Trust me—you really don’t know what you’re missing.
Published Reports on Dr. Bill Wattenburg’s Simple Solutions to Major Problems
What follows on this page are links and references to press coverage about some of Bill
Wattenburg’s more important contributions to society—namely, ways to quickly and
cheaply solve what others have shown in the past to be difficult, expensive problems. If you think that
whatever his latest scheme is sounds like it couldn’t possibly work, then please
read the original stories below as evidence that he has solved similarly difficult problems in the past, and
just might be able to help with whatever the latest sticky wicket is.
- Bay Bridge Vulerability Corrected
- Bill, along with others from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, discovered a weakness
in the design of most suspension bridges that had been overlooked by others as a potential target
of terrorists. Covered in the San Jose Mercury News (front page, Nov. 4, 2001), and in
The New York Times (Nov. 6, 2001).
- Urgent Efforts to Bar Use of Stolen Trucks as Bombs
- The New York Times, Nov. 18, 2001.
- Stopping the Counterfeiting of Magnetic Stripe Credit Cards
- 1973
Wattenburg was asked by an SF Chronicle reporter if he could find a way to copy the flimsy, strange-looking BART tickets
with a magnetic stripe that stored the value. After finding a clever, inexpensive way of doing this that would have
even copied the stronger encryption on the forthcoming magnetic credit cards, Wattenburg helped IBM and the banks
develop a much more secure design.
San Francisco Chronicle, June 4, 1973, p22.
Business Week, Aug 11, 1973, p120.
Journal of the American Medical Association. Nov. 8, 1965, pp583–586.
- Drop Money Not Bombs
- 1972
Wattenburg suggested bombing North Vietnam with at least $50 million in redeemable scrip, while salting the
bombs liberally with real money.
San Francisco Chronicle, Tues. Sept 19, 1972.
- Fixing the BART Train Control System
- 1971–1973
While the BART metro rail system was experiencing severe teething problems, Wattenburg was asked by the State
of California to help find out what the problems were and fix them. If experts are dismissing Bill’s latest
criticism by saying that he’s not qualified in their field, then read this story before dismissing his
statements out-of-hand. Additional details can be found in the San Francisco Chronicle during the same time period.
- Helicopter Mine Sweeper
- 1991
Also known as the chain-matrix mine sweeper, Wattenburg invented this device
during the Gulf War, and although it has proven itself during tests in live
mine fields, the U.S. military has up until now taken a “not-invented-here”
stance, so it has seen no actual use outside the tests.
Clearing land mines by Helicopter, San Francisco Chronicle, 8 March 1991, front page.
More Simple Solutions to Difficult Problems
- Method for remote inventory of oil storage tanks.
- 1974
During the Arab oil embargo the oil companies were thought to be hoarding
gas and oil by fudging the inventory reports they had to furnish to the
government. Instead of the Energy Department’s costly plan to send a
thousand FBI agents to crawl inside the tanks, Bill demonstrated how an airborne
infrared video camera could be easily used to measure the level of oil in
many tanks very quickly.
- Dial-A-Ride Carpooling
- 1973
Also during the energy crisis, Bill devised a computerized means of
connecting potential carpool riders with one another that would have relied
on using the most up-to-date computerized databases available (the telephone
company records) to allow drivers to find people interested in sharing rides
who lived near them and worked in the same area—just by punching their home
and work telephone numbers into the phone after dialing into a toll-free
automated system.
- How to Feed Refugees Quickly, Cheaply, and Safely, Even in War-Torn Areas
- 1993 & 2001
The method that Dr. Bill Wattenburg pioneered for dropping food packets to refugees
(a.k.a. “MREs for Refugees”) is now being used in Afghanistan. Articles in the
SF Chronicle
and on the ABC News web site provide details. Both articles have pictures of the rations.
Published in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 23, 1993, on the front page.
First publication: “Dropping food packages to refugees without using parachutes”, Science,
2 April 1993, page 27.
- Utilities
to test slight cut in voltage to save electricity
- June 2001
A plan to lower the voltages carried into households and businesses by power plants throughout the state—the
brainchild of a maverick Bay Area engineer—will save 500 megawatts of precious energy this summer without
dimming electric lights or damaging appliances, experts say.
- An Immediate Southern Crossing to Relieve Bay
Bridge Congestion
- Spring, 1999
A San Francisco Shuttle: Bus Ferries from the Alameda Naval Air
Station with Parking for 100,000 to Relieve Traffic Congestion Across the Bay
Bridge.
-
Simple, cheap solution to sanitation problems at refugee camps
- April, 1999
How to use 5-gallon buckets to provide bathroom facilities for tens or hundreds of thousands of refugees
crammed into a small area.
- Scientists Present New Ways To Snuff Kuwait Oil Fires
- 1991
Wattenburg’s “Helicopter Mine Sweeper” was proposed as a way to clear land mines
that made it difficult to fight the oil well fires that Iraq set when they abandoned Kuwait.
Wall Street Journal Europe, 5–6 April 1991, page 8
This page was last modified on Monday, 11-Oct-2004 20:06:43 PDT.
