Pete, you were indeed fortunate to have Julius and John touch your life.
Out of curiosity, I searched, but found no record of Julius leaving us. I did discover more of his inventions, as well as learning how the EZ-Pass detection functions. We have that as "Peach Pass" in Georgia, and "Sun Pass" in Florida, reciprocal to other states as well.
He was a very prolific inventor, as can be seen here:
https://patents.justia.com/inventor/julius-m-j-madeyAmong other things, I owe him a debt of gratitude, as he saved me considerable expense while increasing the life of my car tires. Little did I know several of his inventions enabled my last wheel alignment:
Laser-based wheel alignment system
Patent number: 5274433
Abstract: A device and method to align the wheels of motor vehicles. A beam of collimated light from a low power visible laser is split into two generally parallel beams by a partially transmitting mirror and a series of plane front surface mirrors positioned in front and along side the vehicle being serviced. The two beams are reflected from a set of plane mirrors attached to the rims of the wheels to be aligned. The vertical and horizontal angles of each of the wheel-mounted mirrors are set by calibrated lead-screws to cancel the angular displacement of the wheels expected when the wheels are properly aligned. The reflected beams are imaged through a large aperture beam combiner on a common viewing screen. Correct toe-in and camber settings are indicated when the laser beams reflected from the wheel-mounted mirrors overlap at the center of the viewing screen.
Apologies to Matt for totally hijacking his thread.....
