Patent Act

Kenneth Cook, an accomplished inventor and professor at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, was awarded the Order of Merlin for his superior wizarding.
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FIRE-BOUND: The late Kenneth Cook, an inventor, a magician, and a professor at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, described one of his textbooks as a “hot seller.”

Over the years, hundreds of students at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield revered their late professor, Kenneth Cook. It turns out they owe the special bond they shared to his modest childhood in the village of Ubly, near Bad Axe.

In 1960, Cook’s small-town experiences steered him toward LTU’s forerunner, Lawrence Institute of Technology, where he studied and then stayed on teaching for more than 60 years.

“Since I grew up in a small town, the size of the campus and the closeness of the community is what made LTU the best choice for me over other schools in the area,” Cook would later say.

It was also that small-town childhood that kindled his interest in magic — a skill he began perfecting as a child, and one that made him a legendary educator with students. He used magic tricks in his classes to keep students engaged, and he rewarded them at the end of each semester by performing a full two-hour magic show.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1964, Cook never left the 107-acre Southfield campus. He taught classes at night even as he pursued a successful engineering and business career that spanned the United States, Europe, and China.

Upon retirement from the business world, Cook became a full-time instructor at LTU. He was hired as chair of the Department of Engineering Technology in 2006, a position he held until he stepped down in the summer of 2023.

Cook maintained a full work schedule, teaching five courses in the fall term last year, and taught classes four weeks before his death in March of this year. He died one month shy of his 83rd birthday.

In addition to his prodigious legacy at LTU, Cook made significant innovative contributions to Wayne State University and William Beaumont Hospital, now Corewell Health.

His stints at both institutions resulted in the first of more than 25 patents he would file with the United States Trademark and Patent Office for various medical devices, machine tool controls, and energy management technologies.

While doing graduate studies at Wayne State University, he worked in the medical school, where he developed a microwave linear particle accelerator, a device that propels charged particles such as electrons to velocities near the speed of light. The instrument is used for cancer treatment and research.

He also created and manufactured light gates, a digital switch-type sensor used in timing experiments; an air velocity meter to measure speed or flow of air or wind; and severity index analyzers for measuring a helmet’s ability to reduce impact forces to the head.

Those innovations led to his development of a Head Injury Criterion (HIC) computer to measure the effectiveness of helmets worn in sports. Cook and his son, Ken, founded a business, KME Co., utilizing his instruments to test reconditioned football helmets to ensure their safety for use by players.

Cook moved on to William Beaumont Hospital’s medical physics and engineering department, where his work produced more patents on the equipment and instruments he developed.

Among the innovations for which he filed a patent was equipment used in calibrating defibrillators. Another patent he holds was for a hospital bed monitor that sets off an alarm if a patient gets out of bed.

He also designed a robotic blood reader that could count radioisotope-tagged samples, allowing technicians to perform that task without exposure to radiation. Some of those inventions, or others developed from his original creations, are still in use in hospitals nationwide.

Cook had success in the commercial market, as well. In 1976, he joined Machine Tool Co. as general manager for research and development. Machine Tool was later bought out by GTE — a development that opened the world to Cook, his wife, Elaine, and his family.

“National and international travel was a great part of my job, (and) along with vacations Elaine and I took, it gave me an opportunity to do magic in many countries,” Cook said.

Counting business travel and family vacations, Cook said he performed magic in 60 countries and 49 U.S. states.

“Magic again became a great ice breaker for customers, technical presentations, and engineering meetings,” Cook wrote in a two-page summary, Ken Cook’s Personal History with Magic. “Do a little magic for peers or customers and they do not forget you, your company, or its products.”

In 1998, he was named vice president and chief engineer of Vultron/Trans Industries, a company that designed, manufactured, and displayed electronic signage all over the world.

At Vultron, Cook was at the forefront of LED lighting. One of his pixel innovations was Digidot technology, which became a staple on highway signs. It’s still used by transportation companies across the country.

His passion for inventions and interactions with students made it a natural decision for LTU administrators to bring him in to chair the university’s engineering technology department.

Cook brought with him invaluable real-world experience. He was by then a certified clinical engineer and a registered professional engineer, specializing in engineering design, engineering management, and technical marketing.

“I just love creating, and that’s what I try to share with my students,” Cook told an LTU publication.

Cook was the youngest of six children, born in humble circumstances in Ubly on April 18, 1941. Neither of his parents, Cash and Frances Cook, went past the sixth grade in school.

“My dad was an entrepreneur in the truest sense. He owned all kinds of companies, so I think I got some of my willingness to always try new things from him,” Cook told a LTU publication. “I had a physics teacher in high school that turned me on to engineering.”

That physics teacher also suggested he check out Lawrence Tech, a school he admitted he had never heard of.

His parents may not have been educated, but they were entrepreneurs who were involved in a variety of businesses. At various times they owned a ballroom, a bar, a fish market, a real estate company, and an 80-acre farm. Cash Cook was also an auctioneer.

Cash Cook introduced his son to the world of make-believe when he took him to a magic show at a local circus in Bad Axe. The elder Cook encouraged his son’s interest, and took him to magic conventions where he met some of the most notable magicians of the day. In 1955, father and son attended a Harry Blackstone show in Detroit.

“I still have the signed program and remember talking to Harry,” Cook said in his magic history summary. “My Dad loved it, and he filled my basement magic room with props, trick, doves, and illusions.”

With the help of his father and two assistants, Cook developed a stage show routine that landed him jobs while he was in high school. Before he was 18, he was performing shows at county fairs across Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

Among his proudest achievements were his memberships in the Society of American Magicians and the International Brotherhood of Magicians. He also was awarded the Brotherhood’s top honor, the Order of Merlin, bestowed for superior wizarding.

Cook’s reputation for combining magic with the engineering curriculum made his classes a popular attraction at LTU. His senior project students were treated to magic shows where he performed tricks like making a rope seemingly cut into pieces become whole, and making cards fly out of his hands into the pockets of students attending his classes.

A colorful sign on his engineering laboratory door read: Ken’s Place — Where the Magic Happens. His prowess in magic was a perfect complement to the university’s marketing slogan — Be Curious. Make Magic. “Teaching and magic at the university go together like Einstein and Relativity,” he wrote.

During his tenure as department chair, Cook teamed up with other faculty members to strengthen LTU’s engineering technology program, upgrading it from an associate to a bachelor’s degree, and paving the way for accreditation. He also developed the curriculum and obtained accreditation for audio engineering as an undergraduate degree program.

With the help of Cook and others, LTU was able to punch much higher than its weight. Today, it’s one of 13 private, technological, comprehensive doctoral universities in the United States.

Overall, LTU offers more than 100 programs in its colleges of Architecture and Design, Arts and Sciences, Business and Information Technology, Engineering, Health Sciences, and the Specs Howard School of Media Arts.

Its alumni salaries rank in the top 11 percent of university graduates, according to PayScale, the compensation and data company; U.S. News and World Report lists it in the top tier of the best colleges in the Midwest.

Nabil Grace, senior vice president of research and development, has spent 36 years at LTU. He describes Cook as a genius, a brilliant educator, an inventor, and an engineer. When Grace first met Cook and was exposed to his signage inventions at Vultron, he was so impressed he successfully lobbied the dean of the engineering college to hire Cook as chair of the Engineering Technology Department.

FACE OFF: Cook, who launched KME Co. with his son, Ken, developed a system for measuring facial fractures using a dual laser velocity gate sensor. Overall, Cook was awarded more than 25 patents in his lifetime.

“From that point on, I kept working with him, watching him, listening to how dedicated the man was, and (noting) the hours he spent on students’ needs,” Grace says. “You would see him in the morning and see him in the late evening, teaching specific classes — circuits, computers, or machines — everything smart about engineering. In addition to this, I noticed how generously he offered his service to be an entertainer. If there was a function at the university, he would come in and show a couple tricks as a magician.”

Grace adds Cook was a genius who was way ahead of his time.

“Even though we were getting older, every day he would surprise me with new ideas for which he was filing patents,” he says. “He was truly a gentleman. For all the years I worked with him, I never heard anyone complain about Ken Cook. Never. He had a good relationship with everyone. I was the dean for 14 years and never had a complaint from students, from faculty members, or a colleague about Professor Ken Cook.”

Cook’s talent for invention was the driver behind the accomplishments of senior students, especially when they worked on their capstone projects prior to graduation. Cook described those projects as “most dear to my soul.”

“Students in senior projects conceive of a product, do patent and market research for it, engineer and manufacture it, complete a business plan, and demonstrate the finished product,” he said. “Therefore, they do not need a formal final exam.”

Those projects resulted in students designing more than 500 commercial products, Cook said.

To memorialize his work, in April the university announced the formation of a chapter of the National Academy of Inventors in his honor. The nonprofit organization of 4,600 members is based in Tampa, Fla., and is affiliated with 260 U.S. and international universities, government agencies, and nonprofit research institutes worldwide.

Fellows must be named as an inventor with at least one U.S. patent, and are selected by the NAI Fellows Committee.

Members admitted to LTU’s chapter will be the university’s most prolific inventors, including faculty, alumni, students, and friends.

The chapter is sponsored by the intellectual property law firm of Ward Law, with offices in Southfield and Tiffin, Ohio.

Tarek M. Sobh, president of LTU, says the formation of the chapter honors Cook’s memory, helps recognize LTU’s inventors and innovators, and encourages LTU faculty to pursue U.S. patents for the innovations they create through the university’s growing research effort.

“Ken Cook was a prolific inventor, and we have many other true innovators among our distinguished faculty, students, and alumni community,” Sobh says. “We believe an NAI chapter at LTU is a natural extension of our increasing level of research sophistication.”