As an aside to this thread I just discovered by accident an obituary for a rather interesting chap who was a USAAF B-17 pilot that lived and died in Whangarei, NZ.
www.miamiherald.com/2009/11/27/1353457/s-ronald-barnette-launched-global.htmlPosted on Friday, 11.27.09
Ron Barnette, the inventor of glow-in-the-dark plastic, died at the age of 90.BY ELINOR J. BRECHER
ebrecher@MiamiHerald.com
Sir S. Ronald Barnette was a self-taught, Hialeah-based inventor whose post-World War II lab experiments yielded dead-ringer synthetics for building materials that significantly expanded options for industrial designers.
A decorated veteran of the U.S. Army's World War II Air Force, Barnette died Sunday of natural causes at a hospital near his home in Whangarei, northern New Zealand.
He was 90 and since the 1980s had been dividing his time between New Zealand -- where until recently, he raised dairy cattle on an 800-acre spread -- and a home in Miami Springs.
He once served on the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine's Board of Overseers and headed Miami's Opera Guild. His title derives from a knighthood in the Catholic Church's Order of Malta.
The signature product of ``Ron'' Barnette's company, Dimensional Plastics Corp., is Krinklglas, which general manager Jorge Morales called ``acrylic modified fiberglass-reinforced polyester plastic.''
Krinklglo is a photoluminescent plastic that absorbs sunshine, then glows in the dark for up to 12 hours.
It caused a sensation at the 1964 New York World's Fair, when designers wrapped the 64,000-square-foot U.S. Pavilion in translucent Krinklglas.
Much stronger than the real thing, it is often used as a stained-glass equivalent in houses of worship. It's also made into decorative dividers, signs and wall panels.
In Miami, life-size depictions of Christ and the 12 apostles in Krinklglas line a wall at Bayshore Lutheran Church, 5051 Biscayne Blvd.
Barnette, who never earned a college degree, ``was on the cutting edge of research regarding plastics,'' said retired attorney Robert Traurig, a longtime friend. ``He was a brilliant person.''
`IT LASTS FOREVER'
In 2004, as he prepared to debut a product called Krinklglo at the Miami Home Design & Remodeling Show, the 85-year-old Barnette told The Miami Herald: ``Plastic is very creative in the decorative fields. I love the warmth of it . . . And it lasts forever.''
Barnette also invented a synthetic marble called Corinthian, which he claimed DuPont adapted for its Corian brand of countertop material -- without paying him.
He told The Miami Herald that in the 1960s, with patents pending but short of capital, he sought a marketing deal with DuPont, which placed observers in the Hialeah factory for six months.
After they left, Barnette said, someone from DuPont sent him internal correspondence detailing the company's plans to use his products.
In 1965, DuPont began marketing Corian, but Barnette said he couldn't afford to sue.
``When my patent was issued, they stopped making the marbleized style,'' he told The Miami Herald in 2004. ``I didn't have the money to fight them further. I couldn't compete with DuPont,'' which has always denied Barnette's allegations.
The experience left him wary of outsiders, so he kept the company small -- with 14 employees -- and his processes secret.
``When he was here in July, we were going through some things in his office that he had come up with by being creative, and huge companies piggybacked off of,'' Jorge Morales said.
He also kept his company in Hialeah, where he launched it in 1956, even though he knew he would make more money moving it to China.
``He was incredibly loyal to the people who worked for him for decades,'' said son Alan, an Austin, Texas, television and film producer. He and his brother, Douglas, a Chattanooga photographer, plan to maintain the business.
B-17 PILOT
Born Stanley Ronald Barnette in Utica, N.Y., where his father ran a hardware store, he learned to fly before World War II. During the war, he piloted a B-17 bomber in the Pacific.
``Flying was a metaphor for his life,'' son Alan said. ``He couldn't sit still.''
He would cruise the world and visit licensees in 13 countries, said Alan, who was ``with him in Russia in the '70s, and in China when Mao was still around, doing business.''
After the war, Barnette took classes at Pennsylvania's Pace Institute, then became an air-traffic controller in Jacksonville.
Moving to Miami with his first wife, the former Ruth Hinton, he got a job as a plastics company sales representative. She died in 1988, after which he married his second wife, Judith, who survives.
``He was incredibly creative and knew a lot of the engineers and chemists, and he could ask them, `If I wanted to do this, how would I do it?' '' Alan said. ``He rented a small warehouse bay and he'd go and tinker.''
BUOY PANELS
Barnette began working with photoluminescent plastic in the 1950s, when the U.S. Coast Guard hired him to make glow-in-the-dark panels for buoys.
Then he developed a plastic inlay that allows embedded objects to retain three-dimensionality and original texture, and used it to make tabletops, one of which won an award from the American Design Institute.
``He had a fairly large business and came up with Krinklglas,'' Alan said. The architect commissioned to do the World's Fair building saw it, created ``his own design, and asked Dad to make it. Dad [initially] had no idea how he was going to use it.''
For the huge project, ``he hired wonderful, educated men from Cuba who needed a job,'' Alan said. ``They had 100 people overnight.''
He prospered, and ``only stayed at five-star hotels,'' his son said. ``He fancied himself a rather dapper dresser, and drove a Mercedes in the '50s, when nobody else did.''
Barnette remained involved in the business until the end, said Morales, the general manager.
``I'd send him the daily report, and if there was a technical question, he knew it off the top of his head.''
This year, he spent February and March, then July through September in South Florida.
``But this last trip took a toll on him,'' Morales said. ``He told me it was most likely his last trip.''
Barnette asked his sons to scatter his ashes in Hawaii.
and 4 out of 5 bolts sheared
, shows what happens when one speed
