Stanley Hiller, the XXth
Century Alchemist
Alchemy, a high tech industry
of the Middle Ages, to make gold out of garbage, was mostly abandoned and defunct
during the Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution. But the
story of projects that Stanley Hiller undertook and told me
about, qualifies him, in my book, for the title above.
Let me start with the Hiller Highlands.
To put you in the right frame of magnitude, this was probably the least
successful of all projects that were planned and created by Stanley Hiller.
He is the father of the better known Stanley Hiller Junior, who invented and
developed the Hiller helicopter during the World War 2 and grew it into a
major helicopter industry. But Stanley Hiller Senior was quite an
inventor himself. When I bought my lot at 75 Hiller Drive in 1963,
and during construction of my home in 1964, I learned quite a few things from
him about his life.
As the student he worked summers
bottling mineral water some place around Mount Shasta. Yes, there was
bottled water around in those days! That must have put him on the long
stretch of projects, always using whatever was available for free from which he
could make a usefull product which people would buy. What a
concept! The first very profitable project happened during the 30's
Depression. Fruit canning was already big in those days, peaches and
apricots primarily. Around the canneries there were mountains of stones
(or pits) of no food value. Canneries were happy to see Stanley
Hiller cart them away, perhaps they even paid him. But the real
value was in the almond-like centers hiding inside those hard peach
pits. Hiller crushed them and made almond paste which was in high demands
by the cosmetics industry. Apparently Helena Rubinstein cosmetics became one
of his main customers. But Hiller's inventiveness did not stop
there. As the years led into War and the mountains of now-cracked
pit shells grew, another inventions helped Stanley to make more dollars out of
the same refuse. The War effort coincided with the evolution of
electronics, and the old radio tubes, diodes, pentodes, klystron tubes and such
needed high grade carbon filaments. Hiller tried roasting the shells and
result was outstanding: he produced the best grade carbon for the
electronics, exactly what the industry needed. To handle the volume he
gently angled a very very long steel pipe and made it revolve
over gas burners. On one end went the pits on the other end came out
hi-tech carbon.
During this time, his young son
Stanley was inventing a helicopter right in the back yard of the mansion which
still stands today as the main house of the Bentley School. Stanley
Senior did not tell me much about this project, but he did show me his own
contribution to aviation. On the island of Alameda he and Curtis (or was
it Martin?) invented a sea plane. This probably happened in the
20's. Next time you visit Smithsonian Aerospace museum, check the
plaque for Stanley Hiller Sr. The dates are there.
But for us who live in the Hiller
Area, the most interesting story is how it came about. Stanley kept on
inventing and sometimes in the 50s invented a single-channel underground
utilities. He told me that when he applied for the patent, he found out
that two patents were filed but have expired. One was from Edison and the
other from Westinghouse. As far as I know, Tesla wanted to go
wireless. But PG&E was not convinced about Hiller's patent. They told
him, if you put water, electricity, gas, telephone into a single channel,
electrostatic forces could cause serious erosion. Basically, it will not
work. Stanley did not despair but he decides to show them. And much
against the advice and wishes of his wife's Opal he stripped down part of
the backyard -- a small canyon which you can see on the 1935 photo www.prah.net/hiller -- and
constructed at a great expense around 1960 (or 61?) twenty-seven lots, all
with Hiller underground utilities. Alas, PG&E refused to connect and
so the lots stood unsold until 1963, the year that finally the PG&E
resistance faded away.
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As with everything else Hiller
touched, it worked. The utilities have been working flawlessly for
the last 40 years. During this time, Stanley kept an eye on the
condominia development and continued converting garbage into gold.
There was a project with fishing industry in Philippines, and probably many
others I never heard about. His final project was in Florida where the
waterways were being choked by water hyacinths. He died
around 1972 and, as far as I know, before that problem was solved. The solution is still
waiting for some youth who could be torn away from playing video games and do
something useful...
Borut Prah, March 2005