When I was 12 I had my first inventive spark. I went to the Farmer Jack’s grocery store with my grandmother to do some shopping when I saw a promotion for a contest. WIN A CORVETTE!!! The flyer had a line art image of a Corvette with the top down. It wasn’t the Corvette itself that intrigued me, but something else I saw. I immediately grabbed the flyer and took it home.
If you are a child of the 80′s like I am then you know all about the Jetson’s and their flying cars. Seeing by 1990 “They” still didn’t have flying cars yet, I was more than obliged to offer my assistance. I traced the outline of the corvette when I got home and drew instead of wheels, what I thought a flying car should look like.
This was only the beginning of my inventive “streak”. As a kid me and my sister weren’t allowed to go out and play like the other kids because my mom was too afraid for us; so I got creative. I began to take any raw materials and build things with them, I remember building a helicopter using the remnants of a balsa wood airplane and some sheets of thin cardboard. I also made a replica of the Detroit pistons basketball court and a pool table complete with a green felt top and working ball return. I really started getting creative when I was trying to make prototypes of my inventions. I made a prototype of a nano-machine using some old parts of a broken VCR and Degree deodorant tops. What I ended up with was something out of a weird science movie that had metal prongs for one arm and a suction cup for the other arm; my idea was to have a nano-machine to separate and rearrange molecules by using an electrical charge while holding the molecule with the suction cup arm for placement.
I made other prototypes as well, not to also mention mechanical drafts as well. I started to create blueprints for my inventions while in the eighth grade. My first set of blueprints was for the exterior of a flying car. I created multiple angled views, front, rear, left, right, as well as 45 degree angled views. When I was 15, I was creating detailed drawings and cutaway views of my inventions. The details of one of my blueprints had a 3D effect that I never anticipated. Suffice to say my skills were getting better.
Upon graduating from high school I had documented over 500 inventions in a small black binder. My plan was to get my degree in mechanical engineering so I could build my inventions and CHANGE THE WORLD (insert echo here)!
Unfortunately I wasn’t trained well enough to deal with many of the pitfalls that young men can be exposed to. It was those same pitfalls that ended my college career short. I tried to go back and finish my degree when I was 23 and more mature. By this time I had a young family and I was trying to be a full time husband, provider and student. Unfortunately this proved to hard for me and I was lead to drop out. It came to a head when I couldn’t stay awake in my business law class. I was really enjoying my classes so this didn’t make much sense to me to me at the time. I would come to class ready to learn and would be attentively taking notes when all of the sudden, I would look up and realize, I had just fallen asleep in the middle of class. What was funny was you could see where I fell asleep in the notes I was taking. My sentences would go from a complete thought to flat-line, literally just a line where I had lost it! It’s funny now but that was really disappointing while it was happening. I decided to forgo my education for a while and focus on my job and my family. My dream would have to wait.
I still dream of creating a better tomorrow, and dreams are free and you can have as big a dream as you want. I may have lost many inventions to time and progress; however I still have at least 350 more to play with.
Louis D. Lockett, Sr.
Chairman / CEO
Lockett Technologies, Inc.
