Inventor

ROBERT ADLER, 93 TV remote inventor Dr. Robert Adler, the co-inventor of the TV remote control, died Thursday of heart failure at a Boise, Idaho, nursing home, Zenith Electronics Corp. said Friday. Dr. Adler, who won an Emmy Award for his 1956 invention, held more than 180 U.S. patents.

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The inventor wakes before daylight. He has loaded cardboard boxes into his Buick Regal and the car smells like soap. Alone, he leaves his split-level house and at the end of his driveway turns left, toward the chance to sell his dream.The idea came to him 10 years ago, when he worked in a factory. He was a supervisor at a liquor company, and he felt trapped. Everyone else in his family -- his mother, his father, his twin brother -- had the security of a second income. What he had was 18 years in manufacturing and a couple of dreams that didn't work out.Until one restless night when he awoke with three words floating in his head: "soap, mashing, machine."

In 1897, when The Sun's city editor scrawled out a memo to a reporter who was about to cover the first public voyage beneath the waters of the Patapsco in inventor Simon Lake's Argonaut, he was direct and to the point:"If Lake succeeds, give him a column. If he fails, he gets an obit," wrote the editor to the reporter who was about to board Lake's strange Jules Verne-like creation that was part submarine and part tractor.Lake, a young, red-headed engineer-inventor, became fascinated with the concept of submarines after reading "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" as a child in New Jersey.

Emery I. Valyi,86, an inventor whose innovations included an easy-to-grip 2-liter plastic soft-drink bottle, died of cancer May 5 in Mount Kisco, N.Y. Pepsi introduced the bottle, known as "The Grip," in March and expects to offer it to a wider market this fall.Pub Date: 5/15/98

Laurie Beechman,43, the longest-running Grizabella in Broadway's longest-running hit, "Cats," died Sunday in her White Plains home of complications from ovarian cancer, according to her agent, Jim Wilhelm.She took on the part of Grizabella in the touring company of "Cats" in 1983, and four months later stepped into the part on Broadway, which she played on and off for more than five years.Benjamin Bowden,91, a designer and inventor who created a futuristic bicycle called the Spacelander, died Friday in Lake Worth, Fla. In the 1940s, the British-born inventor designed the Healey sports car, a forerunner of the Austin-Healey, and an armored car for Winston Churchill and King George VI.Adrian Marks,81, a former Navy pilot instrumental in saving 315 sailors from the sinking USS Indianapolis during World War II, died Saturday in Frankfort, Ind.Leonie Rysanek,71, a celebrated soprano who gave more than 2,100 performances on the world's leading opera stages, died of bone cancer Saturday in Vienna, Austria.

Nothing can quite prepare you for your first step inside Brent Farley's home.Outwardly, it's identical to the stacks of other tan, aluminum-sided residences in a sleepy Baltimore County apartment complex. Just one clue signals you've arrived at the right place: A hubcap-sized, neon-green peace sign adorns a bedroom window.Farley likes peace signs. Really likes them. More on this later.The door to Apt. 301 swings open, revealing a scene of domestic tranquillity. Farley's wife, Wendy, wields a metal spatula as she cooks dinner.

Brent Farley of Towson spent yesterday on 57th Street in Manhattan hoping to become a winner.He had a good feeling about the ironing mitt, his entry in Hammacher Schlemmer's "Search for Invention '98," the catalog company's fifth annual national inventor's competition to declare the best new consumer products of the year."

It works on muggers, why not elephants?A pepper spray meant to deter elephants from raiding farms in Asia and Africa is being developed by a zoologist at the University of Cambridge and by an inventor in Valley Forge, Pa.On both continents, elephants that raid crops are sometimes shot.Cambridge zoologist Loki Osborn is working with inventor Jack Birochak, who has developed pepper sprays to deter grizzly bears.The spray can hold 1 kilogram of a mixture of chili pepper and oil. Because of the obvious difficulties of operating a spray can close to a wild elephant, Birochak is developing a compressed air launcher that can throw the can 200 meters.

It works on muggers, why not elephants?A pepper spray meant to deter elephants from raiding farms in Asia and Africa is being developed by a zoologist at the University of Cambridge and by an inventor in Valley Forge, Pa.On both continents, elephants that raid crops are sometimes shot.Cambridge zoologist Loki Osborn is working with inventor Jack Birochak, who has developed pepper sprays to deter grizzly bears.The spray can hold 1 kilogram of a mixture of chili pepper and oil. Because of the obvious difficulties of operating a spray can close to a wild elephant, Birochak is developing a compressed air launcher that can throw the can 200 meters.

JACK COVER, 88 Inventor of the Taser stun gun Jack Cover, who invented the Taser stun gun now used by thousands of police agencies as a better way to subdue suspects, died of pneumonia Feb. 7 at a retirement home in Mission Viejo, Calif., according to a statement from Taser International, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company that now makes the stun gun. Rick Smith, Taser International's chief executive, called Mr. Cover "one of the most influential inventors of modern times." Mr. Cover, a one-time NASA scientist, began developing the Taser as a nonlethal weapon to combat the hijackings and riots that were happening in the 1960s, Mr. Smith said.

Alexander Severinsky thought he had escaped long waits for basic goods when his family fled the Soviet Union in 1978. But barely a year later he found himself in his Oldsmobile Cutlass, in the Texas heat, at the end of a line of cars waiting to gas up. "I just came from Russia a year ago, where I stand in lines for food, and now what changed? I'm back in line, only for fuel," he said, laughing, in his accented English. Better fuel efficiency, he reasoned, could boost gas supplies and end the lines.

Oxford - Forty years ago, a young Tim Kearns tossed a baseball into his glove impatiently as his inventor-father tinkered with this bizarre contraption, an automobile windshield-wiper arm attached to the inside of a fish tank. Not surprisingly, Tim was growing irritated with his father's insistence that he pay attention rather than play ball. Turns out Dad was on to something. Friday night, Tim Kearns, at 51 an architect and two-term commissioner of this Eastern Shore town, will be in the audience at Easton's Avalon Theatre as a major Hollywood movie based on his dad's life kicks off the inaugural Chesapeake Film Festival.

Bruce E. Ivins, the government biodefense scientist linked to the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001, stood to gain financially from the huge federal spending in the fear-filled aftermath of those killings, the Los Angeles Times has learned. Ivins is listed as a co-inventor on two patents for a genetically engineered anthrax vaccine, federal records show. Separately, Ivins is also listed as a co-inventor on an application to patent an additive for various biodefense vaccines. Ivins, 62, died Tuesday, apparently in a suicide.

John Lamb was tracing his great-great-grandfather's involvement in the Civil War when he came across reports of a 19th-century killing machine. The former Harford County resident and Civil War buff soon turned his interests toward the so-called Winans Steam Gun. A shiny, black, oversized metal contraption, the steam gun was made by an Ohio inventor who boasted that it could take out an entire regiment in one sweep, firing up to 400 rounds a minute from...

Donovan Truluck, a retired construction superintendent and inventor, died of cancer Thursday at his Arnold home. He was 80. Mr. Truluck was born in Olanta, S.C., and raised in Sumter, S.C. He was 17 when he enlisted in the Navy in 1944 and served aboard the battleship USS Wisconsin as a fireman first class until his discharge in 1946. He was an active member of the USS Wisconsin Association and enjoyed keeping in contact with former shipmates and attending reunions. Mr. Truluck worked for several construction companies, including the John H. Hampshire Construction Co., where he was a carpenter and superintendent for many years.

ROBERT ADLER, 93 TV remote inventor Dr. Robert Adler, the co-inventor of the TV remote control, died Thursday of heart failure at a Boise, Idaho, nursing home, Zenith Electronics Corp. said Friday. Dr. Adler, who won an Emmy Award for his 1956 invention, held more than 180 U.S. patents.

Part vampire, a hero fights creatures of the night with the help of an inventor (Kris Kristofferson, above) in Blade (9 p.m.-11:10 p.m., Starz).

American Inventor, a new television contest to find the next George Foreman Grill, is not the first of its kind - the USA Network's Made in the USA, which ran last year, was essentially the same show. But it's the first to come with the imprimatur of the world-devouring American Idol, whose Simon Cowell is a producer, and backed by the awesome might of the American Broadcasting Co. and boasting the power of a million-dollar purse. It begins tonight in a burst of patriotic narration, celebrating our native know-how even as judge Doug Hall warns: "We've got to reignite the spirit of invention in America.

Almanac-- Jan. 25-- 1915: the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, inaugurated U.S. transcontinental telephone service. 1959: American Airlines opened the jet age in the United States with the first scheduled transcontinental flight of a Boeing 707.