"It's so cool," chortles Ellwood G. Norris. "I love swooping around ten feet off the ground. It makes me feel like superman." Woody Norris, aged 65 going on 15, is describing his latest invention and plaything. It's a one-man microlight helicopter that costs less than a small family car but which, he claims, is so simple to fly that it can be mastered in a couple of hours.
He's hoping his 'Airscooter' will go into mass production within the next 18 months and revolutionise personal transport. But, before that, there is the small matter of the worldwide launch of his new loudspeaker system, which some are predicting will revolutionise the way we experience sound.
Norris's speakers were unveiled by Sony in the UK this summer. Unlike conventional speakers, which depend on vibration to make sound, they have no moving parts. Instead they convert sound into a pair of inaudible ultrasonic waves that, when combined, reproduce the original frequency.
He claims there are fourteen billion speakers sold every year across the world "I can't see why we shouldn't have a twenty per cent share within ten years ...
"The major benefit is completely distortion-free sound throughout the audible spectrum," says Norris, speaking from the California offices of his company American Technology Corporation. But because the sound is carried in beams – a bit like a sonic laser – it has the added novelty of only being audible when you are within the beam. "It means you could be listening to Tony Bennett in the front of the car while your children listen to Eminem in the back, and neither of you will hear the other's music," he explains.
The technology has a huge range of uses. It is already being employed in American supermarkets and on vending machines to send out sales messages to passing customers. It even has military applications as a sound canon – apparently hypersonic sound (HSS) can turn a brain to jelly from several miles.
If all goes according to plan, it is also likely to turn Norris into a multi-billionaire, possibly in the Bill Gates league. He claims there are fourteen billion speakers sold every year across the world "I can't see why we shouldn't have a twenty per cent share within ten years," he laughs.
Even allowing for the natural optimism of the entrepreneur, it seems that the exuberant Norris is on course for extreme success. He's already a millionaire several times over. But, he admits, it could all have been very, very different.
His is an almost clichéd version of the great American success story. Born into extreme poverty, he pulled himself up by his own bootlaces, escaped his deprived origins and went on to fashion his life in exactly the way he wanted it.
"I had a terrible background. I was brought up in a one-room shack in Maryland. There wasn't even an inside toilet. My family was illiterate. My father was a wonderful fellow but he couldn't even write his own name." The family was so poor that Woody and his brother had to go to school on alternate days because they only had one uniform.
"Thankfully, I decided I just wasn't going to be crushed by it," says Norris. He was always interested in how things worked, so he would collect broken radios and fix them in the family chicken coop. "It became my consuming passion," he adds.
Corporations stifle creativity. Most of the best ideas are coming from little guys on the fringes.
And he says he can remember exactly, almost to the minute, the moment he realised he was going to escape his background.
"I had been in the Airforce. After I left, my father disappeared and I had to get a job to pay off his debts. It happened to be at the University of Washington. I wasn't interested in a degree, but I was allowed to sit in on classes. I learnt a lot."
"One night, in April 1961, I happened to be flicking through the latest edition of Radio and TV Electronics magazine. I came to an article about a new no-blade razor that ionised your beard. It was only when I got the bottom of the article that I saw a box which said, 'You have been April fooled. If you can write next year's fake invention, we'll pay you $200.' "
That was two weeks' wages, so he thought he'd have a go. The spoof device he came up with was a linear tracking arm for a record player. "I called up a few hi-fi dealers just to make sure it was plausible but they were so enthusiastic that I thought why waste it as an April fool when I could make it for real?"
That same weekend he made a prototype, and showed it to a local dentist who invested $20,000 on the spot. "I almost passed out. That was an enormous amount at the time. It meant I could refine it into a working model."
From there he never looked back and the inventions just flowed. He made his first million with a precursor to the sonogram. Later, he created a hands-free headset for cellular phones and sold it to Jabra Corp, an international cellphone equipment marketer. There was a 20-hour cassette tape, the first palm-sized digital voice recorder and an in-ear speaker that uses the bones of the skull to transmit sound.
The way he tells it, life for Woody Norris has been a never-ending reel of folksy good luck. He admits that his down-home, self-educated country ways have led some people to mistake him for stupid. "Everyone misjudges me as not too bright, not too savvy and they all try to rip me off."
But he thinks that's because big business so badly needs people like him. "Corporations stifle creativity. Most of the best ideas are coming from little guys on the fringes. I may be 65 but I feel I am just getting started," he laughs gleefully.
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