Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

DENNIS HAMILTON: Lear took an eighth grade education and a lot of mechanical ingenuity to develop the jet and he's since sold his stock in the company that produces the Learjet, but he hasn't given up designing and inventing. He's presently involved in developing something called an inertial car. He explains.

WILLIAM LEAR: The inertial car will be the answer to the commuter, be the answer to the man that has to say drive 20 miles to work and 20 miles home. And he doesn't want to burn up a lot of fuel or any fuel if he can get away with it. But he wants to be able to do it cheaply and he wants to be able to do it comfortably, and he doesn't want to pollute the air. And I believe that's possible with the inertial system. So that's one of the ways in which I think we're going to take care of mass transportation.

The velocity of the flywheel remains constant because you could say you go to work and you leave it outside of your plant for 12 or 15 hours. When you come back, the flywheels will still be running at practically the same speed because they're running in a vacuum and therefore, they have very little losses.

The only losses they have is the friction losses in the bearings, which are very low. And we estimate that you could run the car with say for 40 miles and then keep it static without moving for a period of say 24 hours and still have another 20 miles left in the car even after that length of time. And this is being very conservative because we think you could probably do better than that.

But under the worst cases, you could always have energy available. But the acceleration rate of a car of that kind would be amazing because the power is there, waiting to be taken out of the flywheel. As far as buses are concerned, we have a bus under development at the present time that uses the inertial system.

And the inertial system is backed up by a very small 50 or 60 horsepower steam engine and that runs a 77 70,000 RPM inertial wheel. But it has a transmission in it that allows the wind-- instead of braking, you allow the energy of this normally used for braking, to go back into the flywheel to supply the energy for the next acceleration.

And this is all within the range of possibility and it's not a long development thing. It's just a case of somebody wanting it bad enough to just underwrite the first production units of the thing. The automotive industry could do it if they wanted to. The government could do it if it wants to or it could probably be done with private financing if someone is disposed to let go of the dollars that it takes to do it.

The thing of that kind is not expensive in the terms of which we think expensive things like we'll say going to the moon. This is something that, well, for less than $500 million, you could do the whole transportation problem, both the bus and the individual car.

Our bus is running now. It's running every day. And the new little car will be out right after the first of the year. And it will be quite revolutionary in that it is absolutely quiet, and as I said before, no pollution. And to wind it up, you just connect it to your own electric light line and you make a deal with the power company to use only power during the off peak hours, so that they're happy to sell you power to reduce rate during the off peak hours.

And that helps them and that it gives them improved efficiency when normally they haven't got any place for that power to go. And power plants only become economical when they're run at their full output loads. And this gives them a chance to utilize some of that output that they can't sell any other way.

And that's all within the realm of we'll say, good, technical development. Today, you don't have to do any inventing. It's all the factors have already been determined and are there for their application.

So I think that you will find the power companies themselves going forward. I think you'll find even the government probably getting off of its duff and doing something about helping the building of a little inertial car because that's the only way you're going to solve the fuel problem, especially when you look at the fact that in 20 years we're not going to have any fuel.

And I don't think it's good for us to sit down and wait for that time to come before we've done something about anticipating it. And especially in view of the fact that it's a state of the art. It's not it doesn't have to be any invention. A car of that kind would be less costly in the long run than at present gasoline-driven car.

If we were in production, I would say we could sell that car for $2,000 or $2,500. The development of things of that kind, I think big business doesn't even recognize the existence or the possibility of it. So that big business now looks the other way without intending to not look, but they just don't know about it. So they're not very greatly concerned.

And I think if I went to a big so-called big business and told them about it, they would say, well, he's highly visionary and probably this is something that probably will come along after we're all dead and gone, and therefore, they won't do much about it, but they could if they wanted to.

DENNIS HAMILTON: Finally, even though Lear has given up his stock interest in the Learjet, he hasn't given up his love for airplanes.

WILLIAM LEAR: I'm now going into the production or building of an airplane I intend to go into production on. It will sell for $2 million a piece. And I expect to sell 30 of them a year to start with. As a matter of fact, I expect to have an order for 30 before I even fly the first airplane, but that airplane will fly 3,600 miles or will go from New York to Paris and at the same time will carry 14 people and will be able to land and take off from a field no longer than 4,200 feet.

But that's more of a fun thing for me. If it turns into a business proposition, it would be nice. But whether it does or it doesn't, designing an airplane with unusual characteristics where you save fuel, for instance, the total amount of fuel you burn in an airplane that goes 600 miles an hour is only 150 pounds of fuel an hour.

And that's an important contribution to the fuel shortage problem, to have that much economy in an aircraft. So that airplane I think will be in such demand that we will probably never be able to make enough of them.

DENNIS HAMILTON: William Lear, inventor of the Learjet, speaking to press in Fargo today. I'm Dennis Hamilton.