Serial inventor Eddie Paul has created working prototypes of dozens of inventions. If you can conceive it, he can probably build it. Beginning as a self-taught welder, painter, metal fabricator and machinist he along the way turned from a customiser to a creator, designer and inventor. Initially, he did it to enable a change of circumstance – to move away from homelessness and violence and street gangs but he found that he learned quickly and had that uncanny ability to look at the machinery he was working on and make it better. For the last 20 years he’s been doing it for fun at the same time as earning a handsome living as his engenuity, easy going nature and delivery on time and on budget has become recognised far and wide.
The most appreciative industry by far has been the movie world which often has need of an outrageous mechanical contraption that really works – like the two life-sized horses for the Mask of Zorro, or a life-sized fully functioning mechanical shark for his friends the Cousteaus. How good is he at creating believable contraptions ? Well, the bionic shark was convincing enough that the other sharks in the wild elected it leader of the pack for a few days. There’s no truth to the rumour that he is now working on George Bush III.
Then there’s the 50 plus cars he’s built for movies such as Grease, ET and 'The Fast and the Furious,' to name a few. Indeed, his business is now much greater than just Eddie.
His company performs an array of engineering, design and manufacturing services with Eddie remaining the hands-on front man role as the go-to guy when you need a complex machine designed very quickly for a critical purpose. Along the way his clients have also included the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Boeing, Rockwell, Mission Research, SOCOM and the Department of Forestry.
“If it doesn’t work, it just isn’t finished yet,” says Paul, who has had to overcome enough adversity that he seems immune to it. He is patient, brave and very determined.
“I read a lot about inventors and have noticed a common thread among them and that is that they all tend to ignore the critics that constantly barrage them with negatives,” he says. “Where would we be today if Edison, Tesla, or Bell could be talked into quitting their wacky idea and conforming to the status quo.”
When he invented his CEM pump he was laughed at by many top engineers as a “dreamer” and told not to waste money because he had no formal education, it probably wouldn’t work, and it wasn’t patentable.
Fending for himself from 16 years of age, he recognised he needed skills and got a job cleaning up a factory so he could purchase a welding machine and learn how to weld. He got the machine, worked hard and learned how to weld as good as anyone. Welding worked out well, and he learned all of the associated automotive and customisation arts the same way – panel beating, spray painting, machining, designing, and along the way, any skill he needed to build what he wanted. His customised cars and motorcycles have won countless awards but before he’s finished, we’re wagering he’ll be better known for his diverse and incredibly relevant inventions. Eddie runs much deeper than simply improving existing designs. The intricate knowledge he has of dozens of technologies now enable him to fabricate ideas from the ground up.
Eddie has patented a dozen devices, and one of these devices looks likely to get the bulk of his energy in the coming future - an ultra-light-weight engine, pump, and compressor that has already been bought by fire departments worldwide. Now he has plans for the development of the CEM engine as a highly efficient automobile engine with high power, small dimensions, low vibration and low weight as just a few of its benefits.
In order to put the resources he wants behind the engine, he’s selling a device he invented to enable the filming of three-dimensional movies with one camera. Called "Circlescan 4D," the technology greatly lowers the cost of filming three-dimensional movies while producing a more realistic image. If you’re interested in the technology you can read about it here and contact Eddie here.
As a Cylindrical Energy Module pump, the CEM has been used in an array of equipment and mechanical systems, compressed air-foam firefighting systems, portable fire extinguishers as well as small firefighting vehicles plus a few military applications.
If he succeeds as planned, his engine will play a major role in the automotive industry. The CEM engine fits 12 cylinders into a unit smaller than a single-cylinder engine. It weights one-sixth of a conventional engine of equal capacity and it costs less to produce.
It received its first patent as an engine, pump, and compressor by the U.S. Patent Office in 1993 and Eddie figures the time is right to give the technology some momentum.
“I am raising money to finish the development on my CEM engine, now that the price of gas (petrol) is at an all-time high,” he says.
The CEM engine can be found here.