DOLPHIN TAILS, INC.
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The story begins in Dade County, FL, two weeks before my father's death in October of 1976. During those two weeks I would take my mother and father outside in their wheelchairs and discovered that would soon tire and want to rest. Having a lot of time on my hands, I decided to have a look at the nearby Miami Seaquarium. Shamu was the big attraction and I was enthralled with its performance and obedience to its trainer's commands. An orange ball the size of a basketball was hung 25 feet above the water and on signal the 32-foot sleek and beautiful whale would rise up out of the water higher and higher until it gently nuzzled the ball. Then a most amazing thing happened. A porpoise no more than four and a half feet long rose out of the water and touched the same ball. I pondered how in the world he could ever do that. Being a nuclear physicist and a naval aviator, I knew a lot about forces, especially gravity and airfoils. I just had to dive into the explanation of this unreal phenomenon in depth. And depth was a big part of the explanation. I was told the tank was 60 feet deep. Looking through one of the underwater viewing windows, I watched this little guy swim along the bottom down to the lowest point of the tank, the drain. As he crossed it to go up the slope, he was already a blur. Suddenly he turned straight up so sharply that he must have pulled 9G's. in a flash he was gone. Julius Irving was the "MJ" of the day, I was very impressed by his rising above the other players with a four foot leap. Mr. Porpoise was jumping six times that high. needless to say I went back to that show everyday while I was in South Miami. There were dolphins in a tank where I could almost reach over and touch one. I studied the ease with which they moved through the water and decided right then that I just had to build a swim fin that could catch as much of the performance of a dolphins tail as possible. There was 15% unemployment in those days and I remembered thinking how perhaps a new concept in a swim fin would catch on and create jobs. I was working at the Grumman Aerospace Corporation and was able to interest a number of expert craftsmen to assist me in making a model, even a mold and one of my earliest fins. In 1981 I applied for a patent, and after quite a struggle I received my patent in 1985. This was more than ten years from my father's death, and the unemployment situation was very different. Nevertheless, my interest in my invention continued to grow and I became determined that nothing was going to stop me from getting this fin on the market. The Grumman Corporation had a policy that they had first choice with respect to any patent that any employee obtained. They were not interested so I was freed to pursue the development and marketing of my fin. To my great consternation I could not get and American manufacturer interested in my fin. A company that I had worked for, AMF, had sent their VOIT rubber division to Italy. One of my sons was serving in the Navy in Italy and when I next visited him I made an appointment to speak with the people at VOIT, which the Italians called MARES. While there they told me that they made all of the equipment for the Italian frogmen and that they liked my fin, but are making their own fin, a copy of the Russian fin which they have been racing with for twenty years. They gave me a calendar of swim fin races which showed that every week their was a swim fin race somewhere in Italy. The calendar had swim fin races scheduled all over the world except the United States. Well! I came home with a whole new perspective of my project and the world I was going to introduce it to. This was 1988 and I had heard about an inventor's club on Long Island near me. I joined and soon its president, Dan Weiss, called me and said that he had just attended a trade show in new York City and that he came across a fellow who was interested in prototyping my fin. Mike Paloian's company was only twenty minutes from my home in Melville. He was perfect for me and great to work with. His specialty was in plastics, and soon I was swimming with a number of prototypes. I heard that a swimmer at the New York Athletic Club was trying to promote swim fin racing at West Point. Greg Kincheloe gave me the date of his next annual competition and I took one of my fins along with me. There were swimmers from California who were using the Italian monofin which I was pleased to see was vastly different from mine. Greg gave me the name and phone number of the gentleman who was selling the Italian monofin and I called him and soon received my MATMAS fins in the mail. Chris Hutson, a veterinarian from Redondo Beach, CA, liked my fin and took one back with her to use in mermaid shows. She swam with the dolphins in the Bahamas using my fin and had someone take excellent movies of her at a depth of forty feet. She has been my inspiration and a consistent supporter. Another person who has been very supportive is John Trembley, the head swimming coach at the University of Tennessee and a former gold medal Olympic swimmer. His swimmers have been enjoying a number of my prototypes. Also Joe Mayernick has been using two of my prototypes in his dolphin show in Marineland, FL. He has taught me much about dolphins and helped me to size my DOLPHIN TAIL. Three years ago, while in Los Angeles, I went to the first swim fin race held in California. There, I met Mike Gower, who was doing on the west coast what Greg Kincheloe had done in the east. Mike was very sympathetic to my frustrations with being able to find a manufacturer and he called me one day and told me to get in touch with Steve Kimbler from PacificLink. Steven was my genie, and made my every wish come true. He put me in touch with an engineer in Taiwan and here I am finally with 120 Dolphin Tails in my garage ready to introduce at the stupendous SGMA Super Show in Atlanta! I can describe the experience for other inventors in one word... DETERMINATION!!!
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