"Rufus Stokes"{September 3,1922-June 22,1986

An inventor,who was born in Phenix City,Alabama.He grew up in the rural South and

attended public school in Alabama until he was 18.On November 5,1940,just before receiving his high school diploma,Rufus enlisted in the US Army at Fort Benning,Georgia in the Quartermaster Corps.In the Army,he attended a technical school where he received auto mechanic training.He was deployed in western Europe and served predominantly in the Rhineland campaign.Upon his discharge,he was decorated with an America Defense Service Medal.European-African Middle Eastern Campaign Medal and Good Conduct Medal.While leaving the military,Rufus met Bessie Lee Knight,his future wife of Camp Hill,Alabama when she was attending Tuskegee Institute Army records indicate that he was married at the time of his discharge in 1945.Soon after they moved to Kansas City,Missiouri,where Rufus was employed as a part-time auto mechanic.In 1947,they moved once again,to Waukkegan Illinois,where he found temporary employment as a pipe and sheet metal worker.Between later 1947 & 1949,when Rufus was employed as an orderly at the Chicago Veterans Administration Hospital,specifically in the Tuberculosis Sanitarium.It was during this time that he first saw the negative health effects of the city's pollution.In 1949,he left the hospital and found work Brule Inc.,an incinerator manufacturing company in Chicago.Rufus quickly learned the process of combustion and was through to have controlled to have contributed heavily in the designs of new incinerators,but was never credited for his work.For that reason,he left to pursue his own interests.He later created a smaller domestic version and a larger mobile version of the air purification device to show its versatility.This device further reduced the ask emissions of the furnace and power plant smokestack moreover,it was limited by design and configuration,meaning that its efficiency remained excellent regardless of industrial applications.This was not true of typical air pollution control technologies,such as electrostatic precipitations,bag houses,and wet scrubbers.The larger the device that utilized these approaches,the more cumbersome and inefficient it became.The core of Rufus'technology was a unique utilization 0f what he described as "the three Ts":Temperature,Time,and Turbulence.In his patent applications (U.S.,U.K.,Germany & Japan),he provided only data sufficient to obtain patent approval.Other critical processes involving variations of physics were not revealed,nevertheless manifest in demonstrations to municipal state and federal official and engineering firms such as A.T.Kerney.The ability of the APC-100 to convert particulate matter and toxic gases resulting from the burning of rubber tires and other combustibles to steam was a constant source of intrigue to those who witnessed its operation.In 1982,Rufus was granted a doctor of science degree from Heed University in Hollywood, Florida on account of his scientific achievements.In 1985,he moved to Claremont, California,of mesothelioma,an asbestos-related diease.Ironically,his death coincided with his being brought in as a consultant to the Los Angeles Hyperian Waste Treatment facility.