone has spent $10 or $20 million on a difficult technical problem and not found a +solution, they probably should have asked Bill Wattenburg First.”</q></blockquote> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/foreword.html.annot b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/foreword.html.annot new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/foreword.html.annot diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/foreword.html.i b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/foreword.html.i new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8c488d3c --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/foreword.html.i @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +2 pages +size 400 562 +length 1785 +409 2 11 body html +0 +1581 2 36 body html +32 +begin 0 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/foreword.html.index b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/foreword.html.index new file mode 100644 index 00000000..8c488d3c --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/foreword.html.index @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +2 pages +size 400 562 +length 1785 +409 2 11 body html +0 +1581 2 36 body html +32 +begin 0 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/hobbies.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/hobbies.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..72e168c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/hobbies.html @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +<?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: Hobbies</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Hobbies</h1> + +<p>Wattenburg is an avid tennis player. He has played in many celebrity tennis tournaments +around the country with his friends from Hollywood. He says that the decision as to where he +travels nowadays depends a lot on where the sun is shining and where there is a tennis court. (We +had to wait two hours at the Berkeley Tennis Club for the first interview we got with him.)</p> + +<p>Access to tennis courts will certainly be an important consideration to him before working in +another city. We recommend that guaranteed membership in a first-class tennis club be part of +any offer made to him.</p> + +<p>In the summertime, he still runs the bulldozers he learned to operate when he worked with his +father in the logging woods years ago. He spends two to three weeks average each year fighting +forest fires as a bulldozer operator (Catskinner) on the west coast with U.S. Forest Service +firefighting crews. A U.S. Forest Service Supervisor in Plumas County, Calif., told us that, +“There are not many old pros like him left anymore who can chase a forest fire on a bulldozer in the night +over mountains so rugged that you can’t walk on them.” He said, “I mean fire crews won’t go +where he takes a bulldozer. This guy attacks a fire just like it was trying to kill his kids. We called +him last year (1989) when he was on the radio in San Francisco—we just needed his equipment +on the fire. He was on the fire himself four hours later.”</p> + +<p>Wattenburg keeps two large bulldozers specially equipped for fire fighting at his ranch in +northern California. He mentioned to us that nothing makes him so sad as to see the last of our +virgin forests go up in smoke. There was anger in his voice when he told us that a lot of the +heavy equipment operators nowadays (he called them hard-hat executives) just sit back and let a +fire go until it changes course on its own and burns itself out. “Then they brag about how they +bravely stopped this ten-thousand acre fire.” (We found him running a bulldozer when we +interviewed him the second time at his ranch in Northern California. He gave one of us, who +never learned to drive a car, a lesson on the bulldozer.)</p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/hobbies.html.annot b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/hobbies.html.annot new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/hobbies.html.annot diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/hobbies.html.i b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/hobbies.html.i new file mode 100644 index 00000000..dcf24920 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/hobbies.html.i @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +2 pages +size 400 562 +length 2604 +397 2 11 body html +0 +1015 2 24 body html +255 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/index.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/index.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..36686f24 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,60 @@ +<?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: Table of Contents</title> +</head> + +<body lang="en-us"> +<a name="toc"></a> +<h1>Table of contents</h1> +<ol> + <li><a href="foreword.html">Editor’s Foreword</a></li> + <li><a href="ExecutiveSummary.html">Executive Summary</a></li> + <li>On The Air and Publishing + <ol> + <li><a href="TalkRadio.html">Talk Radio on the West Coast</a></li> + <li><a href="movies.html">Movies</a></li> + <li><a href="television.html">Television Shows</a></li> + <li><a href="publishing.html">Publishing</a></li> + </ol> + </li> + <li><a href="background-education.html">Background and Education</a> + <ol> + <li><a href="background-education.html#Hometown">Hometown</a></li> + <li><a href="background-education.html#Education">Education</a></li> + <li><a href="background-education.html#GraduateSchool">Graduate School</a></li> + <li><a href="background-education.html#AcademicWork">Academic Work</a></li> + </ol> + </li> + <li><a href="business.html">Business</a></li> + <li><a href="patents.html">Patents and Inventions</a></li> + <li><a href="awards.html">Awards</a></li> + <li><a href="hobbies.html">Hobbies</a></li> + <li><a href="covert.html">Covert Activities?</a></li> + <li><a href="colleague.html">A Colleague’s Observations</a></li> + <li>Public Service + <ol> + <li><a href="bloodbanks.html">Blood Banks</a></li> + <li><a href="HelicopterMinesweeper.html">Helicopters to Clear Minefields</a></li> + </ol> + </li> + <li><a href="confrontations.html">Public Confrontations</a> + <ol> + <li><a href="BART.html">Fixing BART Safety (Bay Area Rapid Transit System)</a></li> + <li><a href="creditcards.html">Magnetic Credit Cards</a></li> + <li><a href="dial-a-ride.html">Dial-A-Ride Carpooling</a></li> + <li><a href="MeasuringOilTanks.html">Seeing Inside Oil Tanks!</a></li> + <li><a href="GoldenGate.html">Golden Gate Bridge Traffic Barrier</a></li> + <li><a href="BlueWater.html">Blue Water (Copper) Contamination in Homes</a></li> + </ol> + </li> + <li><a href="GoldMine.html">The Gold Mine</a></li> + <li><a href="BentSub.html">Downhole Drillbit</a></li> +</ol> +</ol> +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/movies.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/movies.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..72b01aa2 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/movies.html @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +<?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: Movie Projects</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Movies</h1> + +<p>Bill Wattenburg played the tough guy talk show host and tennis player (Nolan +Kennard) in Clint Eastwood’s 1988 Dirty Harry movie, “The +Dead Pool”. He next worked with Eastwood and played the role of the pit boss in the +filming of “Pink Cadillac”.</p> + +<p>Clint Eastwood made one of his rare public appearances on Wattenburg’s talk +show to express his views on the political issues on the California ballot in +November 1990. The two of them teamed up for two hours, live on KGO, before the +California audience to support the Legislative Term Limit initiative, +Proposition 140. This “voter’s revolt” was strongly opposed by the +political powerhouses who were unleashing a multi-million dollar, last-minute TV +blitz using other Hollywood personalities to defeat the initiative. The polls +were predicting that Proposition 140 would be defeated. It passed two days +later.</p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/patents.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/patents.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f20565f5 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/patents.html @@ -0,0 +1,53 @@ +<?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> diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/patents.html.annot b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/patents.html.annot new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e69de29b --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/patents.html.annot diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/patents.html.i b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/patents.html.i new file mode 100644 index 00000000..34ce79b7 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/patents.html.i @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +2 pages +size 400 562 +length 3173 +397 2 11 body html +0 +1538 2 30 body html +85 diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/publishing.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/publishing.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..18b069fd --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/publishing.html @@ -0,0 +1,73 @@ +<?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: Publishing</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Publishing</h1> + +<p>Bill Wattenburg is also the comical author Will Harvey who once entertained +nationwide audiences on major TV shows such as “The Phil Donahue Show” and +“The Tonight Show”. Wattenburg’s media career began when he wrote a surprising +best-seller while he was the president of a scientific laboratory in Berkeley. +He had written short stories during his college days. He told us that in 1971 a +group of women at a University cocktail party, who had read some of his short +stories, bet him that he couldn’t write a book that was funnier than the New +York Times’ then best-seller on sexual fantasies, +<i>The Sensuous Woman</i>. So, he whipped +out a book for them in three weeks with the title <i>How To Be Good To A Woman</i>, +which they liked enough to make hundreds of Xerox copies of the manuscript to +send to friends all over the country. But New York publishers said it wouldn’t +sell when he tried to give it to them to publish, free—so his friends could buy +cheaper copies. Unconvinced, he changed the title of the book to <i>How To Find +And Fascinate A Mistress</i>, changed “woman” to “mistress” +in the text, and had a Berkeley printer produce the first five thousand +hardcover with a catchy jacket designed by his engineering draftsmen. He then +gave away 200 copies to airline flight attendants (for whom he had written a complimentary +chapter in the book). Orders began coming in from all over the country.</p> + +<p>Three months later, his kitchen publishing company, Montgomery Street Press, +had shipped over sixty-thousand hardcover copies to every major bookstore chain +in the country. The New York publishing houses that could have had the book for +nothing were soon bidding for the paperback rights. Pocketbooks (Simon and +Schuster) finally bought the paperback rights for a reported $650,000. +Pocketbooks sent him out on a national promotion tour to a few major TV shows. +Requests then poured in from other shows all over the country who wanted him. +Over the next year, he appeared as funnyman Will Harvey on over 130 local and +national TV and radio shows. He was invited back to some major shows several +times in 1972. Paperback sales of his book climbed to over 2,000,000 as he +tickled audiences all over the country with his cowboy humor and the image of +the hapless male struggling to keep up with the sexually aggressive women of the +burgeoning feminist movement.</p> + +<p>A former Pocketbooks executive has told us that Wattenburg received an +advance for the paperback rights of “over $500,000”. She remembered +that he caused quite a problem at Simon and Schuster during the bidding for the +paperback rights to his book. She recalled: “He didn’t have an agent. He +thought that our standard royalty contracts with authors were crazy. He demanded +a guaranteed cash payment up front—not conditioned on future book sales, as was +the usual case. He cleaned up after that. I think he still owns the +hardcover. … He wouldn’t stay at some of the best hotels we booked him into +during the promotion tours. He found out that travel expenses were being +deducted from his royalties after sales went above, I think, 2,000,000. … He +drove us nuts. We had to plead with some famous newspaper columnists and book +reviewers to meet him for interviews at Holiday Inns. …”</p> + +<p>Before it was over, the book that he had tried to give away had earned him +over $1,300,000! It was published in six countries. Bantam books bought the +rights to his next book for an undisclosed sum. He says he still has to explain +on the radio to women who like to tease him that “in no way could I ever +live up to the exploits of Will Harvey.”</p> + +<p>We asked him in 1990 why he didn’t write more books. He said: “You can +sometimes beat the pros at their own game once. But they don’t often let you get +away with it a second time. It’s much easier to find another field.”</p> + +</body> +</html>
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\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/television.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/television.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bef4eed3 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/television.html @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +<?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: Television Shows</title> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>Television Shows</h1> + +<p id="dolphins">Bill Wattenburg’s first television show was an expose on the slaughter of +dolphins by tuna fishing fleets called “The Last Days of the Dolphins”, +which Westinghouse Broadcasting aired nationally in 1975. Strong complaints from +major food company advertisers who market tuna almost cancelled the show. The +original celebrity host had backed out after major advertisers complained. +Wattenburg agreed to replace him. This shocking documentary showed the needless +slaughter of 500,000 dolphins a year because tuna fisherman refused to change +the crude nets they had been using for decades. Congress outlawed the old nets a +week after this dramatic show was aired nationwide.</p> + +<p id="KPIX">Westinghouse Broadcasting Co. (KPIX Channel 5 TV, San Francisco) then asked Bill +Wattenburg to host a new half-hour newsmagazine show which aired on Friday +nights primetime (The People’s Five Show) from September 1975 to 1977. They used one of +the first TV mini-cams to shoot the show “on the street” with only one +cameraman-director, host Wattenburg, and no scriptwriters.</p> + +<p>This show and its format were later expanded to become Westinghouse’s +“Evening Magazine”, which has been syndicated nationwide since 1977 <i>[usually +under the name “P.M. Magazine” outside of the SF broadcasting area</i>—<i>PKS]</i>. +Wattenburg returned to weekend talk radio and his scientific work at the +university when the TV show went to five nights a week.</p> + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/toc.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/toc.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..470cd433 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/toc.html @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ +<?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: Table of Contents</title> +</head> + +<body lang="en-us"> +<a name="toc"></a> +<h1>Table of contents</h1> +<ol> + <li><a href="foreword.html">Editor’s Foreword</a></li> + <li><a href="ExecutiveSummary.html">Executive Summary</a></li> + <li>On The Air and Publishing + <ol> + <li><a href="TalkRadio.html">Talk Radio on the West Coast</a></li> + <li><a href="movies.html">Movies</a></li> + <li><a href="television.html">Television Shows</a></li> + <li><a href="publishing.html">Publishing</a></li> + </ol> + </li> + <li><a href="background-education.html">Background and Education</a> + <ol> + <li><a href="background-education.html#Hometown">Hometown</a></li> + <li><a href="background-education.html#Education">Education</a></li> + <li><a href="background-education.html#GraduateSchool">Graduate School</a></li> + <li><a href="background-education.html#AcademicWork">Academic Work</a></li> + </ol> + </li> + <li><a href="business.html">Business</a></li> + <li><a href="patents.html">Patents and Inventions</a></li> + <li><a href="awards.html">Awards</a></li> + <li><a href="hobbies.html">Hobbies</a></li> + <li><a href="covert.html">Covert Activities?</a></li> + <li><a href="colleague.html">A Colleague’s Observations</a></li> + <li>Public Service + <ol> + <li><a href="bloodbanks.html">Blood Banks</a></li> + <li><a href="HelicopterMinesweeper.html">Helicopters to Clear Minefields</a></li> + </ol> + </li> + <li><a href="confrontations.html">Public Confrontations</a> + <ol> + <li><a href="BART.html">Fixing BART Safety (Bay Area Rapid Transit System)</a></li> + <li><a href="creditcards.html">Magnetic Credit Cards</a></li> + <li><a href="dial-a-ride.html">Dial-A-Ride Carpooling</a></li> + <li><a href="MeasuringOilTanks.html">Seeing Inside Oil Tanks!</a></li> + <li><a href="GoldenGate.html">Golden Gate Bridge Traffic Barrier</a></li> + <li><a href="BlueWater.html">Blue Water (Copper) Contamination in Homes</a></li> + </ol> + </li> + <li><a href="GoldMine.html">The Gold Mine</a></li> + <li><a href="BentSub.html">Downhole Drillbit</a></li> +</ol> +</body> +</html>
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