Making 'Eureka!' Pay

摘要

Paul fenelon found a for tune buried inside the door of his Lincoln Town Car. He was fiddling through a restless retirement in Nashville in 1991 after selling his thermoplastics business to Exxon, when the driver's side window of the car stopped fitting flush into the door. The bad window created an irritating whistle on the highway. Fed up after a few weeks of this, he took the car to the dealership to get it Gxed. The problem soon returned, and back Fenelon brought it to the dealership. Soon after that "fix" Fenelon went to lower his window and it fell like a stone into the door. Enough was enough. Fenelon pried the door panel off himself to have a look. The device he found inside struck him as foolish beyond explanation. "I was absolutely flabbergasted by the complexity of it," says the fiery Fenelon, 61, his brogue from a childhood in Ireland rising to a shout "The design is crazy! A com- plete waste!" Fenelon immediately pictured a simpler system that, now realized, is lighter by half, quieter, cheaper, easier to build and more durable.