Call (888) 786-7243Every so often people come in to raid their self storage units looking for old appliances, old printers, old motors — anything that a kid could take apart to get parts that could be used for a science project. Reading yesterday’s Denver Post, I suddenly realized that one of those kids may actually invent something useful someday — just like Stephen Katsaros did. Katsaros used to be one of those kids — when he was 7, inspired by a hot summer day, Katsaros took apart his bedroom box fan and put it back together using a motor that was bigger and stronger than the old one.
“It sounded like a B-52, but I was cool,” Katsaros told the Post. “I was always breaking stuff open and never really fixing it.”
In case you missed yesterday’s Post, Stephen Katsaros is a local inventor — yes, an inventor, just like Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Potts was a fictional character, of course, but Katsaros is real — and so is his invention, a solar-powered light bulb.
You may be thinking, don’t we already have solar-powered light bulbs? Well, indirectly, yes, if you get electricity from a solar panel, and use that electricity to provide power for an ordinary light bulb.
But Katsaros’ bulb is no ordinary light bulb. It is made of impact-resistant plastic, and contains special computer chips to prolong the life of the solar-powered battery inside. With those chips, the bulb will last about five years, charged by four solar panels. It needs to be charged again about once every four hours.
While people in industrialized countries who are used to having electricity may see no advantage in the new bulbs, they aren’t really intended for mass consumption here. Instead, the solar-powered bulbs can provide light for people who do not have an electrical system to hook a bulb up to. Worldwide, that’s 1.6 billion people, who typically use candles or kerosene lamps. (The kerosene used in kerosene lamps is expensive, emits tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, and worst of all, slowly poisons the lungs of people in the household who must breathe polluted air.)
Katsaros’ bulbs, which were invented only a few months ago, are already beginning to be distributed in 33 countries, and are about to be introduced to Liberia, where there is no electrical grid. The bulbs will be distributed by a new West African company called Africana SunPower.
In his lifetime so far, Katsaros has invented dozens of gizmos. Reading his story, all I could think of was that his parents — or someone else in his life, friends, relatives, neighbors? — must have been incredible hoarders. How else could he have found mechanical parts for all the tinkering he must have done while growing up?
Parents, if your child likes to tinker, don’t remonstrate. Katsaros’ tinkering led him to a mechanical engineering degree at Purdue. After he invented the solar light bulb, Katsaros was able to quit his day job (working as a patent agent at a legal firm — which had to be terribly tedious compared to inventing things!) and dedicate himself full-time to the new bulb. He hopes to bring the bulb next to India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Nigeria.
In case you were wondering, Katsaros is not the only inventor out there who is doing this kind of work. For the next three weeks, 50 inventors from 20 countries are gathering at Colorado State University for the fourth International Development Design Summit. The conference is dedicated to finding innovative ideas that also have business and distribution plans that will help new inventions to be brought to people in impoverished, rural areas who particularly need innovative technology.