Re: New 10" Newtonian Telescope Being Created

From: Ralph Hertle (ralph.hertle_at_verizon.net)
Date: 01/02/05 

Date: Sun, 02 Jan 2005 04:53:13 GMT

Chris.B:

Thanks for your wishes for the New Year and your extensive comments:

Please permit me the courtesy of adding some remarks. If I haven't phrased
something as a question, please feel free to say what you think.

chris.b@mail.dk wrote:
> a) If you have patentable ideas then the last thing you want to do is
> disclose them.

Yours is the voice of wisdom and experience.

In the American free enterprise system one keeps one's ideas secret until
an application for patent may have been issued or a patent granted. Private
property is created relative to the public domain when a patent is granted,
as you probably already are aware.

> b) If you really need help designing something so simple as a
> telescope, then you know nothing of the subject matter.

Hey. That's painting with too broad a verbal brush. I know what the hell
I'm doing.

There are some concepts that I'm still struggling with, for example, what
is the difference of the prime focus and the secondary focus of a Newtonian
telescope? Perhaps you may have something to offer.

> c) Telescopes have a very long history. If something hasn't been
> invented by now, ask yourself what you can possibly offer, that huge
> numbers of great minds, with vastly greater experience haven't managed
> to come up with already over theree centuries?

The prior art of telescope technology, science, and inventions is indeed
huge. That has to be checked prior to making an application for a patent.

> d) If your ideas are so inspiring I can assure you that once your
> patents are granted "they" will come to you.

That is wise advice.

That they will come is another matter. In our current society it is not the
custom that the investment capitalists will seek out the wealth creator's
ideas. External tax and legal realities make that not the fashion. In a
more rational tax and legal world investors would seek out the wealth
creators, I am sure. I belong to the two top inventor's professional
organizations, and I can assure you that researchers from the Wall Street
brokerages and corporation creation firms are not setting up card tables
and handing out literature at the meetings of the two top inventor
organizations. Nor are private investors in evidence either.

Money, and not wealth creation, is more the fashion, e.g., the popular
investor wants to make a profit on trades and often hasn't a clue regarding
what the causes of wealth creation are for the producing businesses or
manufacturers.

> e) Other inventors (successful or otherwise) are much too secretive and
> paranoid to share their ideas with you.

You speak from ignorance. Inventors love to talk about their ideas, and
written non-disclosure agreements enable vigorous discussions. The
inventors organizations are active proof of that. Inventors do not give
away their ideas by sharing them except if they have been defrauded or
conned. Inventors are otherwise advised to keep there ideas to themselves
to protect their property rights, and they are advised (by the NSI and the
ASI) to disclose their ideas only under the specific conditions of a
non-disclosure agreement to members or to licensed patent agents or
licensed patent attorneys, and not to invention marketing firms.

> Why should they? When they can
> obtain their own patents and try to profit from them themselves?

That makes little sense to me. Of course, inventors want profits from their
inventions.

Inventors seek financial partners at all stages of the development of their
ideas. Inventors must always get their own patents. Who else is going to
obtain that patent unless that may be their employer. Inventors may, of
course, if they are under contract with a firm as an employee, assign the
invention to the employer.

Many designers and inventors may elect to keep their ideas to themselves or
issue them to the public domain if their employers are corrupt or dishonest
in some way. That is quite common. (That's the "I did or didn't invent
that" theory.) The weird thing that is happening in pre-employment
agreements these days is that the prospective employee must sign agreements
that he understands and the employer agrees that the employer is not bound
by any agreement or statements that the employer may make to the employee
during the course of employment. Kantian and Post-Modernist applications to
legal philosophy have come full circle and have deleted the mother lode of
the ideas that the Pragmatist lawyers depend upon for making money. Like
the Pragmatists say..."whatever".

> f) You don't need a computer to design a telescope. You need a pencil,
> possibly a pair of compasses and a few sheets of A4 and inspiration.

Now, you are talking sense.

I prefer the Eagle and Ebony editor's graphite pencils. Pilot fiber-tip
pens are great too, and they are good for smaller detail work. All these
are hugely faster than computers, and believe me, I've been using powerful
and sophisticated CAD computers for nineteen years now.

> g) Telescope manufacturers are governed by real world customer needs
> and real world engineering costs.

The PRC is producing most of the telescope products these days. Notice,
however, that they copy and imitate the innovations and the styles that
have been produced in the West. That is, in the Capitalist nations by
private inventors, engineers, designers, stylists and other innovators and
wealth creators. The PRC is less interested in the consumer than he is in
the innovations that can be stolen or imitated. Socialism imitates western
capitalism.

Western manufacturers whose wealth and intellectual property are protected
under law are vigorous in their attempts to relate the interests of the
consumer to the creations of the innovators. Note that the PRC
manufacturers are stumbling all over themselves to create "what sells" (a
Pragmatist by-word), and they are producing ridiculous amounts of useless
redundancy of product types. Oddly, one of the main rationales of Marxist
socialism was that the redundancy of the capitalist robber-baron producers
and exploiters of wealth would be eliminated. They are copying the products
of the West, but in that they failed to copy the principles of intellectual
and all property rights from the west, they are not discriminating about
the types and amounts of investments. They are wasting investment capital
at a huge pace as evidenced by the massive redundancies in the telescope
producer market. PRC vendors may fail financially due to the lack of patent
  protections.

> h) Have you read all the books on telescopes in all the common
> languages,

Hell no.

> studied all the relevant magazines from (say) the last 150
> years and studied all the telescope designs in and out of existence?

No.

> (From roughly the 17th century to the present day)

No

> i) Have you studied all the patents (granted and applied for) related
> to telescope design in all the major centres across (at least) Europe
> (E & W) Asia and the American continent?

No.

That is an enormous task. I will search the USPTO patents in detail,
however. internationally, patent protection is possible. A simple patent
granted in the US would cost approximately $4,000, minimum. Multiply that
by a like amount for every major country, plus legal translation fees and
contests, That depends on the marketing scope for the product based on that
patent. If you need the international expertise I can direct you to the
inventors and patent agents who have that direct knowledge.

> j) Are you qualified in any area of engineering, mathematics, optical
> design or fabrication which would convince investors of you abilities?

Yes.

Providing the investors have sufficient knowledge to understand the ideas.
Investors without knowledge should stay away. They need to understand what
creates wealth, and that letting money ride on the say so of some brokerage
sales person doesn't necessarily create wealth. We are talking creating
wealth and not only making money. Wealth is prior to money.

> j) What track record do you have for inventive ideas?

Lots. I have thousands of great ideas noted on cards and drawings.

> k) Having a patent doesn't mean you can make money from it. Unless
> someone wants what it does, at a price they can sell a desirable
> product for,

There are numerous ways that agreements can provide for money to work.
Negotiated contracts are the usual.

> without massive investment in R&D.

There are rules of thumb that provide a framework for guesstimating the
ratio of R&D costs and the unit quantities of sales through which the costs
are amortized. Note that ten or so years ago the costs of CRT TVs and
monitors fell dramatically due to the fact that the engineering costs and
the costs of tooling had been paid for, that production quantities were
high, and that fixed development and production costs were no longer a
major reason for higher prices.

> (or paying an exorbitant
> sum to get the patent rights from you)

Inventors usually get a relatively small part of the eventual retail price.
Rarely do they get exorbitant prices. The production or sales volume
determines the type of royalties. Also, some inventors are engineers and
designers, and the component of their development work in the total would
be higher. Royalties could range from .5% to 20%, for example, depending on
the amount of engineering development provided by the inventor and the
quantity of sales.

> l) Unless there is a huge demand, or a huge profit to be made per item,
> you are not going to get rich, in a short time, from making or deigning
> telescopes.

Some inventors get rich. Some, like the inventors of the transistor and the
  intermitant windshield wiper for autos had to fight in the courts for
years to get only a small percentage of what they should have received. The
lawyers manage the process of legal actions in such a way that they get
more fees in the long term from their rich clients. That trend often works
against both the individual and corporate investor.

Regarding telescopes, there are three factors that would govern large
profits. One, the market is small. Two, there are too many producers (and
insufficient patent protection that protects capital investment). Three,
there is massive production at low costs from the third world, and if from
the PRC where contracts and intellectual property rights are not respected,
their are low prices from one's imitator-copier competitors. If one deals
with production sources from, say Brazil in the free world, the risks may
be reduced somewhat.

Not even if you are a genius like Roland. (Roland who?) :-)

Music machines?

>
> m) Telescopes are very small beer in world full of vast oceans.

True. The genius of an enterprise would be to profitably sell a million
things to a million customers or one thing to one customer and still make a
profit. That's what American private enterprise entrepreneurs know best.

> n) Have you read the book:"Unusual Telescopes" By Peter.L Manly?
> o) I'm a terrible cynic. Convince me that your post isn't simply a
> troll.
>
> Best of Luck in 2005
> Chris.B
>

I haven't read it. I have been impressed by the large amount of technical
information that has become available over the internet in the recent few
years.

A troll? Never. I have too much respect for rational people who have
something important to say and who will ultimately probably benefit by
their ideas.

Ralph Hertle
.