Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Research Frontiers (REFR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe Bilich who wrote (744)	3/12/1998 4:36:00 PM
From: Richard	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 50274

My introduction to Research Frontiers came as a result of getting to know a friend of my father's who happened to be Bob Saxe's father-in-law. He was a rather excentric, very intelligent, opinionated man who had been quite successful in life. His cousin was a very high powered entrepeneur, who was rather notorious himself in the financial world, Victor Posner. Anyway, it was in 1976 that I began to hear about Bob Saxe and RFI (REFR). From the very beginning, I learned all about how this "light valve" of his would change the world of glass and displays forever, much akin to the scope of change brought about by Xerography, and just as rewarding to those who were investors in this little company. Some of the first things that I learned about Bob Saxe related to his family. I was told that his uncle was Leopold Godowski, the inventor of color film for Kodak. His father was a supreme court judge for the state of New York, and his first cousins were Ira and George Gershwin. While I have to this day never met Bob Saxe, early on I spoke with him on the phone, saw a reprint about him in "Science News" from about 1975, entitled "Dollars in the Crystal", saw pictures of crude prototypes, a copy of a check to RFI from ITT, in the amount of $100,000, and received updates and encouragements weekly from his father-in-law. I even saw a copy of a hand written letter in french from the Nobel physicist Louis-Victor de Broglie who wrote to Bob Saxe congratulating him on succeeding in what Broglie has worked on unsuccessfully for his lifetime.It was explained to me that Edwin Land had done work on the light valve, but he decided to pursue his camera instead. Bob Saxe picked up where Land left off. Everything I learned bolstered the claims of what I had been told. As the years have passed, it was disappointing and very frustrating to always seem to be on the brink of commercialization and yet never quite step over the line. But over time, the excitement kept on coming. Large private investors have put their money into the Company at critical times and multi-national giants keep stepping forward to try their hand at commercializing the technology. My communication with the company has been sporadic over the years. Notes, faxes, telephone conversations. Bob Saxe has always been approachable, and ever so conservative. Perhaps too much so, in my opinion. And one of the main faults that I have seen over the years is that the announcements penned by Bob Saxe were always riddled with caveats. So, no matter how good the news, there were always the "Bobisms" within the body of the announcement to deflate the reader's optimism. My mother used to say, "It's like a cow giving a good bucket of milk, and then kicking it over." With the arrival of Joe Harary on the scene, and the PR firm now in the Company's employ, we see less and less of this. On one hand I feel the eternal fool, as my money would be worth more today had it earned interest in a passbook savings account. But had I not heard of the Company 22 years ago, there is little chance that I would be an investor today. The technology has been proven. The licensees are in place and have devoted large sums of money and manpower toward its development. Once the first commercial product has been produced, the technology will be finally legitimized and the flood gates will open. It doesn't take much imagination to see the investment potential based upon just one or two possible applications. So in a nut shell, that's how I became a shareholder in 1976, and why I have held on all these 22 years. I must say that through all of the ups and downs, I have been on the edge of my seat the whole time. And while I am jaded and skeptical in my own way, I still believe that we will soon see a commercialized product.