silicon research, offered to pay back the 57 investors who followed him into solar cells. He then raised yet another $15 million to create Solar Cells Inc. in Toledo OH to work on a different thin-film technology, cadmium telluride photovoltaics. By 1997, Solar Cells had a prototype production machine. In 1995, he brought in a new president, and bought still more stock in the company to fund research, although the company had yet to pay a dividend. According to Ken Zweibel, former head of the Thin Film Partnership program at the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, SCI was clearly the industry leader in thin-film photovoltaic technology. In 1999, True North Partners, LLC purchased controlling interest and renamed the company First Solar LLC. According to his obituary in the local paper, the Toledo Blade, "Some believe he will be remembered as the "father" of commercial-scale solar energy, having practically handed the needed technology to society on a platter in the 1990s." McMaster rotary engine Since the 1940s, McMaster was sketching and tinkering with models, continuously reworking various designs for what has since become the McMaster Rotary Engine (MRE), Patent US2002043238, 'Wobble engine'. His son Ronald started working on the project in the 1970s, and brother Robert joined in after the sale of Solar Cells Inc. in 1999. The engine is shaped like a drum with the same circumference as a basketball, and is claimed to: Weigh only one-tenth as much as a current six-cylinder engine Have only two moving parts other than a ball valve; eight parts total function under water or deep in space Unlike the Wankel rotary, which has a heavy rotor, the MRE rotor is light wobble plate, promising greater efficiency. In addition to the two-cycle basketball model, work is continuing on a two-cycle engine about the size of a coffee-can that could be built into wheel hubs, and a four-cycle gasoline version, as well as an engine based on a two-part fuel system utilizing gaseous hydrogen and oxygen US2002043238 Philanthropy The Harold and Helen McMaster Foundation was founded in 1988, and has made contributions to libraries, colleges, universities, museums, and hospitals in Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan. Awards Doctor of Science (honorary), Ohio State University Doctor of Science (honorary), Defiance College Pilgrim Award, Defiance College Ohio State University Department of Physics Distinguished Alumni Award Ohio Department of Development Entrepreneur of the Year Award, 1998 National