I found the article:
Jean-Pierre Abbat
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jean-Pierre Fernand Noël Abbat (June 17, 1928 - August 1, 1993) was, with
Dr. Fritz Hartmann, the first to make polyurethane in the USA.
He was born in Le Trait, Normandy to a shipbuilder. He met Marina Lardé at
the Sorbonne and they were married. He migrated to the United States in
1953. In 1962 Abbat proposed to Norman McCulloch to make a ballistically
equivalent bowling pin out of polyurethane foam. Bowling pins were then made
out of wood, with two cylindrical voids, and covered with a thin coating.
The polyurethane pin would last much longer than the wooden pin. The
American Bowling Congress nixed the idea because it would put Brunswick and
AMF, the biggest bowling pin makers, out of business. Abbat kept a
collection of bowling pins, split bowling pins, and bowling pin molds for
many years after that.
Abbat worked for U-Do, Mattel, Kenner, Fisher-Price, and ITT, making toys
and telephone parts out of urethane and other plastics.
Abbat died in Raleigh, North Carolina of colon cancer. He is survived by his
wife Marina Abbat, his daughter Kate Threefoot, and his son Pierre Abbat.
My only comment to this, would have been to make the bowling pins anyway and
sell them to bowling alleys who didn't give a hoot about the American
Bowling Congress, and also to make them fully metric. If you can convince
the bowling alleys that they work the same, but cost less and last longer,
then they could have made a lot of sales. What the American Bowling
Congress wouldn't have known, wouldn't have hurt them. Except they, might
have gotten wise if Brunswick and AMF were to see less and less sales.
That is what competition and the free market is suppose to be about, nicht
wahr?
Have you ever approached your sister and suggested she change her name to
Kate Onemetre? Or does the threefoot refer to something else?
