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Publications...

As you can see from the following list, the Captive Column has had its share of media exposure. Of course there is "Good Exposure", "Indifferent Exposure", and the ever popular "Bad Exposure". The interesting thing about the Captive Column is that it received all three types of coverage over the years. This threw the public into a state of confusion and helped to stifle the inventor's efforts to commercialize it.

You saw the two photos at the top of our Home Page. That beam was made of balsa wood and fiberglass in the inventor's garage. Do you know of anything made of 50% balsa wood that can support a Caterpillar tractor? Imagine what it could do if it were optimized and made of high performance materials like graphite and aramid fiber. You would think a technological breakthrough like this would be newsworthy, but the media generally greeted it with indifference.

The Captive Column got off to a bad start when it was first published by Design News without the inventors knowledge or permission -- endangering the patent filing process. Over the years it became apparent that the quality of the article was inversely proportional to the size of the publication:

• Small Circulation = "Good Article"
• Large Circulation = "Bad Article"

Maybe the Big Boys just couldn't find good help.

In all fairness some of the very small publications did try to get the story out, but they just didn't have the circulation to put it over the top. We have our own theories about why the media behaved as it did, but we'll let you make up your own mind about that one.  

These are the write-ups that we know about, and some of them have links to critiques. The inventor would like your help to expand this list since he is probably not aware of all publications (especially university studies). For example, the inventor stumbled across a North Dakota State University study by accident. Mr. Bosch was surprised to find that it contained copies of his own materials lifted from an article in Sport Aviation magazine, and he wasn't even mentioned in the study. There are probably many others like it at universities across the country so e-mail Mr. Bosch if you come across one. You can usually find them on a dusty old shelf in the Mechanical Engineering Department.

* Articles marked with a asterisk are not about the Captive Column -- they are about some of the inventors other ideas.

Copyright © 1998-2004 by Lawrence R. Bosch.