Inventor passes on his tips

DAYTONA BEACH -- Jim Cairns was a boy, he invented a way to hang pictures in his room without making the holes in the wall that so irritated his mother.

He mixed iron powder with paint and spread it on the walls, then he put magnets on his pictures and stuck them to the iron treatment.

It worked for a while until the walls started rusting.

His mother was not amused.

A few years later, his high school principal was equally unimpressed with Cairns' antics and asked him to leave school.

"I was a bit of a cut up," Cairns said, recalling those days.

But his early urge to push the envelope has served Cairns well in later life. He went on to found Ocean Design Inc., and to invent electric and fiber-optic connectors that have led to more than 50 patents.

Now, Cairns has written a book, "The Inventor's Pathfinder: A Practical Guide to Successful Inventing," which encourages people to invent and gives them the steps to follow.

If necessity is the mother of invention, Cairn's book is no exception. He discovered most books about inventions were written by lawyers and focused on obtaining patents. "There was nothing to walk someone through the process," Cairns said. "I wanted to provide a road map, a path to follow. Anyone who wants to spend the time to do it right, can."

Cairns self-published his book through iUniverse and it is available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. "I thought at the end of my career, if I could set out my experiences and help anyone, I wanted to do that," said Cairns, 69.

Cairns said when he talks to groups, he asks for a show of hands from those who've had ideas for inventions. Almost everyone raises a hand. Then, he asks how many did anything with their ideas, and no hands come up. "The beginning inventor's biggest problem doesn't seem to be getting interesting ideas; it's knowing what to do next," Cairns said.

He recently spoke to the Volusia Manufacturers Association. "The members were in awe," said Jayne Fifer, the group's president. "I think he opened quite a few eyes on the thought process for coming up with inventions."

It's often a matter of building a better mousetrap. Cairns likes to point out there are 100 patents on toothpicks and 500 patents on golf tees.

If they didn't know otherwise, his listeners might not suspect this down-to-earth man with an engaging smile invented highly sophisticated fiber-optic connectors. He makes it sound as easy as inventing toothpicks.

After he was kicked out of high school in Pennsylvania, Cairns took the GED. When he wasn't accepted to the University of Pittsburgh, he just started going to classes anyway. College administrators finally noticed after two semesters when Cairns was named to the honor society. The dean called him in and, after admonishing him in terms not printable, begrudgingly agreed to admit him.

Cairns went on to obtain a Ph.D. in physics. He was working for the Navy when he applied the first principle he now describes in his book on inventing: find a problem that needs a solution.

Tired of making so many underwater dives to readjust or replace underwater connectors, Cairns was inspired to develop a better connector. The first connector he invented was licensed for $1,500, but was never made. He kept trying.

Cairns continued to invent underwater connectors, which have been compared in laymen's terms to regular wall sockets, while working at The Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California and as a chief scientist for NATO in Italy. Then, Cairns decided to take the leap of faith that would change his life. "I decided to take a couple of years off to see if I would make money as a inventor," he said.

He moved to Florida and started a company, which he sold to Lockheed Martin Corp. in 1985. Then, he returned to Italy, kicked back, enjoyed the food and wine and waited. When his agreement not to compete with Lockheed expired, he came back to Florida. He established Ocean Design in his garage in Holly Hill to manufacture and sell the connectors he invented.

The company has grown to 225 employees and has worldwide customers that include the offshore oil and gas industry and the military. Cairns said the company's connectors have expanded energy exploration by allowing deeper ocean searches for oil and gas.

Last summer, Teledyne Technologies, Inc. bought a majority interest in ODI at a price valuing ODI at a minimum of $60 million. ODI stockholders have the option to sell their shares to Teledyne until June 2009 when Teledyne will have complete ownership.

Cairns remains on ODI's board of directors and lives half of the year in Ormond Beach. He spends the rest of the year with his Italian wife, Annamarie, in a 700-year-old monastery near Urbino, which they converted into their home. He also became an Italian citizen.

Now that he is known as an inventor, people come to him with all sorts of screwy ideas. In Italy, Cairns agreed to go to a man's house to look at an invention. It is a "perpetual motion machine," the man told Cairns. "Just a minute, let me go turn it on." The memory still makes Cairns laugh.