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 Inventor Thomas Kasmer spoke with me in a phone interview on 10/21/04. His story is almost as fascinating as his invention. Mr. Kasmer went through the boot camps of some of the world's largest technology corporations at a very young age.

C2= Eric Haase for Conscious Consumers’
T.K.= Thomas Kasmer

   C2 - Can we talk about your personal history? I've read quite a bit of technical information on your invention, so I thought I'd concentrate more on you & what makes you tick.

    C2 - What led you to your work on the Hydristor? Were you an environmentalist wanting to help with ecological issues, a mechanically trained person who saw a way to improve current auto technology, or a combination?

   T.K “I’m a combination of that & more. My whole life has been a training period for what I'm doing
“I was a mad scientist kind of a kid. I would disassemble whatever I could get my hands on. I got into chemistry, model rocketry, stuff like that. I once built a rocket & launched it in front of a bunch of kids in the schoolyard. It ended up going in the principle’s office window. The kids loved it; she didn’t. I was also an avid reader of paperback sci-fi.”

    At age 14 he was given a Studebaker which became his new tinker toy. “I designed & built the intake, exhaust (an adaptation of a 1936 Graham Paige supercharger) & modified the overdrive to make it 2 speed at any speed which gave 6 forward & 2 reverse gears. I had that 6-cylinder “Studie” doing a 125 mph.”

   Kasmer went to a technical high school, ‘Binghamton North.’ He studied within their electricity program for 3 years, learning about electronic distribution, & AC/DC systems construction. He also had shop, drafting, drawing, chemistry & all the regular courses you got in a good technical school back then.

   While still in high school in 1957, at age 17, Kasmer was awarded an apprenticeship to the IBM electronic training program. He got shipped around to new departments at IBM every few weeks. He got to tinker with the latest electronic technologies in development.

   Kasmer ended up doing reliability studies on new IBM technologies for 2 years. He then decided he wanted to go to college. Harpur College (State University of New York at Binghamton) admissions told him to take the state exam that Saturday to see if he could qualify. He managed to get prepared in time & got the 2nd highest score in the state.

      The year was 1959 & few educational loans were available. Kasmer resigned his position at IBM, & began his study of physics & math at Harpur. He had no money saved so he took jobs as an electrical technician at a local company. His work was with early digital logic cards using transistors for which he developed power supplies. He worked with two other engineers on power designs, took delivery jobs & swept the floors of a machine shop. For extra cash he became the chief mechanic at a nearby kiddy amusement park. Meanwhile, he continued working as a consultant for IBM.

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The inventor (left) at work.

  Kasmer's first patent would come as a result of his IBM consulting. It was actually a co-patent for his design work on the "Hydrapad", an automated hydraulic positioning drill for circuit board manufacturing.

   In 1963, using the money he had saved from his jobs, Kasmer bought a Corvette split window ZO6 coupe. Three years later he picked up a 1963 Buick Rivera with a variable pitch Dynaflow transmission. The hydristor was partly the lovechild of Kasmer's relationship with the Dynaflow (or as my dad calls it, the 'Dyna-slush', because of its propensity to leak transmission fluid & sometimes 'slushy' acceleration. But it was the Dynaflow's variable-pitch torque converter that caught Kasmer's attention.

   Kasmer's power supply experience landed him a job at General Electric. While there he worked on a C.D.I. discharge ignition with impulse timing instead of points. This was an ignition system that didn't appear on mass manufactured cars until much later. His next employment was at Bendix Scintilla; Maker of the mini-magneto spark ignition switch widely used in WWII airplanes.

   While at Bendix he was put to work on a firing circuit for rocket ignition. The result of this work was the silicon control rectifier. Kasmer came to understand the basis for silicon control rectifiers & used them in his work at GE. His circuit work may have gone to the moon on one of the L.E.M.S.

   From 1963 to ’86, Kasmer mostly worked as a freelance consultant & with IBM as needed. He worked with Westinghouse on radar & nuclear survival power supplies, consulted on automated assembly lines, steering gears, & the automobile smog pump (a GM innovation.)

   In 1986, while working as a power supply engineer, Kasmer got a call from a company seeking a one million-watt power supply for Reagan’s star wars laser project. Kasmer was back home in Binghamton at the time taking care of his ailing mother. He set up shop in her basement where he designed &built a 150,000-watt section of the requested one million-watt power supply which was being funded by a military contractor. However, Kasmer felt called away from working on weaponry.

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