From a Small Head, a Big Idea Grows

The competition is stiff at the top. Ask boy inventor Brian Nowell.

The Spring Valley first-grader has been through local, state, regional and national competitions with his award-winning invention, and he’s seen the best.

He has stood side by side with Jason (Chicken Legs) Sanders of Vinton, Iowa, who designed an elevated fowl feeder. It rehabilitates sedentary hens whose legs have gone flabby.

Brian has tested the glow-in-the-dark toilet seat enthroned in Good Housekeeping magazine’s pantheon of approval. He’s puckered up to “Hot Sipper” straws that cool soup en route from mug to mouth.

Those gadgets were good, Brian says. And he acknowledges that his brainchild--a gardening aid called the “Speedee Seeder”--may not be as high-tech as the toilet seat or as sexy as the chicken exerciser. But not to worry.

“I just like to invent,” Brian said in a recent telephone interview. “And I like what comes after, when people like what you invent.”

Because when it comes to inventions--Brian says with his seven years of accumulated wisdom--it’s the ones that sell that count.

Brian’s already figuring out how to bank his victory last month at the Invent America! best-of-inventions competition.

If Brian has things his way, Speedee Seeder will soon be a household term.

To the uninitiated, the Speedee Seeder is a dowel and a Popsicle stick, marked with measurements and held together with a thumbscrew. With it, a gardener never has to wonder if his seed rows are uniform or the depths consistent.

“Just set it to the height and width you want,” Brian said, “then jab it into the ground,”

A first-grader could have thought of it.

The Speedee Seeder sparkled in its simplicity, said Michelle McGovern, spokeswoman for Invent America! The Washington-based education program awarded Brian a $1,000 U.S. savings bond, a computer and 100 books that will go to Murdock Elementary School, where Brian begins second grade next month. His idea was entered last year for the 1991-92 competition.

The arena of student competition is already too small for the Speedee Seeder, said Urban Miyares of The NUVENCO Group, a San Diego-based business management company for inventors.

“It’s unique to have someone come up with something so plain and so functional,” Miyares said. “Most adult inventors don’t have their projects so well thought out.”

In a field where real success comes to only a few--out of every 2,000 patent applications, only one is granted--inventors rarely end up recovering development costs from their products.

Young Brian’s invention may make the grade.

The founder of a Miramar product development company, which has fashioned a high-impact styrene version of the Speedee Seeder, is bidding for production rights.

“It’s a cute idea,” said Ernest Stewart, owner of Matrix Enterprises.

Cute enough to start Stewart crunching numbers: a few hundred dollars for the prototype; $2,000 to $3,000 for a patent license; $8,000 to $10,000 for a production mold, and another $10,000 or so for raw materials, packaging and marketing.

Stewart figures about $25,000 is needed to put a “souped-up” version of Brian’s invention on the market, and he is interested.

Brian’s father, Greg Nowell, said he and his son are on their way to marketing the second-generation seeder. Nowell said the product may be in home improvement stores and mail order catalogues in time for Christmas.

“It’s been a very interesting education for me,” said Nowell, a landscape architect who said his and his son’s efforts are the family’s first foray into the inventing world.

That entree came after Brian heard his father complain about nicking his fingers as he poked through soil.

“My dad had this problem,” Brian said. “He didn’t like getting his fingers dirty.”

It is a heady time for Brian, and his thoughts skip to and fro, from child-inventor stardom to theoretical design and back down to earth.

Since he won the award in July, Brian has become a true media darling, hauling his simple seed planter to talk shows and newscasts in Washington, New York and Los Angeles. This Friday, Brian will be taped on the youth talk show “Scratch” at the CBS studios in Los Angeles.

With appearances on “Good Morning America,” “CNN News,” “ABC World Report” and a show for inventors called “Why Didn’t I Think of That?” on-air interviews have become old hat for Brian.

One minute he’s explaining how he keeps from getting nervous on camera, the next he’s going through machinations over how to improve his prize-winning invention.

Brian can also pull back and reflect on his status with a wisdom that goes beyond his years.

“Television is fun,” he said. “But we’re gardeners. That’s what’s important.”

Said his mother, Maryann: “He’s already talking about planting his fall garden.”

Invent America! is a national, nonprofit elementary school contest started in 1987 by then-Vice President George Bush. The program tries to teach schoolchildren from an early age how to solve daily problems. More than 30,000 elementary schools participated last year, McGovern said. The program is sponsored by private corporations and administered by the nonprofit U.S. Patent Model Foundation.

Veteran invention watchers are eager for Brian’s next masterpiece. And the next.

“Imagine where he’s going to be in 10 or 15 years,” Miyares said.