The Daily Alaska empire., 1943-11-02
CORONER BING RUNS IDEA LAB;
 AIMED AT AXIS

PASADENA, Calf. Amazing chap, that Crosby. Languid but indefatigable. You never know what pie he'll have a finger in.
 Long popular crooner of the Blues of the Night golfer cattle owner racetrack builder t. turf man whose nags delight radio gag sters And now-impresario of war-winning inventions.
 With his brothers, Bob, the band leader, and Larry, his public -rela- tions man. Bing has established a laboratory that fills classic need :: go-between for the unknown and often shabby Man with an Idea and the manufacturer who can put it into mass production.
 Aided by Army Technicians
 Obscure Edisons bring their gad- gets, drawings or hay concepts to the Crosby Research Foundation here, dozen miles east of Holly wood. The foundations engineers, aided now by Army technicians, then strive to perfect or adapt the rela- lively few offerings that show prom ise of practicability.
 Projects now in the works are all military secrets, but H. Lloyd Praeg- CT, the foundations general man. ager, can tell enough about them to indicate some are sensational.
 There's contrivance with which Praeger declares it's possible for an aviator to see through fogs and clouds literally, with his eyes; not inferentially by means of instru- ments.
 How it operates whether chem ically, electrically or otherwise-is of course a secret Praeger adds, but I can tell you this:
 When the inventor brought it to us. the thing just barely enabled us to see the ground as big dark blur through 500 feet of fog below plane Now we can distinguish build ings. We hope to be able to see people walking along the streets"
 How Patient Looks Inside
 Already perfected is stereoscopic which gives a three view of patients in- terior when surgeon is probing for 8 bullet or scrap of shrapnel. It's to cut in half the time needed for many operations
 Inventor Thomas Bussler of Wheelersburg, Ohio, turned in an auxiliary lock which, says Praeger, makes railroad-switch tampering with anything milder than welding torch.
 Through the laboratory passed a gold-plater mirror gadget that picks ID ultra-red rays from plane ex- hausts It has enabled English Spitfire pilots to shoot down hun dreds of German planes at night.
 Bing, publicity shy, scoffs. Hey, gan that stuff, fella," if you suggest he and his brothers are helping the war effort with their foundation. They have little to do with the actual research, but they are the financial packers and consult oc- on proposed developments
 Thus in Bing's case it's another activity for guy who never seems 70 try very hard at anything and calls himself "The Groaner," but is one of the favorite singers of all time :. who stars ill ,adio and movies is heard on ,ecords somewhere probably 24 hours a day TX. entertains the men in service camps .. largely financed he building of race track at Del Mar, Calf (now converted to de- 'ense work .. has a string of 30 -acehorses and owns hundreds of cattle in Nevada and Argentina.
 Most Ideas Rejected
 About 90 per cent of the gadgets submitted to him are rejected. Some are impractical, such as the per oetual motion and anti-gravitational averaging one each per month. Of those accepted for in- about 2 or 3 per cent pan out into something useful.
 The foundation produces some tems itself, turns others over to It collects percent age of the inventors royalty, varying with the amount of research it has but so far the books are kept entirely in red ink.