Roger E. Billings grew up in Provo, Utah and was born in 1948. He played French horn in the Provo High School Band and Orchestra. He was very inventive, and in 1965, he designed a way to use hydrogen as a fuel to power a Ford Model A, as a high school science project. Receiving a Gold and Silver Award at the International Science Fair in 1966, he was awarded a scholarship to Brigham Young University. While a freshman at BYU, Billings received a research grant from Ford Motor Company to continue research on hydrogen fuel automobiles. In 1982, his BYU sponsored hydrogen Volkswagen won the 1st Place Award for Low Emissions at the national Clean Air Race held at the General Motors proving grounds near Detroit, Michigan. This led to a fairly large government grant to develop hydrogen as an alternative fuel.
Billings is the author of two books on the subject, Hydrogen from Coal: A Cost Estimation Guidebook (1983) and Hydrogen World View (1991). He started a company, Billings Energy Corporation, in 1973, but sold his interest in it in 1984, convinced the development of his hydrogen engine was premature.
In 1976 he started a computer company called Billings Computer, where he manufactured one of the first personal computers. He also founded Caldisk of Anaheim California, the company that invented the “double-sided” floppy disk drive. Caldisk quickly became the second largest manufacturer of floppy disk drives, and was eventually acquired by World Computer.
Billings also invented and patented Functionally Structured Distribution (FSD) which is a method of sharing information between personal computers over a network. He spent five years developing FSD eventually installing a 200 node network of personal computers in Winnebago Industries taking over tasks previously handled by a IBM mainframe. In June of 1982, Billings unveiled FSD at the National Computer Conference in Houston Texas.
In December of 1987 the FSD Patent was issued by the U.S. Patent Office. Billings tried to enter into a friendly licensing agreement with Novell, but eventually ended up in Court seeking to enforce his Patent. Years later, just weeks before trial, Novell filed a petition with the U.S. Patent Office seeking to have the Patent re-examined -- a process that can be initiated by any party claiming to have a publication older than the patent which purportedly discloses the invention.
While the Patent was in re-examination, the Court case in California was placed on hold. Because Novell provided over 600 articles which, according to Novell, taught the ideas that Billings claimed to invent. The Patent Office assigned an examiner to review each article to determine if in fact, the ideas of the invention were known and published before Billings filed his application.
Because of the sheer magnitude of the material submitted by Novell, the Patent Office was overwhelmed. As a result, the re-examination process took years.
Finally, ten years later, all but one of the references had been eliminated. The Examiner ruled that the Billings invention was new and novel with the exception of one survey article about mainframes which speculated that they could be networked but failed to supply information about how it might be accomplished.
Because of the single reference remaining after the review process, the Billings legal team needed to amend the language of the Patent claims to specifically state that the invention did not include a reference to mainframe computers. This would allow the Patent to be re-issued. Unfortunately, by the time that Patent Office completed their review, time had run out and the Patent had only one month remaining before expiration. The ten year review process had effectively rendered the Patent invalid.
Billings abandoned his efforts to license his FSD Patent, and devoted his efforts to the development of Gigabit Ethernet networking equipment which his company, WideBand Corporation, manufactures in Gallatin, Missouri.
Billings also continues his efforts to establish hydrogen as the "clean burning" fuel of the future. In 1991, Billings invented the fuel cell car which operates more efficiently than cars with internal combustion engines, and makes hydrogen fuel cost-competitive with gasoline. Several auto companies are now testing hydrogen fuel cell cars including GM and Mercedes Benz. He recently re-established his Billings Energy Corporation, to exploit commercial opportunities associated with hydrogen energy. Billings and his hydrogen fuel cell were featured in Time Magazine, July 14, 2003.
Religous life
During the late 1960s, Roger served a mission in Brazil for the LDS Church. In 1979 he moved his family to Independence, Missouri where he was appointed a member of the LDS Mission Presidency.
In the 1985, Roger left the LDS Church and later became affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ in Zion That group was dissolved in 1997.
External Sources
- Web sites owned by Billings and his organizations
- Books
