mordant wit

When New England inventor Philip French had his epiphany 15 years ago, he didn't dream it would lead to an invention that would be pressed into service in a top-secret government project, or spawn an epic court battle over the limits of executive power. He was just admiring a tennis ball.

The ball's seam, with its two symmetrical halves embracing each other in a graceful curve, intrigued him. "I thought, my god, I bet you can do something with that kind of shape," he recalls. He was right. French and two colleagues went on to design and patent a device now called the Crater Coupler, a simple, foolproof connector for linking one pipe or cable to another without nut threads or bolted flanges.