Pulse Of The City

Blown Away
A rocket scientist and a hairstylist team up to invent the world’s first cordless dryer.

As
a physicist and engineer for General Electric, Ericcson, and NASA,
Plano’s Walt Evanyk has often stood at the forefront of scientific
advancement. He has invented complex cellular and satellite technology,
and he helped design the first CT scan and ultrasound systems. In all,
his name appears on some four dozen patents. His latest invention: the
cordless hair dryer.

Unbelievable
as it may seem—in an era that has seen the human genome charted and
rotisserie cooking brought to the kitchen countertop—the cordless hair
dryer has remained, until now, just a stylist’s dream. The main hurdle
turns out to be the battery. Because a dryer converts electrical
current to heat (as opposed to motion, with heat as a byproduct), it
consumes about four times the amperage of a typical industrial power
drill. At that rate, a session of wireless coiffing couldn’t last more
than two minutes.
Perhaps no man yearned for a cordless dryer more
than Turtle Creek hairstylist Louie Perez. At international trade shows
and competitions such as the Hair Olympics (imagine Edward Scissorhands
meets Ready … Set … Cook!), he saw pesky corded dryers causing
constant problems, from trips and falls to circuit overloads. Then one
day a client of his at Perry Henderson Salon interrupted Perez’s
tonsorial ministrations to take a call on her cell phone. She later
explained that the call had come from an eminent battery expert, one
Walt Evanyk.

Initially,
Evanyk wasn’t too interested in Perez’s quest to free the hair industry
from the bondage of its electrical tether. He considered a hair dryer
“kind of low tech.” But then he gave the problem some thought and saw
the engineering challenges that would make the cordless dryer a real
accomplishment. “It’s about adjusting power demands, how you conserve
battery currents, how you maintain heat, how often you have to replace
the battery,” he says. “So, okay, it’s got my interest now.”

The
quest to build a better hair dryer required that Evanyk incorporate
technology—heat-retaining materials, weight-distribution ergonomics,
solid-state circuitry—developed for the space program. Perez offered
ideas for additional features, including a mechanism to spray gel and
mousse while drying and a collimator that allows a stylist to adjust
airflow without snap-on attachments. After four years of tinkering,
these two unlikely partners now share the patent, finalized in late
July, for what Perez calls “an industry-revolutionizing product.”

But
the science doesn’t stop there. Advances made in creating the cordless
hair dryer have already spawned other life-changing inventions,
including a system that can wirelessly monitor human vital signs and
the heretofore elusive cordless glue gun. —Dan Michalski

Thrill Ride
At last someone has figured out what to do with the Trinity: jet boats!

My
3-year-old boy is in the developmental stage where he’s fascinated by
any motorized means of conveyance. He’s a huge fan of Thomas the Tank
Engine, Jay Jay the Jet Plane, and that motorcycle on Central
Expressway (from his car seat: “Dad, that motorcycle is beating you”).
This works out well, though, because I’m in the same developmental
stage, and sharing a common interest has really reinvigorated our
relationship.

So
it’s hard to say who was having more fun as we hurtled down the Trinity
River at 50 mph in a Smoky Mountain Jet Boat skippered by a stout Kiwi
named Tup. Dodging bridge pilings under Walton Walker Boulevard, we
sprayed green water everywhere, flushed egrets out of trees, startled
turtles off logs, and basically caused all of God’s creation to wonder,
“What is that all about?” Yes, well. An explanation for those members
of the animal kingdom who need it:
The jet boat was invented in the
early 1950s by a New Zealand sheep rancher by the name of William
Hamilton. He was the first to figure out how to propel a boat by
sucking water into a jet unit and shooting it aft (see: Newton’s third
law of motion). The beauty of this arrangement is that a modern-day
recreational jet boat, without an external propeller, is highly
maneuverable and can operate in about four inches of water—and, more
importantly, it’s called a jet boat. Since Hamilton’s time, Kiwis have
dominated the jet-boat industry, both in terms of building the things
and piloting them.

And
that is why, when a North Carolina businessman started a company to
take people on jet-boat rides, he imported some Kiwis. He also brought
over two boats equipped with Hamilton jet units (powered by
450-horsepower Chevy engines). He painted these boats purple and green,
and he named his company, naturally enough, Smoky Mountain Jet Boats.
Then Nick Williams couldn’t secure an operator’s license (an imbroglio
too lengthy to detail here), so he had to relocate his company.

Which
is how, perhaps not naturally enough, Smoky Mountain Jet Boats came to
ply the Trinity. Williams has a brother who owns an office building
behind the AMC Grand megaplex. From the parking lot of this office
building, it is possible to launch a boat into a small overflow lake
fed by the Trinity.

Actually,
when Tup and his crew first put into the lake in July, they didn’t know
if they could make it onto the Trinity. A narrow channel connects the
lake to the river, and it was obscured by tree limbs and roots. Imagine
coming all the way from New Zealand to tear around a lake the size of
Bachman. “When we found out we could get on the reevuh,” Tup said, “we
were happy as peegs in excrement.” Only, being a Kiwi, Tup used a
different word for “excrement.” (I hasten to add that he didn’t say
this in front of my little chit.)

Now
it’s no worries, mate. Smoky Mountain is by far the best Trinity River
project I’ve personally experienced. At the point where they launch,
only a few miles of the river are navigable, but if you were kidnapped
by pirates, blindfolded, and taken to that stretch of river, you’d
never know it was the Trinity. A curtain of cottonwood, mulberry, and
oak trees blocks out whatever lies just over the river’s bank, and the
wake from the jet boats has dislodged all the aluminum cans and other
flotsam that used to litter the river’s crannies. I could imagine the
Trinity as Commodore Basil Muse Hatfield saw it in the 1930s, when he
took it from Dallas all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. Except
Hatfield piloted a motorized scow, which doesn’t sound nearly as cool
as a jet boat. And he didn’t have a sleeping child in his arms.

As
Tup roared through bends in the reevuh and put us into 360-degree
spins, I looked down and saw that my boy had checked out. He takes
after his mother in that regard. She, too, is prone to falling asleep
just when the action gets good.

A 30-minute ride runs about $25 per person. 888-900-9091 or www.smokymountainjetboats.com.