Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 20, 1991 TAG: 9103200475
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B3 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: CHRISTINE NEUBERGER RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
DATELINE: STAFFORD (AP) LENGTH: Medium
That interest in high explosives has helped trigger the ingenuity of Richard Snyder, the prolific inventor behind a slew of high-tech devices that have made electronic blasting safer.
Now 65, Snyder has six patents under his belt, but he doesn't allow his creative energy to smolder.
"You can't sit back on your laurels hoping one thing will last forever. I do it to keep from being bored, stymied," Snyder said. "Someone has a need for it somewhere and you fill the need. The possibilities are endless."
Snyder, a retired Air Force pilot and radio operator, conceived his first blasting safety instrument more than two decades ago.
He remembers a friend in the railroad industry talking about the premature detonation of explosives inadvertently caused by two-way radios.
For months, Snyder brainstormed and labored over drawings. He eventually hatched a device to prevent such premature detonation; he called it the Electromagnetic Attenuated Detonating System.
His first invention didn't spark much industry interest, but further creative efforts did. He went on to devise a succession of instruments that improved electronic blasting techniques and made the use of dangerous explosives safer, more reliable and less expensive.
"My eyes were opened to how backward the field was at the time," he recalled. "One invention just led to the next. When you make a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door."
With the financial backing of a partner, he began churning out dozens of inventions in a spare bedroom in the Springfield home where he once lived. He marketed his wares under the company name Safety Devices Inc.
The firm grew rapidly as it strove to keep pace with government and industry demand for blasting controls and tools.
At its height in the mid-1980s, Safety Devices employed more than 30 workers in a plant at a Lorton industrial park. As the decade wore on, however, the company scaled back its operations.
The firm, now based in a workshop next door to Snyder's Stafford home, is run by his wife, Doris Files. The couple's three teen-age children help out.
Snyder, who serves as the company's consultant, often can be found in an adjoining laboratory, dividing his time among a handful of projects and inventions in progress.
"I have to keep busy with something," he said. "What seems like trouble to some seems like a challenge to me."
He hasn't focused his creative energy solely on the field of electronics.
A proponent of passive solar energy, Snyder has built what he calls a "solar fence" to heat the water in his outdoor jacuzzi. He constructed the solar-energy generating system by mounting a series of water pipes on a fence.
"I still think solar energy has a lot of potential," said Snyder, who believes homeowners could reduce hot-water bills with the help of such simple, easy-to-maintain systems.
"Hot water costs about $50 a month. This is something I'd like to have myself. If it would do other people some good, why not."
Snyder, who is often contacted by budding inventors, eagerly offers encouragement.
He is helping one promising inventor assemble the prototype for a device that would prevent some hang-gliding deaths by warning gliders when they have failed to hook their safety lines.
"Even if it only saves one life," he said, "it's worth it."
by CNB