3d Systems ( DDD -9.68% ) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Nov 27, 2024 , 8:30 a.m. ET Contents: Prepared Remarks Questions and Answers Call Participants Prepared Remarks: Operator Greetings and welcome to the 3D Systems third-quarter 2024 earnings conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. [Operator instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mick McCloskey, vice president, investor relations. Please go ahead, Mick. Mike McCloskey -- Vice President, Investor Relations Hello, and welcome to 3D Systems' third-quarter 2024 conference call. With me on today's call are Dr. Jeffrey Graves, president and CEO; and Jeff Creech, EVP and CFO. The webcast portion of this call contains a slide presentation that we will refer to during the call. Those following along on the phone who wish to access the slide portion of this presentation may do so on the Investor Relations section of our website. The following discussion and responses to your questions reflect management's views as of today only and will include forward-looking statements as described on this slide. Actual results may differ materially. Additional information about factors that could potentially impact our financial results is included in our latest press release and our recent filings with the SEC, including our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. During this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP measures. In our press release and slides accompanying this webcast, you will find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations with comparable GAAP measures. Finally, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons in this call will be against our results for the comparable period of 2023. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Jeff Graves, for opening remarks. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Thank you, Mick, and good morning, everyone. Today, I'll begin with an overview of our third-quarter results and then touch on some recent key accomplishments and announcements. I'll then ask our CFO, Jeff Creech, to take us through the Q3 in greater detail before closing the call with comments on our outlook, after which we're happy to take questions. So, let's start on Slide 5. At a high level, our third-quarter revenue largely represents a continuation of the trends that we and the additive industry broadly have been contending with for several quarters now. Very simply, macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties have caused our customers to reduce capex spending for new capacity in their factories, which in turn has created a persistent headwind to hardware system sales. It's really that simple. As a consequence, our revenues were essentially flat on a sequential basis. This was slightly weaker than we had anticipated as a few key installations of new systems, which were targeted for acceptance late in Q3, slipped into the fourth quarter. However, while the sale of new printing systems is still sluggish, what is changing for the better is the utilization rate of our installed base as indicated by rising sales of consumables to our customers. Consumable materials grew approximately 10% from the prior year and demonstrated sustained sequential growth, a trajectory that has consistently improved since the beginning of the year, most recently growing 9% sequentially in the third quarter versus Q2. In a similar vein, interest in new application development has been on a very robust trajectory. As many of you know, we have one of the largest and most capable application engineering groups in the world. These engineers work directly with our customers on new applications for both metal and polymer 3D printing. Year to date, revenues from our industrial application group are up 26% from last year and continue to rise. We monitor this activity level as a directional indicator of growth potential for new applications. The performance we experienced in Q3 is a strong indicator of continuing growth in customer interest in 3D printing for their production needs. We expect this interest to ultimately translate into more robust sales as the economic environment improves. To provide a little more color on where this interest is coming from -- leading the way or what we refer to as the high-reliability markets, such as energy, oil and gas, semiconductor equipment manufacturing, and aerospace and defense, all of which have a very high standard for component quality, performance, reliability, and traceability. For these customers, which are often subject to strict regulatory requirements, the ability of both our polymer and metal printing solutions to meet their needs and to do so with compelling economics is a cornerstone of our value proposition. As an example of markets that I'm particularly excited about these days are those driven by the trillion-dollar investments being made in AI. These investments cascade directly into several of our targeted end markets, ranging from semiconductor equipment manufacturing to data centers, to the power generation equipment needed to provide electricity critical to their operation. As just one example, the management of heat is absolutely essential to both the manufacturer of silicon chips as well as their performance and life in the data center environment. The nanoscale of advanced microprocessors, combined with the extraordinary number used in a modern data center, creates an extremely challenging environment to keep the processors cool in operation. One way to effectively do so is through the use of high-purity copper elements that can be placed in or very near the heart of a GPU, combining the inherent capability of 3D printing to manufacture complex high-surface area components with our unique capability to ultra-high purity copper with our advanced metal printing systems gives GPU and data center architects, a powerful means of removing heat effectively from the system. Given that the power consumed by data centers now exceeds that of many small countries, this cooling capability is increasingly valuable. And this is just one example of our increasing focus on the full semiconductor ecosystem that we believe will provide one avenue for meaningful growth for our company in the future. Another market we continue to be excited about is high-performance automotive, an example of which is F1 racing. As an example, you may have seen our announcement earlier this month with Sauber Motorsports. In this case, we updated the entire Sauber production facility as they added 10 of our newest production printer systems to their manufacturing workflow. This included eight of our market-leading SLA 750 dual laser printers and two of our just released PSLA 270 platform, all enabled by a host of industry-leading high-performance materials. Sauber will use these systems in large part to validate their aerodynamic designs through rapid fabrication of production components for wind tunnel testing. This award builds on a nearly 20-year relationship between our companies, reflecting the trust they have in our technological leadership and outstanding service capabilities, both of which are essential to their success in this challenging industry. This important win as a strong new element to our automotive foundation, a market which is expected to grow to almost $8 billion in the next few years. Since I mentioned it, let me take a moment to focus on our newest photopolymer printing platform the PSLA 270. This is the first of what will be a family of new projector over Vat printing systems, combining the superior surface quality associated with our flagship SLA printing platform with the blazing speeds offered by the latest high-resolution projector technology. This technology is an outgrowth of our work in regenerative medicine which incorporates a very high-resolution projection system. By replacing a single-point laser with a full field projection system, we attain high precision at much higher print speeds. In fact, the closest competitive solution today would have to run two machines simultaneously to achieve the same output as one PSLA 270. In addition, this system is designed to use our entire portfolio of advanced polymers originally developed for the Figure 4 system. By offering this exceptional platform as a part of a complete factory workflow, we believe our PSLA platforms will lead the industry forward in photopolymer applications. From a healthcare standpoint, the third quarter was strong with solid growth on a sequential and year-over-year basis. We attribute this growth to a meaningful recovery in dental, up well over 30%, and another impressive performance in personalized healthcare, which was up almost 20%. Given the momentum we have in our healthcare business broadly and our strong pipeline of new products and applications ahead, we remain very excited about the future of this portion of our business. From a gross margin standpoint, the third quarter was softer than we had anticipated, predominantly driven by an increase in inventory reserves and continued lower factory utilization, both driven by softness in printer volumes. Jeff Creech will take you through the specifics in more detail shortly. But after normalizing for inventory reserves, our third-quarter operating margins were roughly in line with recent performance. We continue to target a business model that can deliver mid-40% margins or greater over time once the benefits of our in-sourcing and restructuring initiatives are fully realized with increasing volume. Operating expenses for the quarter were consistent with our expectations. We're pleased that our restructuring actions have started to more positively influence performance, representing a nearly $3 million sequential improvement. And while our overall opex expenses are declining, we continue to invest extensively in our R&D activities, which is fueling a historic year of product innovation for our company. More on this in just a few moments. While we're encouraged by some of the leading indicators that we're now seeing, we also recognize that the revenue environment we're operating in today demands an even greater degree of operational efficiency to gain sustained profitability, which is our clear goal. As such, operating expenses remain a strong focus and a lever largely within our direct control in this environment. With that in mind, we maintain our goal of reducing operating expenses to below $6 million for the first quarter with the majority of this improvement coming from reductions in G&A. Lastly, to our balance sheet where we've been focused on optimizing working capital as we position ourselves for future growth, we entered 2024 with a goal to deliver inventory reductions as a healthy generator of cash throughout the year. Today, we remain on pace to reach our target of a 20% inventory reduction by year-end. Over the course of the third quarter, cash on our balance sheet declined $3 million from the prior quarter, a significant rate improvement from prior quarters. This leaves us with one of the strongest cash positions of any company in our industry. On Slide 6, I'd like to take a few moments to reflect on the historic year progress across our technology road map. You've heard this from us many times before, but as the inventor of the technology that birthed the 3D printing industry, our dedication to innovation is a core element of our company culture, maintaining momentum with mission-critical R&D even through a challenging sales environment is not only fundamentally different than most of our peers, but it's embedded deeply in our DNA. This is the primary reason customers turn to 3D Systems first in assessing the capability of 3D printing to meet their metal and polymer production needs. Reflecting this commitment, you witnessed an unprecedented pace of innovation from our company over the last 12 months, contributing nearly 40 new materials, software enhancements, and metal and polymer printing platform since Q3 of last year, '25, and this year alone. And the momentum will continue as we exit this year and move into '25. This represents the culmination of three years of focus and investment, and we're refreshing our entire portfolio of printing platforms and the materials and software that enable their outstanding production performance. From a key application standpoint, during the third quarter, we announced QuickCast Air, which is targeted for the investment casting market. This casting method is essential to aircraft and rocket propulsion systems and other high-performance applications. It's expected to reach nearly $34 billion over the next 10 years. QuickCast Air reliably delivers a large high-precision investment casting pattern in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods, providing up to a 50% reduction in resin usage in some cases, while maintaining the inherent advantage of virtually unlimited geometric complexity of design. The result for our customers is higher performing components at lower cost and in much shorter production cycle times for their most demanding applications. On the software front, we announced a significant milestone in commercializing our Oqton industrial MOS platform with our strategic partner, Baker Hughes. Our software, which is now utilized in Bakers Houston, Texas manufacturing facility, is enabling on-demand additive manufacturing to provide full factory floor workflow integration, automation, control, and optimization. Its production implementation is providing key proof points such as a 98% reduction in active monitoring engineering time, a savings of 136 engineering hours per printer annually and an 18% reduction in costs associated with scrap due to real-time actionable alerts during component production. Turning to healthcare. Our personalized healthcare business delivered another quarter of meaningful growth. During the quarter, we were very pleased to announce that we're once again expanding our orthopedic surgical planning portfolio, this time with FDA clearance for our new total ankle patient-matched guides to pair with Smith+Nephew's total ankle replacement solution. This expands our patient-specific surgical solution capabilities in a market anticipated to grow to over $5 billion in the next few years. Today, we're exceptionally well positioned in the craniomaxillofacial and spinal markets and new FDA-approved solutions such as this, highlight our ability to expand our orthopedic applications much further in the human body. We're also leveraging our expertise in surgical solutions into adjacent markets, rolling out expanded capabilities to address the needs of trauma patients in addition. We see opportunities to expand our personalized health service in Europe and elsewhere and are investing accordingly to ensure regulatory approvals are acquired. These growth elements reinforce our enthusiasm about our growth in this key area of our company. For our dental activities, a key growth engine for the future is the multibillion-dollar dentures market. In an important milestone, we secured FDA clearance in September for our first-to-market multi-material single-piece jetted denture solution. Our unique denture offers -- offering provides unparalleled combination of toughness to ensure long-term reliability with outstanding aesthetics for enhanced patient experience. As previously shared, we found an excellent launch partner in Glidewell, one of the world's largest producers of restorative dental devices, who's hit the ground running with implementing Jetted dentures into its workflow following our clearance with the FDA. We're excited to see this product enter the market in the coming months. To wrap up my introduction, undoubtedly, 2024 has been a difficult sales environment. But with our strong balance sheet, we've delivered tremendous progress transforming our technology portfolio. Form next, the largest AM conference of the year that was just held last week, gave us an opportunity to highlight this journey with the announcement of several new product introductions. In addition to our metal and PSLA polymer platforms, we highlighted our newest Titan extrusion platform, which is our inroad into the industrial extrusion printing market. The EXT family, as we call it, includes the 1270, the 1070, and our newest addition, the 800, provides novel approach to extrusion technology, offering a hybrid solution that can accommodate pellets, filaments, and traditional CNC machining, all in one platform. Delivering speeds of five to 10 times faster and having raw material costs roughly 10 times lower than its closest competitor, we see increasing interest from our customers around the world for this family of products. Rounding things out, we've also announced a plethora of new materials supporting our SLA, MJP, and SLS platforms, further expanding the broadest portfolio of additive solutions in the industry and setting the stage for us to drive increased adoption in the years ahead. So, with that, I'll turn things over to our CFO, Jeff Creech, for more on the quarter. Jeff? Jeff Creech -- Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin with our revenue summary on Slide 8. Third-quarter revenues of $112.9 million declined 9% from prior year, driven primarily by a continuation of macroeconomic pressures impacting hardware system sales, partially offset by growth in materials sales. On a sequential basis, revenues were roughly flat and impacted by a few large dollar orders that fell outside of our third-quarter close. Within our segments, industrial revenues were $57.9 million and down about 19%, predominantly driven mostly by a decline in printer sales. In our healthcare segment, revenues were $55.1 million for the quarter and grew 5% from prior year. As Jeff just mentioned, growth in the third quarter was primarily driven by a healthy rebound in dental and our personalized healthcare business. Now, let's turn to Slide 9. Non-GAAP gross margin for the third quarter was 37.6% and included an increase in inventory obsolescence reserves taken in the quarter, representing approximately $3 million. Normalizing for the impact related to inventory reserves would result in a margin of 40.2% for the third quarter. Comparing to prior year, margin was 44.8%, which included a significant benefit of regenerative medicine milestone revenue recognition. Excluding the impacts of inventory reserve increases and the milestone recognition in the current and prior quarters, respectively, gross margins would have been 40.2% and 42.7% with a year-on-year decline primarily driven by unfavorable absorption given lower sales volumes. Now, let's move to Slide 10 for operating expense. Non-GAAP operating expense for the third quarter was $61.4 million, increasing $5.6 million from prior year but declining $2.7 million consecutively, in line with our expectations. As an important reminder, the prior-year quarter comparison benefited from a tailwind associated with lower incentive compensation expense in addition to other benefits that were more one-time in nature. Third-quarter operating expense benefited from our previously discussed restructuring actions, and we continue to expect an additional sequential reduction, targeting opex below $60 million for the fourth quarter. Now to Slide 11 to finish up the P&L. We reported adjusted EBITDA of negative $14.3 million for the third quarter, compared to a gain of $4.7 million for the same quarter last year. Declines in adjusted EBITDA primarily reflect lower sales volumes, margin, and higher operating expenses as just discussed. The prior year profitability performance was also significantly impacted by the milestone revenue recognition from our RegMed business, as I just mentioned. In line with my commentary on expected opex savings in the fourth quarter, we would also expect an improvement in adjusted EBITDA sequentially as we continue to move toward our longer-term goal of consistent profitability. For the third quarter, we reported a fully diluted loss per share of $1.35, and this includes noncash charges of approximately $144 million associated with the impairment of goodwill and other long-lived assets as a result of our interim valuation testing during the third quarter of this year. This compared to a loss per share of $0.09 in the third quarter of prior year. Non-GAAP loss per share was $0.12 compared to a gain per share of $0.01 in the prior year. Now to Slide 12 for the balance sheet. We closed the quarter with $190 million of cash and cash equivalents, compared to $193 million at the end of the second quarter of this year. As expected, cash performance represented an improvement in working capital management, particularly as we look to continue driving down inventories as a result of our in-sourcing actions from prior years. As noted on previous calls, we've been highly proactive in repurchasing our debt and have reduced our 0% convertible notes down by over 50% since Q3 of last year, fortifying our position to continue supporting critical R&D investments for the new product releases combined with a keen focus on reducing expenses to drive profitability. Looking forward, we continue to view inventory as a source of cash in the fourth quarter. I'll conclude my remarks on Slide 13. As you heard from us this morning, we continue to make strides across our portfolio to emerge stronger from the current economic cycle when pent-up demand for additive solutions returns. We've been consistent in fueling our R&D engines through a tougher macro environment, driving an acceleration of applications and new product development to emerge stronger in the years ahead. However, we are adjusting our guidance expectations for the full year 2024 as follows. We expect full-year revenues between the range of $440 million to $450 million, which implies a mid- to high-single-digit percentage sequential recovery in the second half revenues from the first half of this year. While the fourth quarter has historically reflected a higher degree of year-end capital budget spending, given current uncertainty in the near term as well as indications of timing adjustments related to inventory management among a few customers, we expect the benefits to be more modest ending the year. Full-year gross margins are expected to be in the range of 38% to 40%, given the impact of short-term inventory reserve adjustments as we continue to integrate our in-sourcing capabilities that we believe, longer term, will improve gross margins to the mid-40% range as volumes recover, and we are able to reap the full benefits of our in-sourcing and restructuring actions. We are maintaining our expectations to deliver opex at or below $60 million for the fourth quarter, continuing its trend of sequential improvement and reflecting the benefits of our previous restructuring. As a result, adjusted EBITDA is expected to improve on a sequential basis, primarily driven by the reduction in operating expense. Jeff, I'll hand it back to you. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Thanks, Jeff. So, we believe that the broader macro trends negatively impacting our industry to the greatest extent are beginning now to move behind us. With our strong cash position, we've been able to maintain our core investments for the future while consistently restructuring our company to maximize operating efficiencies. Our determination to support key R&D investments are fundamentally different from many others in the industry, and we believe position us well for accelerated growth and profitability as our end markets inevitably strengthen. While we will not be providing explicit comments on 2025 yet, looking beyond this year, as much of our critical R&D work is behind us, we will continue to evaluate incremental actions that can strategically remove costs from our business and drive sustainable profitability. In doing so, I believe we'll deliver meaningful value to all of our stakeholders. So, with that, we'll now open the line for questions. Kevin, if you'd open the line for us, please? Questions & Answers: Operator Certainly. We'll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator instructions] One moment please while we poll for questions. Our first question is coming from Jim Ricchiuti from Needham and Company. Your line is now live. James Ricchiuti -- Analyst Hi, good morning. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Good morning, Jim. James Ricchiuti -- Analyst So, looking at your implied revenue guidance for Q4, it's a little surprising with only a month left in the quarter that there's a relatively wide range of scenarios. I'm hoping you could help us understand what's driving that. I mean, it sounds like potentially some of your customers may be working through inventories and maybe that's on the material side. But maybe if you could help us understand that a little? And then I have a quick follow-up. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Yeah, Jim. I think there's two factors. One of it clearly is inventory management from our customers. They're in good shape, but they want to make sure they don't get out over their skis with the -- all the changes coming in '25 with the -- in the political environment and the geopolitical issues, I think nobody wants to be overly exposed on inventories. So, I don't think it's a massive problem, but certainly, they'll be managing them customer by customer. The big unknown, Jim, is really how much capex they'll be willing to spend in the fourth quarter and at what rate. Even if they cut lose capex late in the quarter as we saw in Q3, some of those installations aren't been completed until the following quarter, which delays revenue recognition on many of them. So, there can be a timing issue on their capital spend. In normal times, they try to -- a lot of them would try to spend their capital up in the fourth quarter and get it done as early as possible for planning. Right now, what we're seeing is a bit of trepidation, a bit of slowness in issuing POs. I expect this quarter to certainly be up and -- but not quite -- if I had to guess, Jim, not quite in line with historical norms. But there is some upside for us versus our midpoint. But given the Q3, there was some slippage at the end of the quarter into the following quarter. I just don't want us to get out ahead of ourselves. So, that's why you'd see a little bit of a wider range and a little bit more modesty, if you will, on the growth rate in Q4. So, we believe it will be up and up nicely for the quarter. But capex, inventory management are just unknowns, and we want a buffer for those. That makes sense? James Ricchiuti -- Analyst It's helpful. And maybe we could just turn to gross margins because the guidance for the year, I guess, 38%, 40%. Again, a little surprising given that your nine-month gross margin was 39.5%. Is this all a case of unfavorable absorption if the Q4 revenues come in at the low end of your implied guidance? Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Yeah, there's two factors, Jim. One of them is that, one of them is factory absorption. The other one really is mix because -- and I'm keeping my fingers crossed here, we should see an uptick in printer sales, and that's good for the long term from a materials utilization standpoint. I'm a little concerned that customers will be managing inventory on materials, and it's an unknown. So, you could see a mix effect, and you certainly will still see a factory utilization effect. So, I'd say there's two factors in that. And both of them lead to a little modestly on the gross margin for the quarter. Nicely, the in-sourcing work we've done, I think, will pay real dividends for us from a printer manufacturing standpoint as volumes rise again, hopefully in '25. But for right now, it's -- any uptick in printer sales in Q4 would be a drag on gross margins. James Ricchiuti -- Analyst Got it. Thank you. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Thanks, Jim. Have a good Thanksgiving. Operator Thank you. Next question is coming from Greg Palm from Craig-Hallum. Your line is now live. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Good morning, Greg. Danny Eggerichs -- Craig-Hallum Capital Group -- Analyst Yeah, thanks. Hey, guys. This is Danny Eggerichs on for Greg today. Thanks for taking my questions. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Hey, Danny. Sure. Danny Eggerichs -- Craig-Hallum Capital Group -- Analyst I know you kind of said you're not going to touch on '25 yet, but just thinking about maybe profitability, I know in the release, maybe some commentary, it was like trajectory toward profitability in quarters ahead. Are we thinking about it as something that can be a '25 event? Or is it just kind of too early to tell? How should we be thinking about breakeven into profitability? Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Yeah, Danny. It's the art of prediction. So, I'm very encouraged by the number of new application customers are talking about. If they put real capital behind that, we could see a nice lift in revenues in '25. It's a question of how quickly will they spend the money for it. Nicely, I have no doubt these applications are things they really want to put in their factories. That's a good thing. It's a timing issue. So, we're hopeful revenues will be rising in '25, which will be helpful. Factory utilizations then improve. The inventory reduction plan we have will be great for cash. So, those are all positive factors. And we have -- I'll be candid with you, we have real opportunities for cost management, which I think will really help in '25. So, I can't give you a number, but I think you'll see significant movement in '25. If those things come to pass, you'll see significant movement in '25 toward profitability. And hopefully, at some point during the year, you'd see a swing to positive EBITDA and growth from there. So, it's just too early to tell, and we won't put out guidance until we get to our fourth quarter results. But I'm encouraged by the trends, and we'll see if they continue. Danny Eggerichs -- Craig-Hallum Capital Group -- Analyst Yeah. That makes total sense. Maybe if we can just touch on the AIG, the application innovation group. You know, sounds like it was really strong in the quarter. Just maybe trying to size up that opportunity, maybe where contribution currently is and when the cycle eventually returns, how should we be thinking about that opportunity going forward? Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer And, Danny, I would tell you the revenue we generate from AIG, so these are obviously -- their applications customers are paying for us to develop with them. So, there is a revenue stream there. The important thing about that is the trend of the revenue stream. So, if it's growing, it's not -- it may not be a material -- actually, it may not be a material number on the overall P&L. But if it's growing, then customers are demanding more and more of our time to develop new applications. And we're picking and choosing those very carefully to make sure they're the highest volume, highest value components that we can help them develop for their factories. So, I would tell you the magnitude of revenue is not really important. It's the direction that it's headed in that 26 -- I think we quoted a 26% rise is fabulous. I mean our guys are swamped. And we have -- we have 80-plus applications here is the biggest -- I believe it's the biggest in the industry. And, certainly, I'm very proud of, I think they're the best in the industry. And these new applications they're working on are tremendous. The amount of interest we have related to semiconductors broadly and data centers and things, all driven by, I believe, this overall AI investment in the use of AI. That, I think, is going to be a nice way for us and for anybody in this industry that's positioned for primarily in the metal side of the business. I think the ability to print basically heat sinks, heat conduction, capability is very, very positive. So, you could see some large applications flowing through in the future for those. And that goes all the way down to semiconductor equipment manufacturing. We can consolidate the number of parts in the machine. These are extremely expensive machines, as you might know. We can consolidate a number of parts. We can make them higher-performing parts, all by 3D printing them. And so, we've got all of the major semiconductor equipment manufacturers working with us. We have people that are using GPUs and data centers working with us. In fact, at Formnext, I wish I'd put this on a slide you would have seen a copper heat sync that was incredibly interesting. It's out on the website, I believe, but it was designed using AI, quite frankly, and it can conduct heat away 3x more efficiently than any other high-purity copper heat sync in the world. And so, we're tremendously excited about markets like that because they are very valuable high payoff components, which will help the whole supply chain. So, I quoted the AIG rise not because it's material impactful on the P&L, but because the trend is really positive in terms of customer interest in 3D printing. So, I can't really help you from a timing standpoint on revenue specifically, but the trend is very positive. Danny Eggerichs -- Craig-Hallum Capital Group -- Analyst OK. That's great. Appreciate the color. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer OK. Stay warm, Danny. Have a good Thanksgiving. Operator Thank you. Our next question is coming from Troy Jensen from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is now live. Troy Jensen -- Analyst Hey, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions here. I guess, Jeff, one thing I picked up at Formnext that I thought was kind of new was a lot of positive talk about Oqton. You did mention it in your kind of prepaid remarks, but could you just kind of talk -- give us an update on software in general and 3DXpert? Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Yeah. Sure, Troy. And thanks for the call, and thanks for the interest at Formnext, too. Yes, you asked about two things there, and I'd throw in a third. So, our 3D Sprint software, which drives our polymer machines and 3DXpert on the metal side, tremendously valuable tools for people that want to apply 3D printing. And what we've done now with Oqton is basically integrate 3DXpert into the Oqton workflow. And we've really targeted and focused Oqton on the high-reliability markets like oil and gas we're doing with Baker Hughes and others. But that software platform, Troy will allow us to monitor the entire workflow, not us, but customers that like the entire workflow from raw materials to fished part. And what we're seeing in the Baker Hughes production lines right now is a tremendous improvement in the productivity and quality of parts they can get out. The real-time monitoring, the feedback control, the traceability required. So, it impacts everything from setup time to the time of part is produced, and it gives you full traceability to the part when it's finished. So, you make -- we're making 3D printing a true production process with this. Interesting feedback from Baker Hughes as also a customer of the software was this industry is now starting to really think about how to use 3D printing and production, whereas before it mainly went into laboratories for prototyping and even demo parts. Now, it's being used in -- on the factory floor. Those requirements are so different and so much more rigorous in terms of monitoring the job, monitoring the actual production of the part. So, I'm really pleased with Oqton's progress. I think we'll demo very nicely with Baker Hughes and then we're rolling it out broadly to other primarily industrial applications that have to make high reliability parts. So, energy, aero, certainly, the medical markets, anybody that has to make a high reliability parts at high productivity. Troy Jensen -- Analyst OK. How about two other questions here. Did you have a 10% customer in the quarter? Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer We do. Jeff -- I have to -- yeah, I'm sure -- I don't have the number in front of me, Troy, but it would be in our queue, I believe, Jeff, right? So, it's in our queue and certainly, it will be related to dental, Troy, as it has been historically true. So, that's -- that relationship remains very strong. The indirect printing aligners is a great way to make them, and we continue to be a key supplier in that market. So, yes, I mean -- and I don't have a number Troy, but it's in the queue, and we can certainly get back to you. Troy Jensen -- Analyst Yep. I'm just glad to hear they're back. But -- and then just last question, regenerative business. Can you just talk about when you expect to hit the next milestones? Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Yeah, Troy. I think we'll see some additional milestones in '25. I wish we could talk more about it. The -- both the precision and the speed at which we can print extremely fine structure now is amazing. We have multiple paths to the design of those printers for production applications for organs in the human body, specifically lungs. So, I am really pleased with progress on the technology and the implementation of that for lung manufacturing. So, you can expect we'll be talking about milestones in 2025 that we're hitting. And I continue to believe we're on track to be in a position to get the human demonstration on a reasonable timeline. United Therapeutics, our partner in this, we'll have to speak to that milestone. But in terms of the printing technology and things and the materials that go with it, extremely pleased with progress. And, Troy, just one more -- one more advertisement for that. It's really cool applications that are going to bring a lot of benefit to humanity. It's also generating some great technology that we can transition into our industrial printers. For example, the PSLA with this high-precision projection system over Vat, that's a direct outgrowth of our work on regenerative. So, if you take a hardened projector that's used for industrial applications for workflow. It's a direct transfer and a drop-in. So, you'll see some real technology synergy coming out of our work on regenerative into our industrial markets. Troy Jensen -- Analyst Awesome. All right, guys. Good luck going forward. Happy Thanksgiving. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Thanks, Troy. Happy Thanksgiving to you too, bud. Operator Thank you. Next question today is coming from Ananda Baruah from Loop Capital Markets. Your line is now live. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Good morning, Ananda. Ananda Baruah -- Analyst Good morning. Good morning. Yes, thanks for taking the question. Happy Thanksgiving. Yes, I appreciate you guys taking the question here. I guess a couple, if I could. The first is on just sort of the core healthcare business and industrial solutions sort of taking the backwards sort of the softer sellout notwithstanding, you guys do seem like the last three quarters, you kind of baselined at this high 50s, low 60s run rate. And in healthcare, you've picked up both because of the dental business and then also here's kind of a question, is there anything in personalized healthcare as the state from dental that we should be aware of? And so, really, with that as a backdrop and sort of the supplies business continuing to grow, what does the baseline business look like into '25, understanding, yes, you're not giving guidance yet. But in industrial solutions as baseline right now and as you're seeing a pickup in healthcare, and if you're also seeing a pickup in ongoing growth in supplies, what does that say structurally about going into '25? Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Yeah. Yes. So, on that, I'll start with the last point, Ananda. Yeah, all of that would lead you to say, look, '25 should be a better year. As long as I think the whole world feels a bit snakebit -- as long as the geopolitical climate calms down and the economies continue moving in the direction they are, the unknown is that we have a change in administrations in not only in the U.S., but potentially other countries and these wars tend to flare up periodically. So, all of that said, which are unknowns, the trends are moving in the right direction in terms of both printer platform sales and consumable sales over the future. So, hopefully, we'll be sitting here when we announced Q4 results, we'll talk about a stronger '25. And also, I think we've got some real cost opportunities, quite frankly. So, we've made -- we've been consistent in our investments in R&D. Those are paying dividends now. And we've got some flexibility going into '25 to really manage our cost structure in a more optimum way. So, I think there's some real opportunities within the four walls and then also in the external environment. In terms of healthcare, Ananda it's a great business. The orthopedic business, as I call it, the work we do for surgical planning on bone repair and surgeries is terrific. We continue to gain FDA approvals for other areas of the body. We're very strong in everything above the neck fundamentally and on the spine. We're continuing to grow throughout the body elsewhere, and it's a clear strategy. We're going to expand those applications below the neck just as quickly as we can develop them because all the same basic tools apply. So, I can -- I expect to continue to see growth or may be noise quarter to quarter. We continue to see growth in that business, and it's a very good business. very hard for others to get into unless it takes time. So, I think that's a great business. The dental business -- we've got a good foundation with indirect aligners. And I think you'll see a lot of new products hit the market. And I mentioned dentures on the call, great business. I think 3D printing is a natural for those, and we have a great offering. So, I'm excited about '25 for dentures -- funny as that sounds. And then you've got other dental applications, night guards, and others. So, I love the healthcare business. It continues to be a core focus of the company. On the industrial side, these high-reliability markets were swamped with interest on new applications from customers. And I would hope '25 would see them start spending some real capital money in those directions because the payoff is clear. So -- and that gets back to the world economy and their factory utilization. So, hopefully, in all of that, I answered your questions. If I can clarify anything, I'm happy to do it, Ananda. Ananda Baruah -- Analyst No, that's really great. And just a quick follow-up on tariffs. Anything to be aware of in the tariffs that have been announced so far or supposed to be announced? Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer You know, Ananda -- yeah. It's very interesting, and this is all public. If you look at the tariffs that have been talked about and particularly with respect to China, the Chinese metal printing companies have sprung up over the years and, I think, aim toward Chinese markets and others. They're increasingly looking to export those products into the U.S. And a lot of the U.S. applications are defense-oriented. So, I think both the tariff situation and the focus on defense will help us as a U.S. company. I think that's -- it's a great thing because the influx of those printers, and I've shared this information, it's all publicly available, has been high. And I would hope as onshoring and supply chain shortening effects take hold, if we do see tariffs coming in and certainly the growth in defense and aerospace, those are all positives for us as a U.S. company. Ananda Baruah -- Analyst Super helpful. Thanks a lot. Have a great holiday, you guys. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Thanks, Ananda. You have a great Thanksgiving as well. Operator Thank you. [Operator instructions] Our next question is coming from Brian Drab from William Blair. Your line is now live. Tyler Hutin -- William Blair and Company -- Analyst Good morning. Tyler here filling in for Brian. It was great color on the data center equipment. It sounds like additive would be great for the gold plates that go on GPUs and the other data center infrastructure, but I only have two questions today. First, what are your plans for convertible debt coming due in 2026? And then second, you mentioned a target of mid-40s gross margin. What revenue rate would need to be to support those levels, assuming that on historically similar revenue levels going forward, you'd probably do higher margin just driven by the in-sourcing efforts? If you could just elaborate on that situation. I appreciate the time, and happy Thanksgiving. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Thanks so much for the question, and Happy Thanksgiving to you as well. So, you touched on the key points. It's -- the factory, basically, our gross margins, if you look at COGS, our factory -- that's going to be a direct outgrowth of factory volumes and the increased benefit from in-sourcing. So, clearly, as volumes rise, it's a good thing for factory utilization rates. And the other benefit that brings us is a lower propensity to write down inventory. We absorbed -- the reality is we absorbed a lot of inventory when we insourced manufacturing aggressively over the last two years. And I would tell you, for everybody listening on this call, I think it's a tremendous move for a low-volume, high-mix company like ours in this industry taking full control over your product from the start-up design to the time you ship and install to a customer is critically important in controlling the pace of new product introduction and the quality of the product you ship. I firmly believe that. So, we spent great effort in sourcing. And unfortunately, with that, we had to absorb a lot of inventory from our contract manufacturing partners that they had purchased, and we're working that inventory down. We'll bring it down 20% this year from a starting point, we'll continue to do that. Unfortunately, if volumes stay low in the plant, you're more exposed to inventory write-offs due to just aging of the parks. They don't go bad, but they age out according to your policy. So, we have some headwinds on the last two quarters from that. Hopefully, as volumes pick up, that effect that kind of over-the-top effect will go away, and you'll see improvements in factory utilization. So, both of those will really help gross margin significantly. And then on top of that, we're rolling out new materials all the time. So, new consumables we're also really driving services because the customers that have factories want great service. So, the increase in services revenue, the increase in materials revenue will all support higher gross margins. So, fundamentally, those are the levers. And I have no doubt we can get to mid-40s. That's our near-term goal. We have a long-term goal of getting over 50, which given the growth in metals in the world right now and the relatively lower materials pull-through on metals, that's a challenge. And -- but we're getting there. We're headed that direction. And I have confidence over the long term, we will get there. And then eventually, metals -- some of the metal materials will probably evolve to match 3D printing as well. But for now, there's not a lot of materials pull-through from our standpoint on the metal side. So, it is a drag on the overall gross margin. But we're getting there. It's improving. And I'm thrilled to have both metals and polymers in our portfolio. Some of the most exciting applications we're seeing on the industrial side are hard core metal applications with difficult materials like copper, which are hard to print. So, long-winded way of saying those are the elements that get us to mid-40s and then up to 50%, which is our ultimate goal. Tyler Hutin -- William Blair and Company -- Analyst Thank you, Jeff. That's great color. I just wanted to follow up. Do you have -- on the plans for the convertible debt coming due in 2026, just any color you can provide there. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Yeah. It's certainly a work in progress, I would tell you right now. I mean, that's been a lovely debt instrument for us. We obviously went to market at a great time, and it's a zero coupon piece of paper. It's been terrific for us. It will come to at some point, we've got to deal with that. And so, we're looking at -- how do we do that with the most traditional methods we can, OK? So, we're looking at how we can really reduce that debt. I'm not in a position to talk about it today. But clearly, we want to deal with it as early as possible and not get into -- get toward maturity dates. So, you'll hear a lot more about that in '25, OK? Tyler Hutin -- William Blair and Company -- Analyst All right. Sounds good. Looking forward to 2025 for you guys, and have a happy Thanksgiving again. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Thank you. And happy Thanksgiving to you and Brian as well, OK? Operator Thank you. Next question is coming from Jacob Stephan from Lake Street Capital Markets. Your line is now live. Jacob Stephan -- Lake Street Capital Markets -- Analyst Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just curious on the healthcare business. Obviously, nice to see that return to growth this quarter. But maybe just kind of give us a sense on the order patterns now that we're kind of two-thirds of the way through Q4, I mean do you feel like kind of the revenue level where you guys were at in Q3 year's a good, I guess, a place to build off of? Or do you expect to see stability here? Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Yeah. Yeah. So, good morning, Jacob, and a happy Thanksgiving to you coming up. Thanks for calling today. Yes, I think that's -- this is the foundation to build from. It's -- healthcare is -- on the orthopedic side of our business, of the healthcare business, it's a good, steady business. And the nice thing for us, we're doing two things to grow that business. Number one is developing more applications below the neck -- for the skeleton below the neck, and it's really a great business. It continues to grow nicely, steadily over time. We work closely with the FDA to get certifications on those, and it's a great business. We are moving with our partners -- our channel partners into the trauma field in that, which I'm really excited about. Obviously, it's tragic when someone comes to an emergency physician with trauma into the skeleton. And our technology can apply there. It challenges us on speed because those people need very fast treatment. But it's a lovely growth area for our business, so I like that. And we've been stronger in the U.S. than Europe on -- in that personalized health service. So, Europe remains a strong focus as well and in fact, some other parts of the world. But -- so, I look at all the growth factors. I like the foundation of the business today. It's a terrific business, a strong brand, very happy. I see it growing from here. The dental business, obviously, a little bit more volatile. We've been very primary in indirect printing of aligners, and we're diversifying that portfolio now as we move into dentures and elsewhere. So, a little bit more volatility as those markets rise and fall. But the diversification of the portfolio will really help in dental over time, and you'll see that over the next two years. So, again, expect quarter-to-quarter noise like any business, but by and large, that healthcare business in total is going to continue to grow for us, and we're thrilled with it. It's a terrific business to be in. Jacob Stephan -- Lake Street Capital Markets -- Analyst Got it. And then maybe just kind of on the -- I guess, in-sourcing initiative, requiring more inventory to be repurchased back from your contract manufacturers. I'm just curious, I guess, what percentage of that kind of inventory surplus was repurchased from the contract manufacturers and maybe any kind of -- Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Oh, gosh. Yeah, Jacob. We had to buy -- and I don't have a real number for you, but we had to buy, I think, Jeff, well over $100 million of inventory. We had to bring back in-house. I wasn't -- I'll be frank with you, Jacob. I was not pleased, and I'm not blaming them. We were a small customer to these very large-contract manufacturers. I was not pleased with their inventory management, their supply chain management and the quality of the product they were shipping on our behalf and the speed at which you could introduce a new product. So, those four things drove us to insource, OK? And we're headquartered in South Carolina, it's a lovely place to build product. We've insourced 80%, 90% of our business now, largely in South Carolina. We do some manufacturing in Europe as well. But as a part of that whole taking it back in, we needed to buy the good inventory that they had purchased on our behalf. So, it created a small mountain -- not Mount Everest -- but a small mountain of inventory that we've been burning down. So, we'll continue to work away at that. It's all good stuff, but in good parts, but we just got to continue to work it down, and it's been difficult in a low sales environment. That's been challenging. So, I'm proud of the 20% reduction we'll attain by the end of the year, but we've got more to go. And on the bright side, when you do it, it's a good source of cash. It frees up cash. But it has -- we've been able to make the investment because we had a lot of cash on the balance sheet. So, we did that at a time where we could afford it. And as we work it down, we'll realize the benefit from a cash and from a gross margin standpoint on COGS. Jacob Stephan -- Lake Street Capital Markets -- Analyst Got it. Very helpful. I appreciate all the color. Happy Thanksgiving, and looking forward to '25 for you guys. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer We are, too. Thanks so much for calling in. Operator Thank you. We've reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Jeff for any further closing comments. Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Hey, Kevin. First of all, I want to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving as well. You've been terrific at moderating our calls for many, many quarters now. So, thank you for that. And for everybody else that's tuned in, I want to thank you all for joining our call today. For those in the U.S., I wish you all a happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday with your families. For those outside of the U.S., I wish you a very happy holiday season coming up. We'll look forward to talking to you again at least in the New Year. Operator [Operator signoff] Duration: 0 minutes Call participants: Mike McCloskey -- Vice President, Investor Relations Jeff Graves -- President and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Creech -- Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer James Ricchiuti -- Analyst Jim Ricchiuti -- Analyst Danny Eggerichs -- Craig-Hallum Capital Group -- Analyst Troy Jensen -- Analyst Ananda Baruah -- Analyst Tyler Hutin -- William Blair and Company -- Analyst Jacob Stephan -- Lake Street Capital Markets -- Analyst More DDD analysis All earnings call transcripts
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Big 12 foes match up when the Texas Tech Red Raiders (6-4) and the Oklahoma State Cowboys (3-7) play on Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024 at Boone Pickens Stadium. What channel is Texas Tech vs. Oklahoma State on? What time is Texas Tech vs. Oklahoma State? Texas Tech and Oklahoma State play at 3:30 p.m. ET. Texas Tech vs. Oklahoma State betting odds, lines, spread Odds courtesy of BetMGM Texas Tech vs. Oklahoma State recent matchups Texas Tech schedule Oklahoma State schedule This content was created for Gannett using technology provided by Data Skrive.
Argentina's Nuclear Ambitions: Milei's Bold Energy PlanEdwin Jacobs, director of the Social Insurance Bank (SVB), recently announced that he approved the largest payroll in the institution’s history. On November 29th, SVB will disburse a total of 37.9 million florins in old-age pensions, along with an additional 4 million florins as a 75% year-end bonus. An extra 1.6 million florins will be allocated for AZV premiums for pensioners. This payout will benefit 22,703 pensioners, of whom 19,876 reside in Aruba. The top three other countries where pensioners from Aruba live are: As of December, 72 new pensioners will be added to the system, while 42 pensioners have passed away. One noteworthy trend is the decline in the mortality rate among SVB pensioners. In 2014, for every 1,000 pensioners over 65, 34.9 passed away. By 2019, this number had decreased to 33.3 deaths per 1,000 pensioners. In 2023, the figure dropped further to 31.0 deaths per 1,000 pensioners. This marks a significant reduction and challenges the common perception that older adults are dying at higher rates today compared to the past. SVB’s data also reveals that more citizens are reaching older ages, signaling positive developments in health and longevity across the island. Old-age pensions remain a crucial support for seniors, and it is our responsibility to ensure their continued sustainability for future generations.
A 39-year-old Lincoln man was charged Friday after police discovered more than 400 grams of methamphetamine and marijuana at his residence, according to court documents. Julius Phillips was charged with possession of 140 grams or more of meth, possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, possession of a firearm while violating drug laws and possession of money while violating drug laws. At about 4:15 p.m. on Thursday, officers with the Lincoln Lancaster County Narcotics Task Force were near North 32nd and Starr streets, where Phillips resides, police say. Investigators had already obtained a search warrant for Phillips' residence and were aware he may be in possession of a gun. According to the probable cause affidavit, police noticed a woman entering Phillips' home, then they both exited and headed toward 30th Street. People are also reading... Rest assured, Nebraska volleyball fans: The missing fan behind the servers will be back Saturday Nebraska football’s pregame meeting interrupted by USC players in brief scuffle Matt Rhule reacts to no-call at end of Nebraska-USC game: "I don’t know what else to say" 'Bocephus' is back: Hank Williams Jr. to play Lincoln arena Friday Nebraska's home game against Wisconsin gets time, TV designation Arrest made in 55-year-old cold case of Nebraska teen stabbed to death As Nebraska's Democratic Party shrinks, some former party officials call for change Kidnapping in Nebraska prompted police chase that ended with 3 dead in Missouri 'She put on a show': How John Cook decided to ramp up his recruitment of Teraya Sigler Mountain lion spotted on trail camera east of Bennet, Sheriff's Office says Signing Day: Meet Nebraska volleyball's five-player 2025 class Wind-aided fire destroys vacant Village Inn in Lincoln 'Sophisticated yet simple': How Nebraska's offense changed in Dana Holgorsen's debut Man dies in northeast Lincoln house fire Amie Just: Ahead of milestone birthday, local sports figures give advice on turning 30 Officers approached Phillips and the woman and ordered them to the ground before arresting them. Investigators searched Phillips and found $7,021 cash in his pockets and two cell phones. Police eventually searched his home. Inside, 309.5 grams of meth was discovered in a bag and 162.6 grams of marijuana was found in the kitchen freezer. In one of the home's bedrooms, officers located a rifle with ammunition. Judge Thomas Zimmerman set Phillips' percentage bond at $750,000, meaning he would have to pay $75,000 to be released. He is being held at the Lancaster County jail.37 Products So Elite That Basically No Copycats Will Ever CompareBlake Snell and Dodgers agree to $182 million, 5-year contract, AP source says
Driving a feed truck on a farm means steering a 60,000-pound vehicle inches away from a concrete feed trough that would wreck the truck. While augers are shoveling food out of the truck to the hungry cattle below, drivers have to drive perfectly straight. “It’s just one of the most demanding jobs in one of the worst environments out there,” said Jacob Hansen, the CEO of ALA Engineering. “And so food truck drivers, specifically, do not stick around very long.” Jacob Hansen, CEO of ALA Engineering, explains how the company’s automated feed truck works during the Nebraska Ag Expo on Dec. 12 at Sandhills Global Event Center. ALA Engineering, a startup based in Scottsbluff that also has an office at Nebraska Innovation Campus, hopes to change the livestock industry with driverless technology. The company showed off its concept for a driverless feed truck at the Nebraska Ag Expo in Lincoln earlier this month. Hansen said the truck could help farmers deal with labor shortages and food costs. The ALA Navigator is still being developed, but the company brought its technology attached to a normal feed truck to the Ag Expo. ALA Engineering’s driverless feed truck aims to help farmers who have to drive large trucks with precision to feed cattle. Once the truck is on the market, it would drive a predetermined route with lane limits. The truck will also have sensors in order to see any obstacles on the road ahead while it is dumping feed. Hansen, who studied software engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said the predetermined routes that will be used by the truck means that autonomous vehicles in agricultural settings are safer than a driverless car in city traffic. “When larger robotaxi companies and stuff make big public mistakes, it shines negatively on the autonomy industry as a whole,” Hansen said. “And it’s worth knowing that agricultural and industrial and off-highway autonomy is a lot different than kind of urban autonomy, especially when it comes to safety.” Although the company’s trucks may be less likely to crash, there are still big stakes. “If you plant a week late it’s a big deal,” Hansen said. “If you don’t feed cattle for a week, it’s the end of the world.” The engineering company is building multiple different sensors into the truck so that it can operate day after day in whatever weather conditions a state like Nebraska might throw at it. The backup sensors even have backups. Asher Khor, the senior embedded engineer for the company and a UNL graduate, said the truck can be accurate within less than an inch. Asher Khor (left), the senior embedded engineer for ALA Engineering, shows off the company’s automated feed truck at the Nebraska Ag Expo on Dec. 12 at Sandhills Global Event Center. “If you’re a few inches off, you will hit the bunk,” Khor said. “They’re major vehicles and so we need really, really precise accuracy of the vehicle.” The truck is meant to solve problems like inaccuracies in food distribution and crashes. Hansen also said the agriculture industry as a whole has experienced labor shortages. The average farmer was unable to hire 21% of the workforce they would have hired under normal circumstances, according to a 2022 National Council of Agricultural Employers survey. The vehicle is set to go into production in 2026, Hansen said. Before then, the company will work on commercial pilot programs and complying with different regulations. The truck will be ALA Engineering’s first product. Hansen said the company had built a driver-assistance program but decided to keep engineers working in research and development, building toward the end goal of an autonomous vehicle. The startup’s goal isn’t to replace all of a farmer’s trucks or employees, Hansen said. He said good employees are often more useful elsewhere in a stockyard. “As your oldest truck ages out of your fleet, bring in one of ours,” Hansen said. “As you lose an employee, or you have an unfilled position, bring in one of our trucks.” The invention of the round baler is credited to the Luebben family of Sutton, with the patent issued in the early 1900s. This advertisement of Ummo Luebben circulated in 1909 and mentions a Beatrice manufacturer of the invention. Appropriately located in a former horse stable, the Ford Livery Company at 1314 Howard Street was America's first car rental company, dreamed up in 1916 by Joe Saunders. He and his brothers expanded their company, later renamed Saunders Drive It Yourself System, to 56 cities by 1926. They sold to Avis in 1955. Cary Steele checks one of his seven computer monitors while taking a 911 call in 2014 at the Lincoln Emergency Communications Center. Although the system was first used in Alabama, Lincoln is credited as the home of the 911 system's invention. Inspiration for the chocolate-coated ice cream bar came from a candy store in Onawa, Iowa, in 1920. But it wasn’t until owner and creator Christian Kent Nelson took his invention to a Nebraska chocolatier named Russell Stover that the Eskimo Pie went into mass production. Many variations of the delicious treat are available in grocery and convenience stores worldwide. Union Pacific Railroad mechanical engineering employees determine a comfortable speed at which the world's first ski chairlift should operate during a test at the railroad's Omaha railcar and locomotive repair shop complex in the summer of 1936. The next time you sit on a ski lift on the way to the top of a mountain, think of bananas and the Union Pacific Railroad. Credit them with the modern-day chairlift system used by ski resorts around the globe. Seventy-five years ago, Jim Curran, a structural engineer with U.P., came up with the idea of adapting a system used to load bunches of bananas onto boats into one to move people up steep, snow-covered slopes. His design called for replacing the hooks for bananas with chairs for skiers to sit on while wearing skis. The chairs would be suspended from a single cable running overhead. Curran's idea was so out of the box for its day that his co-workers thought it was too dangerous and his boss tried to shelve it. Fortunately, Charlie Proctor, a consultant brought in by the railroad to help plan the Sun Valley Resort in Idaho, saw Curran's design, which he had slipped in with some approved designs, and thought otherwise. Proctor, a famous skier from Dartmouth College, convinced the railroad's top management to allow Curran to make his idea a reality. This winter ski season, the Union Pacific and Sun Valley Resort are marking the 75th anniversary of the world's first chairlift operation, which was invented not in the mountains but in the flatlands of Nebraska in Omaha. "From our side ... it's kind of unusual that a railroad would invent a chairlift," U.P. spokesman Mark Davis said. The railroad did so to serve a need, "and it turned out to be groundbreaking for the skiing industry," he said. During the 1930s, Union Pacific Chairman W.A. Harriman saw Americans beginning to embrace winter sports and knew his railroad operated through some of the most scenic and mountainous territory in the western United States, according to the railroad's history. Harriman's vision: Develop a world-class winter sports resort served by the Union Pacific. Other railroads were thinking the same way. Harriman enlisted Austrian sportsman Count Felix Schaffgotsch to find land for such a resort. In winter 1935, the count came across the area that would become the world-famous Sun Valley Resort in south-central Idaho, about 100 miles northeast of Boise. "Among the many attractive spots I have visited, this (location) combines more delightful features than any place I have seen in the United States, Switzerland or Austria, for a winter sports resort," Schaffgotsch wrote to Harriman. Based on Schaffgotsch's recommendation, the railroad bought 4,300 acres adjacent to the Sawtooth Mountain National Forest. The Sawtooth Mountains, running east and west, would protect the future resort from northern winds. The mountains also surrounded a small basin, with hills and slopes largely free of timber. Snowfall and sunshine were abundant. And natural hot springs would provide outdoor swimming year-round. Schaffgotsch had found the perfect spot for a winter sports resort. Construction of the ski lodge and other facilities began in April 1936. Meanwhile, nearly 1,200 miles away in Omaha, members of the railroad's engineering department were investigating ways to transport skiers up slopes, including by rope tows, J-bars and cable cars. But those designs were put aside after Curran's chairlift idea was championed by Proctor. Soon prototypes of the lift were being built and tested at the railroad's locomotive and railroad car repair shops, on land that is now home to the Qwest Center Omaha and the new downtown baseball stadium. To help determine how fast a chairlift should travel up a mountainside, engineers attached one to the side of a truck for tests. Because it was summer and relatively flat in Omaha, engineers wore roller skates to simulate skis running over snow. Their conclusion: 4 to 5 mph would be a comfortable speed to pick up and drop off skiers. It's the summer of 1936, in Omaha, as the world's first snow ski chairlift is ready for a round of testing to determine a comfortable speed for snow skiers to get on and off the lift. The world's first two first snow ski chairlifts were debuted by Union Pacific Railroad at the opening of its Sun Valley, Idaho ski resort in December 1936. (Courtesy Union Pacific Railroad) When Union Pacific opened the Sun Valley resort on Dec. 21, 1936, the world's first two chairlifts went into operation. As with anything new, it took skiers awhile to get used to the newfangled invention that changed the sport forever. The railroad sold the Sun Valley Resort in 1964. In 1896, 17-year-old Carl A. Swanson borrowed enough money from his sisters to travel from his native Sweden to Omaha. Without knowing a word of English, he began working on a farm near Wahoo, then moved to Omaha, where he continued studying English, business and accounting. While working in a grocery store, he met John Hjerpe, who sold produce for farmers on a commission, and in 1898 went to work for him. After saving $125, Swanson put his nest egg into a partnership with Hjerpe and Frank Ellison for a net capital of $456. Although the enterprise was intended to be called the Hjerpe Commission Co., the sign painter accidentally eliminated a letter and the firm was spelled Jerpe from that day forward. In 1905, the partnership became a corporation with $10,000 in capital and within a decade moved from a commission firm to paying cash for all purchases. With Ellison's death at the beginning of World War I, the corporation assumed his stock and began moving seriously into butter production and, a short time later, into poultry in general. Swanson bought out Hjerpe's interest in 1928 but retained the name Jerpe. About 1923, Clarence Birdseye developed fast-freezing as a method of not only preserving food but also retaining fresh flavor, which had not worked well with conventional freezing. As the Depression lessened, Jerpe Co. became a distributor for Birdseye, which was purchased by General Foods and inexplicably named Birds Eye. By the beginning of World War II, Jerpe's had grown to the point where Swanson was known as the "Butter King," one of the four largest creameries in the United States. During the war, production again was diverted, with the firm becoming one of the largest suppliers of poultry, eggs and powdered eggs to the military. At the end of the war, the firm's name was changed to C.A. Swanson & Sons, its major brands being called "Swanson Ever Fresh." With Carl Swanson's death in 1949, management was assumed by sons Gilbert and Clarke, who had been apprenticing for the position for some time. A year later, after considerable experimentation with crust recipes, the company introduced a frozen chicken pot pie using some of Birdseye's techniques. Although some of the story of frozen dinners may be apocryphal, it is simply too good not to repeat. Two ill-fated versions of the idea, the Frigi-Dinner and One-Eye Eskimo, already had been attempted. Then an overpurchase of 500,000 pounds -- 10 refrigerated boxcars -- of turkeys sent the Swansons scrambling for a solution. One of the less probable versions of the incident said that the only way the boxcar refrigeration worked was when the cars were in motion, which necessitated their constant movement from Omaha to the east, then back. Back in Omaha, Gerry Thomas discarded the previous metal trays and perfected an aluminum compartmentalized container with turkey, cornbread dressing and peas, which could be retailed for 98 cents. Because the box design resembled a rectangular television screen, the product was dubbed the TV Dinner. Unsure of the salability, 5,000 were produced and instantly sold in the first year, 1952. The second year, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce were added and an astounding 10,000,000 were sold. Not resting on the success of the TV Dinner, 1953 also saw the Swansons as one of the nation's largest margarine producers. Despite their success in butter and margarine, both products were discontinued in 1954 to allow the company to concentrate on its main items of canned chicken fricassee, boned chicken and turkey, frozen chickens, drumsticks, chicken pot pies and TV Dinners. In April 1955, Swanson merged its more than 4,000 employees and 20 plants with the Campbell Soup Co., which ultimately dropped the famous TV Dinner label, thinking it limited their market. Still generically thought of as TV dinners, the frozen dinner joins butter brickle ice cream, raisin bran and maybe even the Reuben sandwich as an Omaha original. Historian Jim McKee, who still writes with a fountain pen, invites comments or questions. Write in care of the Journal Star or e-mail jim@leebooksellers.com . Dean Sicking of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Midwest Roadside Safety Facility examines a SAFER barrier on display at the Smith Collection Museum of American Speed on Friday, Oct. 21, 2011. (ROBERT BECKER/Lincoln Journal Star) Don't turn until you know where to turn. Mac Demere watched the car in front of him lose control and veer left toward the inside of the track. He tried to anticipate the car's next move, not wanting to turn until he knew where the other car was headed next. Don't turn until you know where to turn. He finally swerved far to the track's outside. But as the other car regained traction, it veered sharply to the right, directly toward Demere, and Demere's car smashed into its right side. "I can't tell you what caused him to lose control," Demere said of the 1983 crash at Watkins Glen International in upstate New York. "It happens so fast." Demere, now 57, walked away from that crash, but the other driver suffered a broken ankle. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you crash, said Demere, a former racer from South Carolina and longtime motorsports journalist. That certainly seemed to be the lesson at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway a week ago when 15 cars crashed, killing two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dan Wheldon. He was the first IndyCar driver to die on a track since Paul Dana was killed during a practice run at Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2006. On Oct. 16, two cars went airborne -- Wheldon's and Will Power's. Wheldon hit a catch fence built to protect spectators from crash debris. He died later at a hospital of head injuries. Power hit a barrier designed by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Midwest Roadside Safety Facility. He walked away. The tragically different fates of Wheldon and Power have raised concerns about the catch fence at NASCAR and IndyCar tracks and have highlighted the safety performance of the UNL-designed SAFER barrier. Dean Sicking, director of the safety facility at UNL, said the SAFER -- or Steel and Foam Energy Reduction -- barriers now are in place at all NASCAR and IndyCar tracks. There have been no fatalities involving crashes into those barriers since 2004, when all of the barriers were fully installed at NASCAR tracks. Before those barriers were installed, 1 to 1.5 drivers died each year at NASCAR tracks alone, Sicking said. In an especially cruel span of 10 months in 2000 and 2001, NASCAR crashes claimed the lives of budding stars Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin Jr. and Tony Roper, and one of the sport's legends, Dale Earnhardt. The trapezoidal barriers designed at UNL are made of insulation foam that is waterproof and effective at absorbing the impact of cars going well over 100 mph, Sicking said. Steel tubes serve as a barrier between the foam blocks and track. The SAFER barriers protect drivers from the unforgiving nature of concrete walls. Sicking -- whose office is decorated with a photo of him shaking hands with former President George W. Bush, as well as numerous awards -- related the story of how the UNL center got the contract to design the barriers. In 1998, Tony George, the longtime former IndyCar president and Indianapolis Motor Speedway CEO, wanted a new racetrack barrier. The concrete barriers simply weren't good enough. IndyCar designers had developed a new barrier made of sheets of plastic, but it broke into 50- to 100-pound chunks that littered the speedway when hit too hard. George asked the UNL center to improve the design. "He said, ‘Can you fix this?'" Sicking said. "We never admit we can't do something." Initially, Sicking wasn't convinced it would be worth the extra effort. Then his assistant director, Ron Faller, convinced him it would drive the UNL center to find new solutions to road safety and new materials with which to build them. Sicking agreed and asked George for $1 million. "He said, ‘When can you start?'" It didn't take the UNL center long to figure out the IndyCar plastic barrier would never perform as well as foam, and Sicking worked to convince a skeptical George. Finally, George relented. In 2002, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway installed the SAFER barriers, and, seeing how well they performed, NASCAR CEO Bill France Sr. ordered them installed at all NASCAR speedways by the end of 2004 at a cost of $100 million. The UNL center oversaw installation. "No one can ever put it in right," Sicking said, laughing. The barrier has earned the UNL center numerous awards, including the prestigious 2002 Louis Schwitzer Award, presented in conjunction with the Indianapolis 500. IndyCar senior technical director Phil Casey called SAFER barriers the greatest achievement for safety in automobile racing. The barriers were installed at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in 2003, and the speedway where both Petty and Irwin Jr. died has had no fatalities or serious injuries since, said speedway spokeswoman Kristen Costa. "It's better on impact. It moves with the vehicle," she said. Costa said the speedway reconfigured its catch fence in 2009 to make it safer as well. Sicking said catch fences at motorsports facilities need to be re-examined. "The catch fence is a difficult safety issue, a tough nut to crack, but I think it can be," he said. Sicking said IndyCar is reluctant to invest the large amount of money required to redesign the catch fence, and NASCAR isn't as interested in redesigning it as its cars rarely go airborne like the open-wheel Indy cars are prone to do. While nothing has been determined, the UNL center could end up leading the investigation into the crash that killed Wheldon, as it did with the 2001 crash that killed Earnhardt, Sicking said. The UNL center has examined nearly 2,000 crashes under federal contract. "Any time you have a big wreck, we normally get to look at it," he said. Demere, the former racer who now is pursuing a master's in journalism from UNL, said it appears Wheldon tried to slow down by lifting his foot off the accelerator and tried to direct his car toward the gearbox of the slowing car in front of him. But his car's nose lifted, and, traveling at more than 200 mph, his car quickly took to the air. With 15 cars involved, it was simply impossible for Wheldon to avoid the carnage, Demere said. He said drivers try not to think about getting seriously injured or killed while they're racing. They simply try to focus on the track and the racers around them. "We all know that it might happen to us," he said. "Quite frankly, I'm surprised that it didn't happen to me." Before the Internet and Wikipedia, the distinctive yellow-and-black covers of CliffsNotes adorned the bookshelves of many a college and high school student. The series of study guides (which are not to be used as a substitute for reading the actual text, OK?) was launched in Lincoln by Cliff Hillegass and his wife Catherine. From the original 16 Shakespeare titles, CliffsNotes has grown to include hundreds of works and has saved many a student. Nebraska history shows many inventions have originated in the Cornhusker state, some by women and a few that have lasted for more than a century. One of them that is often overlooked began with a promise and came to be after a dream by a Crete woman. John Quincy Robb’s daughter Elizabeth Jane was born in Washington, Illinois, in 1858, but the family moved to a farm near Tecumseh a short time later. Elizabeth married William Wallace Douglas and moved to Missouri, then to Glenwood, Iowa, before moving to Crete near the beginning of the 20th century. Although both were teachers, William was employed by the Burlington Railroad as a land agent. In 1904, Elizabeth attended a talk by a missionary from Tibet sponsored by a Crete Methodist church and was so taken by his story that she pledged $20,000 to his campaign. Not only was this an incredibly large amount of money, she had no idea where she might come up with it. That night, Elizabeth dreamed of “an old man with a long white beard who told her to make a steel collapsible voting booth,” which would ensure her wealth enough to fulfill her promise and prosper. The concept of voting booths at the time came from the introduction of the Australian balloting system and employed wooden booths. Because of the waste and amount of labor involved in building, then dismantling them, demand for a lightweight, collapsible, reusable booth that could be quickly reassembled by unskilled labor was obvious. The only obstacle was manufacturing a booth with those requirements that also would meet all local and national requirements. The next morning, Elizabeth began to build a prototype with paper, pasteboard and pins. With the idea and working model, the next step was securing a patent. She contacted Albert Litle Johnson, C.C. White’s partner and brother-in-law at Crete Mills, for financial help. Patent 828935A was issued to Johnson and Elizabeth Douglas in August 1906. Dempster Manufacturing in Beatrice then built a small number of booths that were sold locally. In 1909, the Douglas family moved to Los Angeles, where a small factory was built and 1,000 two-stall booths with red, white and blue canvas screens were sold to a local government with William as salesman. Within months, he sold an additional 4,000 booths for $40,000. The family returned to Crete in 1912 and leased property at 1530 Pine St. from the Burlington Railroad, where a factory was established. In less than a decade, a new building had been constructed and employed 10 workers with four salesmen. Elizabeth designed a new booth concept in 1923 resulting in another patent in her name alone the following year. Although William died in 1930, the business prospered until 1945, when the factory burned. A new building was quickly constructed. Elizabeth died in Friend in 1952, but Douglas Manufacturing continued in family ownership. I.B.M. approached the firm in 1970 and subsequently contracted for Douglas to build metal media storage containers. 1980 saw a second fire but the facility was again rebuilt with an expansion. In 1990, the leased land was purchased from Burlington and two years later a third fire was met with yet another expansion, with the firm reporting having 25 employees. Today, Douglas Manufacturing still builds voting booths with as many as five stalls per unit, now using aluminum instead of steel and vinyl attached with Velcro in place of canvas. Elizabeth and William’s great-grandson Roger C. Douglas is now president of the firm, which also produces ballot boxes, election signs, media storage boxes and even flash drive containers. Patents secured through the years for ideas never produced included retractable steps for Pullman railroad cars, a mail cart and shut-off valves for gasoline pumps. Sadly, the company is closing. Douglas broke the news Dec. 30 to the four remaining workers, according to longtime employee Tim Smejdir, who said business had been "very slow, so the decision was made to terminate." Douglas is selling or auctioning equipment and plans to retire, Smejdir said. Douglas Manufacturing was the oldest manufacturer of election equipment in the nation. Interesting, too, is that the election supply company was formed by a woman over a decade before women received the right to vote. Dr. Roger Mandigo, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor of animal science poses with a McRib sandwich inside a meat locker at the UNL Animal Science Complex on Thursday, November 4th, 2010. Mandigo invented a process to bind meat together into different shapes. The technology is often associated with the famous McRib sandwich. Move over, Richie Ashburn and Bob Gibson. Another Nebraskan has made it to the hall of fame. Of course, University of Nebraska-Lincoln meat scientist Roger Mandigo never had Ashburn's ability to hit to all fields or Gibson's ability to back batters off the plate with an inside fastball. His induction Saturday in Scottsdale, Ariz., was into the Meat Industry Hall of Fame. And his biggest claim to fame outside that industry is research that led to the introduction of McDonald's McRib sandwich in 1981. His company is no less exclusive. Among the 10 other honorees were Col. Harland Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken; Dave Thomas,founder of Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers; and Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's. And it just happens that Mandigo's return coincides with what the Wall Street Journal describes as the first nationwide featuring of Mc-Donald's McRib sandwich at 14,000 restaurants, including more than a dozen in Lincoln,in 16 years. Wouldn't this be a great time for a big guy - squeezed into a small, obscure, windowless office during an $18.3 million renovation at the Animal Science Building - to step up, at last, and claim credit for his highprofile work? "I get credit for inventing the McRib fairly often," Mandigo conceded in an interview earlier this week. But taking credit was not something he did back in 1981. And he won't be doing it now, in his 44th year at UNL. That's because, despite common misperception, it's just not true. "We played an important role in the technology to bind pieces of meat to each other.I didn't invent the McRib sandwich," he said. "Mc-Donald's did that." All this is said with the kind of smiling patience that a McDonald's associate is supposed to demonstrate when asked for the 44th time during the lunch rush to hold the pickles. Pickle slices, by the way, are part of the standard preparation of the McRib. As its ravenous fans, including Steve Glass of Walton, know so well, a McRib is a pork patty that's also garnished with raw onions and smothered in barbecue sauce. Glass, 47, had two McRibs on his lunch tray Thursday as he made his way to a table at the McDonald's near the intersection of 10th Street and Cornhusker Highway. That's right, two. "I haven't decided whether to eat the one now or eat it later,"he said. Rapid progress on the first one seemed to leave the choice between one and two very much open to question for a guy who likes "something different - not a burger." Glass is not one to worry about what's under the barbecue sauce."It's like a hotdog," he said. "What's in a hotdog? If it tastes good, go ahead." Decades ago, it was Mandigo who was going ahead with a research initiative launched by the National Pork Producers Council. Its members were looking for another reliable source of demand for pork shoulder. There were never any royalties associated with the results, Nebraska's newest hall of famer said. And to this day, the McRib comes and goes from the McDonald's menu for reasons that have to do with its intense popularity and a national supply of pork trimmings that's typically a lot more limited than the supply of beef trimmings. "If you suddenly start to buy a large amount of that material,"said Mandigo,"the price starts to rise." As the cost to McDonald's rises, the McRib tends to go out of circulation again. And then the same parts of a hog tend to flow back into the processing lines for Spam, Vienna sausages and other specialized products. Anything else that goes into periodic McRib feeding frenzies is not for Mandigo to analyze. "It's a function of a business strategy and that's McDonald's decision, not mine." The official word on that subject comes from Ashlee Yingling at the headquarters of McDonald's USA. The McRib is in something called "a national limited time promotion for the month of November in the U.S.," Yingling said by email. This is only the third time that's happened in the 29 years since it hit the market. The rest of the time, the company has chosen a regional strategy. "To keep it relevant and appealing," Yingling said, "it will continue to be offered as a limited-time promotion on a regional basis." Does Mandigo eat this sandwich that he did NOT invent? "Every chance I get," he said. Virtually no one, anywhere in the world, is unfamiliar with the iconic photos of a drop of milk above a white haloed crown just as the previous drop hits a flat surface, or a bullet as it exits a just-pierced apple. Few outside the state, however, realize that Harold Edgerton is a native son and graduate of the University of Nebraska. Harold Eugene Edgerton was born in Fremont on April 6, 1903. Harold’s father, Frank, was born in Iowa, then graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1900 as president of his senior class. After teaching in the Fremont public schools, he returned to Lincoln on the staff of the then-new Lincoln Star. After earning a law degree from George Washington University, Frank again returned to Lincoln in 1911, becoming the assistant attorney general of Nebraska and prominent in state politics before becoming county attorney in Hamilton County. Harold’s interest in science came early; in 1910, he told of attempting to build a searchlight on the roof of the family home and realizing tin cans were unable to produce a tight beam of light. While attending junior and senior high school in Aurora, he became interested in photography and, with the help of an uncle, set up his own darkroom. In 1921, Harold entered the University of Nebraska and at his father’s suggestion, he earned half of his tuition by wiring Lincoln homes for electricity and working on a line gang for the Nebraska Power & Light Company. It was here that he observed how, in the darkest night, his coworkers became suddenly visible in lightning flashes and just as suddenly again were invisible. As a student, Harold joined Acacia, chose a major in electrical engineering and was active in the annual E-Week open houses. Interestingly, although there is no record of which exhibits Edgerton participated in, one of the demonstrations during his student days involved stop-motion photography that employed either 120 flashes per second or an exposure of 1/50,000ths of a second depending on which report is to be believed. The demonstration featured an electric fan with the letter N painted on the blades. The room was darkened, the “strobe light synchronized to the fan, thus making the N stand still ... people could hardly believe their eyes.” After graduating from Nebraska with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1925, Edgerton moved first to Schenectady, N.Y., then entered MIT. He received his master's degree, having developed the stroboscope, which employed a reusable flash bulb that was linked to a camera. Edgerton married his high school sweetheart, Esther Garrett, in 1927, received his doctorate in 1931 and became an associate professor at MIT. As he further perfected his stop-motion photography, some of his work was shown at the Royal Photographic Society’s convention in London. In the 1930s, Edgerton and two of his students formed Edgerton, Germeshausen & Grier, later becoming simply E.G.&G. Corp., which manufactured Rapatronic cameras, consulted with the U.S. Army during World War II, had contracts to do photographic research surrounding atomic explosions for the Atomic Energy Commission, was instrumental in the establishment of the New England Aquarium in Boston and ultimately had 47 operating divisions with more than 23,000 employees in several countries. Often forgotten is Edgerton’s film “Quicker 'n a Wink,” which won an Academy Award for best short subject in 1941. Myriad awards followed, with perhaps the most prestigious being the Medal of Freedom for his nighttime reconnaissance photos during WWII. In 1947, his photo essay on hummingbirds was published in National Geographic magazine, and in 1953, he began working with Jacques-Yves Cousteau to develop an underwater camera using side-scan sonar technology. These experiments led to discovering the USS Monitor, which sank in 1862, and producing the first real photos of the Titanic in 1986-87. Closer to home, in October 1967, Edgerton donated two strobe lights to be mounted on Nebraska’s State Capitol tower as an aircraft warning meant to be visible for 150 miles when extended to their operational capacity, seemingly to fulfill federal aeronautics regulations. Working with Bob Newell, the Capitol building superintendent, Edgerton had his mother standing by to activate the experiment. The low-power version of the lights on the east and west sides of the building were turned on as she said “let there be light,” as instructed by her son, and almost immediately complaints began to pour in. The experiment lasted only briefly before being abandoned. Ultimately, the strobe light was perfected to the point where the light burst lasted only one-billionth of a second with his stop-motion photos of bullets, hummingbirds, Stonehenge, milk droplets, etc., known worldwide. Edgerton died at MIT on Jan. 4, 1990, and five years later the Edgerton Explorit Center opened as a museum in his honor in Aurora. Reach the writer at nfranklin@journalstar.com or 402-473-7391. On Twitter @NealHFranklin Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly.Australia's Black Friday sales — and the rise of the 'de-influencer'
Senna is in preschool and already speaks four languages. These are the benefitsIn my role as the Word Man for Sky News I have been asked repeatedly to explain the word “woke”. And I have done my best—on ‘Credlin’ and elsewhere. But the same question keeps coming up. I have explained the history of the word (and I’ll summarise that history below) and talked about how the word is used. But still people remained puzzled, and keep asking me the question—so clearly more explanation is needed. Now, after much thought, I think I’ve nailed it. The word “woke” now means “snob”. “Wokeness” is the new snobbery. Anyone who is comfortable with the label “woke” feels superior, and looks down on the rest of as intellectually (and morally) inferior. Next to them we are mental and moral midgets. The “woke” believe they can see far more than us mere peasants, and that while we are driven by dumb, narrow-minded prejudice, they (and they alone) are morally enlightened. They are superior—we are inferior. Hence, the “woke” are the new snobs. How do I reach that conclusion? Well, it starts with the history of the word. This word (originally the past participle of the verb “to wake”) means ‘fully alert; awake to the world around us; aware.’ Used in this way “woke” comes from Black American English. It’s first recorded in this way in 1891. The earliest citation is from Joel Chandler Harris (the man who gave us Uncle Remus, Br’er Rabbit and the tar baby). Writing in 1891 in a story called ‘Balaam’s Ass’ he spoke of an unaware person by saying “he ain’t woke good yet”. For the next 60 or 70 years it remained exclusively part of Black English in America. Then it was taken up by trendy left-wing white people— “politically correct” people— around the world. They now use the term “woke” to describe themselves to claim they see more than others, they are aware of more than others, and know more than others. The rest of us peasants are not “a wake up” to what’s really going on, and that makes the “woke” the smartest people in the room. To give you an example: when “woke” people defend the right of biological males to compete in women’s sport—they believe they have a better grasp than their opponents of the intellectual truth about the concept of ‘gender’ and they are disgusted by what they see as the immorality of a trans-gender person (born male, now identifying as female) being denied the right to anything less than total acceptance in the world of women (including women’s sports, change rooms, toilets and so on). Anyone who disagrees with them is dismissed as being blind to the moral rights (to the basic human rights) of trans people. Such opponents, the “woke” believe, are morally and intellectually inferior. In other words “woke” now equals ‘snob’! That’s my new definition. The dominant form of snobbery, the most fashionable form of snobbery, is being “woke”. And the “woke” know how good they are, and feel smug, and superior and quite comfortable with their snobbery. When Tanya Plibersek cancels a $1 billion dollar gold mine, costing thousands of jobs and costing the New South Wales economy enormous benefits, she does so feeling smug and superior. The reason she gives is an Aboriginal mythological belief, but she knows better than the rest of us peasants and knows that she is right, and we are wrong. That’s the new snobbery. If an Aboriginal mythology says that a certain place is the home of the ‘sprit of the blue banded bee’ then all economic and industrial development in that place must come to halt. If you can’t understand that then you have the intellectual and moral reasoning capacity of a lizard—and a fairly dumb lizard at that. She is superior, you are inferior. You must accept your place in society and submit to wiser and smarter judgement. That is the new snobbery. And that is the meaning of the word “woke”. In much the same way, Chris Bowen is a snob when it comes to renewable power. He speaks as if he is vastly superior to anyone who is dumb enough to disagree with him. If you can’t understand that millions of solar panels, tens of thousands of wind turbines, and a re-build of most of the energy grid is cheap—if you can’t understand that then then there is something wrong with you. You are inferior. You must leave such decisions to your moral and intellectual superior—Chris Bowen. That is the new snobbery. There are two classes in our society—the woke and the rest. And the “rest” have second-rate status, no brains and no moral compass. That’s us. We are “the rest”. The “rest” are the inferior class — the woke are superior. They are the new snobs. Listen carefully next time someone from this smart, smug, arrogant, superior class is speaking—you will hear a voice dripping with superiority, with snobbery, expressing (in their tone) complete contempt for anyone who fails to see the world exactly as they do. So, whenever you encounter this mysterious word “woke” just think to yourself: “Ah, yes, that just means the snobs among us” — and you’ll be on exactly the right track. Kel Richards is a veteran Australian broadcaster and author whose distinguished media career includes hosting the ABC current affairs show AM and his own talkback commercial radio shows. He is also a frequent on-air contributor for Sky News Australia.
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Korea's National Assembly to vote on second impeachment motion today Published: 14 Dec. 2024, 07:00 SEO JI-EUN [email protected] Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI Protesters call for President Yoon Suk Yeol's impeachment in front of the National Assembly in western Seoul on Friday, just one day ahead of the crucial impeachment vote. [CHOI KI-WOONG] The National Assembly is set to vote on a second impeachment motion against President Yoon Suk Yeol at 4 p.m. Saturday. “As it is a matter of national importance and gravity, considering the need for thorough discussion within each party and potential delays, we scheduled the plenary session at 4 p.m.," the spokesperson for National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik said Friday. To pass, the impeachment motion requires a two-thirds majority in the 300-member National Assembly, or 200 votes. The liberal bloc, led by the Democratic Party (DP), holds 192 eligible members, meaning at least eight lawmakers from the president's People Power Party (PPP) must break ranks to support the motion. The vote will be conducted by secret ballot, raising the possibility of defections from the PPP. Related Article Seoul city government releases safety plan ahead of mass rallies on Saturday Impeachment vote to take place Saturday at 4 p.m. to 'prevent potential clashes' Broadcaster Kim Eo-jun alleges assassination plot against PPP leader in National Assembly testimony Possibility of Yoon's ousting grows as at least 7 PPP lawmakers say they will vote for impeachment Yoon’s approval rating falls to record-low 11% after martial law declaration During last Saturday’s vote on the first impeachment motion, most PPP lawmakers staged a walkout, leaving only three members — Ahn Cheol-soo, Kim Sang-wook and Kim Yea-ji — to participate. PPP floor leader Rep. Kweon Seong-dong said the party will hold a general meeting ahead of Saturday's vote to discuss whether to maintain official opposition to the impeachment motion and to allow members to vote freely. Rep. Kim Sang-wook of the president's People Power Party urges his fellow lawmakers to join the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol in front of the main hall of the National Assembly in western Seoul on Friday, as another PPP lawmaker walks past him. [KIM SEONG-RYONG] As of Friday, seven PPP lawmakers had publicly declared their intention to support impeachment. “I will vote in favor of impeachment on Saturday, and I know several colleagues who feel the same way," a PPP lawmaker, aligned with party leader Han Dong-hoon, told the JoongAng Ilbo, an affiliate of the Korea JoongAng Daily, anonymously on Friday. The growing dissent within the PPP is attributed to Han's sudden endorsement of impeachment on Thursday and the backlash against Yoon’s same-day address, where he defended his failed attempt to impose martial law last week. Even Rep. Kweon acknowledged that "many expect" more than eight lawmakers to vote in favor. The liberal bloc filed the second impeachment motion on Friday afternoon, focusing on the unconstitutional nature of the president's short-lived martial law declaration. The second motion has omitted earlier accusations that were made in the first attempt, filed on Dec. 4. These included first lady Kim Keon Hee’s alleged stock manipulation and interference in election nominations through a power broker, as well as criticisms of Yoon’s "value diplomacy," which has been seen as dismissive of China and Russia while favoring Japan. BY SEO JI-EUN [ [email protected] ] var admarutag = admarutag || {} admarutag.cmd = admarutag.cmd || [] admarutag.cmd.push(function () { admarutag.pageview('3bf9fc17-6e70-4776-9d65-ca3bb0c17cb7'); });WAYNE, PA — Guardian Capital Partners has acquired Team LINX, a Denver-based provider of technology infrastructure services, in partnership with the company’s executive management team, who will continue to lead the business. LINX specializes in designing, integrating, installing, and maintaining network, multimedia, wireless, and security systems for data centers and mission-critical applications. Founded in 2003, the company has delivered over 100,000 projects nationwide across a range of industries, including healthcare, financial services, and education, with a total value exceeding $1 billion. Scott Evans, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Guardian, highlighted the strategic significance of the acquisition. “Our acquisition of LINX represents another compelling opportunity for Guardian to invest in a business that is well positioned to capitalize on the attractive digital infrastructure sector, which we believe continues to benefit from the secular trend of data proliferation and required capacity to fuel core services and advanced computing applications such as artificial intelligence,” Evans said. LINX’s leadership team sees the partnership with Guardian as a key step in accelerating growth and enhancing their offerings. Erik Isernhagen, President and CEO of LINX, expressed enthusiasm for the collaboration. “We are eager to embark on this next phase of our journey and view Guardian as the ideal partner to support our continued development. Not only does Guardian bring deep sector expertise, but our firms share a collaborative culture and strategic vision primed for delivering continued investment and powerful results for our stakeholders.” Jay Dzialo, COO of LINX, added, “Guardian’s operational playbook enables us to take our well-developed capabilities to the next level as we support our customers and teams at scale.” With Guardian’s investment and operational support, LINX aims to expand its reach within the technology infrastructure sector while meeting the growing demands of data-driven industries. Financing for the transaction was provided by MidCap Financial, with Goodwin Procter LLP and Arnold & Porter LLP serving as legal advisors to Guardian and LINX respectively. Industria Partners acted as strategic advisor to LINX. This acquisition positions LINX to capitalize on the ongoing expansion of digital infrastructure needs and reinforces Guardian’s commitment to investing in high-growth sectors. For the latest news on everything happening in Chester County and the surrounding area, be sure to follow MyChesCo on Google News and MSN .