If At First You Don't Succeed

Over the next few days my dad and I e-mailed back and forth, discussing our research into Hedy Lamarr: her Austrian childhood, her marriage to a Nazi-friendly arms dealer, her escape to Hollywood, where she quickly became known as "the most beautiful girl in the world." But on August 11, 1942, Lamarr and her composer friend George Antheil received patent No. 2,292,387, a radio-controlled missile they hoped would override Nazi jamming efforts.

Lamarr wanted to quit the movies and become a munitions expert, but the government told her she was of more use selling war bonds (she reportedly once sold $7 million worth in a single night). It was the end of her technology career. It wasn't until 1997 that Antheil and Lamarr received peer recognition, by a professional engineering society.

When Lamarr died, the obituary in The New York Times focused on her movie stardom and dismissed her participation in the invention, saying she lacked the technological background, and crediting Antheil with the "expertise." This so enraged my father that he left harassing phone messages for the obit writer and his editor for days on end. "That's the problem with the world!" he fumed. "'Expertise' hell! Experts mostly know what can't be done, and since anything can be done, they know nothing!"

But thanks to Hedy Lamarr, my father and I began to figure out something essential about our universe: The world does not welcome innovators or artists, though not out of malice. The problem is a structural glitch. The world is set up to function as smoothly as it can, and it doesn't recognize the difference between innovation and disaster: Either one throws a wrench into the system. Trying to make the world really better is as much a crime against society as trying to make it worse. Only small incremental improvements are rewarded and applauded. Widgets.

When the dot-com bubble burst, much of the country's venture capital seemed to go with it. Yet my dad decided to try again. This time, knowing he could not contain or control his own iconoclasm to the extent necessary to build and sustain a traditional corporate structure, he would start a different kind of company. "I am not an entrepreneur," he finally acknowledged. "I have no management skills. I'm really an artist."

Morgan Labs would be an artists studio, a fount from which innovations and patents and little spinoff companies would spring. He would also take a cue from his married life and recruit people who knew and understood him. Wife No. 4, Judy, had turned out to be like a character out of a Dave Barry novel -- humorous and sane, and not the least bit tragic, even around the edges. She has stuck with Morgan for upward of 15 years.

Accordingly, one founding partner is a former college roommate, Ron Buel. Buel is a former Nike executive, and, before that, founding editor and publisher of the Willamette Week, one of Portland's alternative newspapers. Morgan's lawyer is old fraternity brother Lee Kell. Kell summed up their mission nicely when he told me, "We need to form a company to protect Morgan from the world, but more importantly, from Morgan himself."

The first of the Morgan lablets, named Octavian Scientific after the famously beneficent Roman emperor, was formed around a patented innovation for the testing of semiconductor chips. The potential market is huge -- more than 87 billion chips are shipped every year, and every one of them is tested. Octavian is in a partnership with Portland State University, the first such arrangement under a new Oregon law that allows educational institutions to co-develop technology with for-profit enterprises.

The second company, Morgan Connector, already has a staff of nine, including Buel as CEO and primary fundraiser. The core group of employees are all closer to their dotage than otherwise, except for two whippersnappers who are still in their thirties. "And we're not quite sure about them," my father harrumphed jokingly. The product, a new kind of coaxial cable connector, is as close to the great, mythological widget in the sky as anything Morgan has ever worked on.

Incredibly, the staff at Morgan Connector is unfazed by my dad's fertile and fickle imagination. They even seem to be enjoying it. "We used to date our business plan drafts by winter, spring, etc.," Terry Davis, the vice president of sales, said, laughing. "Then we dated them by month, then by week. Now we time-stamp them."

Morgan Connector is completing its first round of financing, with more than 20 angel investors so far.

"The scariest thing about the future is that the future isn't necessary."

One afternoon last winter, I sat in on a meeting at Starbucks with one of the principals of a medical equipment start-up called Hemonix who came to my father for advice on raising investment capital in a climate where few are biting. His company had patented a noninvasive method for measuring vascular pressure. Its technology replaces a procedure so risky that complications from the pressure test itself result in nearly 50,000 deaths every year. My dad can't offer much hope. "I feel for them. They're sitting on proven technology that would save 50,000 lives a year and lower costs," he says as we walk away. "And they will have a tough time getting funded." (Hemonix has since succeeded in obtaining funding.)

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