Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[Zeev Hed]

mainehiker, I have met Ovshinski first, at the first International conference on amorphous materials, it must have been 1970 or there about, my last encounter was in 1988, at the first international conference on applications of High temperature superconductors, in San Diego, I have not talked to him since. From the early 70', Stan has managed to raise (and waste) probably close to a $billion of OPM but with little to show for it. He is a visionary, but not a good businessman. My experience has been that history repeats itself in that regard. He had ventures with Mobil and Exxon in the past, that came to naught. As for the hydride technology, it works, but the hysteresis is great and probably titanium hydrides would be better, I have not worked on that for too many years to know where this is standing now.

I remember three years ago having a big argument on SI about Stan (in regard to OUM, which is a flawed approach, IMHO, based on pure thermodynamics), and while INTC/ENER are still working on it (and Stan seduced a great guy, Lowery from Micron, to run it), I think that it will not find major applications either, just some minor unimportant niches.

Zeev