Rob Gourley

Life Cycles – Ted and Carol Suratt

July 23, 2022 — Stories of our ancestry can link us. Ted Suratt, who co-founded AquaNew and WIT with Rob Gourley, was proud of the Suratt name. His relative, Tavern Owner Mary Suratt, was the first woman to be hang for her supposed crime by the U.S. Government. Ted defended her, believing that she was …

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Old School vs. New School – An Interview with AquaNew’s Rob Gourley

AquaNew’s Rob Gourley is from the Old School. He has spent his entire life around machines and to make them run better, he is a trial-and-error mechanical tinkerer. He makes the case in a recent video (Minute 23.39 start of the section entitled “Watt-Ahh”) that the years of trial-and-error in making the first successful machine …

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First Transatlantic Flight in a Navy-Curtis Flying Boat – Banana Glue, Roll of Wire, New York Times Newspaper and Rickety Like Strawberry Crates

March 12, 2021, National Navy Aviation Museum, Pensacola, Fl. – Rob and I met with Museum Curator, Dina Linn, to show her photos of the Navy flying boats over 100 years ago. Rob and his cousins spent hours as children flipping through the pages of their grandfather’s photo album containing over 100 photos of the …

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Update on Ahh-Mazing “AHA!” Discovery for September 2018 – Disguising Knowledge of Math

January of 2021: Back in 2018, I wrote about the recent Trowbridge Family Reunion held at Yelping Hill in Connecticut. My husband Rob is a grandson of Mason Trowbridge. In this article, I highlighted the Trowbridge cottage that was originally designed by world-renown architect Ruth Maxon Adams. Rob’s cousin, Ann Trowbridge along with her husband, …

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Ahh-Mazing “AHA!” Discovery for November 2018 – Time for a Change

Rob Gourley’s paternal grandfather, Lyle Gourley, owned a lumber yard in Highland Park, Illinois, located north of Chicago and part of the North Shore Area of Lake Michigan. He was one of the leading business owners in Highland Park. One of Rob’s memories of his grandfather is during the Depression, he met payroll both for …

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Ahh-Mazing “AHA!” Discovery for September 2018 – Disguising Knowledge of Math

At the Trowbridge Family Reunion last month, I asked several grandchildren including my husband, Rob Gourley, about their favorite memory of their grandfather, Mason Trowbridge. It was unanimous that it was Jock, his faithful red golden retriever dog. In 1959, this photo with an article about Mason were published in the New York Herald Tribune. …

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Ahh-Mazing “AHA!” Discovery for June 2018: Mason Trowbridge Jr. – Inventified By Necessity

Rob Gourley lost his first adoptive mother, Neeler, when he was a young boy. He stayed with his cousins, Helen, Liz and Jane, for about one year in northern Maine (Penobscot Bay) giving his father, Robinson Sr., time for both recovery and re-establishment of a stable home environment in New York before bringing back both …

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Ahh-Mazing “AHA!” Discovery for May 2018: Raising a Inventified Child

My father-in-law, Robinson B. Gourley Sr., if he was still alive, would have laughed about what I considered one of his best lifetime accomplishments. He was a World War II veteran, an award-winning cellist, a career engineer for GE and a loving grandfather. In my opinion, his parenting skills, what he called “benign neglect”, actually …

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Ahh-Mazing “AHA!” Discovery for December 2017: Helen Fox Trowbridge, a 1914 Sister of Santa Claus

Background Note: Inventor Rob Gourley is asked on a regular basis how he could have discovered the gaseous state of water (Dioxytetrahydride Gas). He typically starts by saying he comes from an inventor family. Rob is turning 70 years young this coming year. I would like to spotlight in the coming months, those exemplary individuals …

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