This is one of my favorite stories from the history of systematic innovation. This article is an excerpt from ‘ADL Chronicles – A presentation of the products and inventions that came out of the laboratories of Arthur D. Little, Inc.’, written by Irving J. Arons.
In March 1977, Jim Birkett, a senior staff member of Arthur D. Little, came up with the idea of the company sponsoring a contest to see if any of its staff could come up with a way to break another adage – that lead balloons couldn’t fly. This was the beginning of ‘The Great Lead Balloon Contest’.
Jim formed a blue-ribbon committee of senior management (and the daughter of Public Relations Director Alma Triner, Kim Triner – a noted Juvenile Balloon Addict) and issued a Request for Proposal (RFP), which spelled out the specifications for flying a lead balloon. Proposals were due on March 30th. In all, six teams responded with proposals of how they would solve the problem and build and fly a lead balloon. The Blue Ribbon Committee selected three approaches, announced that they would supply 0.8 mil lead foil (tissue-paper thin) and helium, and that the ‘fly-off’ would be scheduled for Friday, May 13th.
One team, headed by Marie Chung, Warren Lyman, and Ed Dohnert, proposed to build an 8 foot diameter by 14 foot long endoskeletal balloon/dirigible, built on a balsa wood frame. It was dubbed the ‘Lead Zeppelin’.
A second team, headed by Jack Ennis and Sid Meyers decided on a traditional spherical, non-rigid design. They would build a scrim-reinforced lead foil outer skin, backed up by a conventional 10 foot diameter weather balloon. Their intent was to fill the space between the reinforced foil and the weather balloon with helium, allowing the air in the weather balloon to escape and eventually remove the balloon. That proved difficult or impossible to do, and the helium was eventually contained within the weather balloon – not the foil.
My team, headed by Ken Sidman, Paul Monaghan and Art Schwope, went with a cubist/Origami design, suggested by Paul Monaghan, that was basically a nine-foot cube to be folded flat and unfolded or opened only during inflation to ensure that there would be no air trapped inside, thus the “Origami” moniker. The lead foil strips were to be held together using one-sided adhesive tape, and the side seams were to be reinforced with adhesively-held scrim.
As previously mentioned, the ‘fly-off’ was scheduled for Friday the 13th of May. But, due to excess wind conditions, the lift-off was postponed to the following Monday, May 16th.
The event was covered by the press – AP and several local newspapers, as well as by a local Boston TV station.
As the event unfolded, our cubic balloon began inflating and unfortunately, due to a technical problem, one of the side seams stuck to the bottom panel and tore a huge hole in the bottom of the balloon as it inflated. In a post mortem, we concluded that we should have put some talc over the adhesive bonded scrim to prevent it from ‘blocking’.
But, in fact, our cubic balloon creation did lift some 12 feet high off of the ground. I know this because I was underneath the balloon, trying to place the ‘silk purse‘ in a gondola-like basket for the historic ride! A gust of wind came along, whooshing the helium out of the gaping hole and the balloon collapsed on top of me.
The spherical balloon lifted off of its launching pad, broke its tether and landed about a mile down the road off of our ADL complex.
But, the third balloon, the Lead Zeppelin took the prize. It too broke its tether and was last seen heading toward Logan airport – about six miles from ADL. Someone on the balloon committee realized that it would show up on Logan’s radar and called the control tower to warn them about our problem. After some laughter on the part of the tower personnel, they began tracking our IFO (Identified Flying Object) and it was last spotted by a commercial aircraft out over the Atlantic Ocean headed toward Europe!
After the contest Art Schwope noted, “By definition, a balloon is an inflatable structure. The so-called winner of the contest was a design based on the lead foil being placed on a rigid, wooden frame. It was filled with helium but not inflated by helium. It was a zeppelin, not a balloon.”
The spherical balloon really wasn’t one, either. It was “built as an over layer of the lead film on top of a weather balloon. The intention was to remove the weather balloon for the contest, but that proved difficult or impossible. Thus the helium was contained by the weather balloon, not the lead foil.”
In short, there was only one, true lead balloon.(Ours.) It didn’t fly high or far. But it was the only inflatable structure in which the lead film contained the helium. Yes, technically it was a failure, but true to the nature of ADLers, we considered it a success, as it was the only lead balloon and it did fly (for a short time)!
So, once again, the scientists at Arthur D. Little had done the impossible and shown that lead balloons could be made to fly.
To see the original article this story was taken from, go here.
If you would like to stay current with the Frame of Reference blog, please subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow me on Twitter.
©2010, Chris Fillebrown, All Rights Reserved
Related posts:
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I saw this recreated on Mythbusters, they did the same thing!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZSkM-QEeUg
I heard that Mythbusters had floated a lead balloon. This story is a dramatic example of the spirit of innovation. It opened my mind.
Thanks for the link, Curt!
Chris
{ 1 trackback }