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Alvin M. Marks, Inventor With 122 Patents, Dies at 97
By BRUCE WEBER [New York Times]
Alvin M. Marks, a prolific inventor who held patents on polarized film for
sunglasses, a 3-D moviemaking process, a generator the size of a grapefruit
that could produce enough electricity for a house, a windmill with no moving
parts and a trillion-dollar "space train," died Sunday [May 25, 2008] in
Gardner, Massachusetts. He was 97 and lived in Athol, Massachusetts.
The cause was liver and pancreatic cancer, said Molly Bennett Aitken, his
former wife.
A man capable of both small-bore pragmatism and large-scale imagination, Mr.
Marks held 122 patents. An expert in optics, he developed several variants
of polarized film that were used in sunglasses and to reduce glare on
television screens; a headlight system to aid night driving; and window
panels that change gradually from transparent to opaque and back again.
In 1951, he was granted a patent for a "three-dimensional intercommunicating
system" that could be used to make TV shows and movies. He was president for
many years of the Marks Polarized Corporation, based in the Whitestone
section of Queens, where, along with his brother, Mortimer, who died in
2006, he invented many improvements on his original device, even though
three-dimensional moviemaking never became the widespread technique he hoped
it would.
For much of the latter half of his career, Mr. Marks focused on developing
alternative and low-cost energy sources. An early experimenter with solar
energy, he served as an adviser to President John F. Kennedy, and in 1967
was a consultant to the United States Senate on new technologies.
His inventions in the energy field include several aerosol electric power
generators for home use as well as larger-scale generators, including the
"windmill" with no moving parts, which proposed the placement in remote
locations of enormous screens that would emit charged water particles into
the wind to create power.
In recent years, he had been developing an array of minute antennas capable
of collecting sunlight and transforming it into electricity, as well as a
corresponding battery for storing it.
Alvin Melville Marks was born in Brooklyn [New York] on October 28, 1910.
His father, Alexander, was a lawyer. He studied at a variety of colleges and
universities, including Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, Harvard, M.I.T. and
New York University, receiving a bachelor of science degree in electrical
engineering from Cooper Union. Because he could read German, his former wife
said, he spent much of his Navy service during World War II translating
intercepted Nazi documents.
After his first two marriages ended in divorce, he married Molly Bennett in
1967; they divorced a decade later, and she subsequently married Gerard
Aitken III, who became Mr. Marks's business partner, helping to raise money
to support his research. Mr. Aitken died in 1987, and Mr. Marks adopted the
two young children his partner and friend had had with his former wife.
All told, he had five children, two stepchildren and two adopted children,
all of whom survive him. They are Sara Marks Tabby of Merion Station, Pa.;
Bridget Marks of New York City [New York]; Jacqueline Marks of Dallas
[Texas]; Sean Christopher Marks of Litchfield, Connecticut; Frederick Peter
Marks of Athol; Douglas Marks of Pensacola, Florida; Meridyth Senes of
Burlington, New Jersey; Gerard J. Aitken IV of Swan Lake, New York; and
Hannah Aitken of New York City [New York]. Mr. Marks is also survived by 12
grandchildren.
"My father was fluid with unconventional relationships for years," said Ms.
Marks Tabby. "That's how he ended up having a hand in raising nine
children."
In 1989, Mr. Marks won a patent, with Peter G. Diamandis, for perhaps his
most audacious invention, a plan to circumvent conventional space travel
with a 6.6-million-pound, 180-foot train that would be propelled into outer
space in an electromagnetic tunnel. It would cost trillions of dollars and
take a decade to build, he said, but once complete, it would cut the cost of
space exploration drastically.
"It's a feasible idea and should be given consideration," he told The New
York Times at the time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/31/business/31marks.html?ref=obituaries
M MIT
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