Paul MacCready: I had guaranteed a relative’s loan at a bank for roughly $100,000 for him to start a company, which didn’t succeed. He couldn’t pay the money back, and as guarantor of the note, I was obligated to pay the money back. Because of some peculiar circumstances, where I thought I had some liquid assets around, they had evaporated while all this was going on. So I was stuck with the debt, which was rather annoying. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. I didn’t have any special plans on what to do. I couldn’t figure out how to handle it. I was going on this vacation trip in the summer of 1976, having time to just daydream, let the mind dawdle around on what it wanted to think about — nibbling away on little old memories and new thoughts and making connections that I otherwise would not have made. I did recall, with no special emphasis, this £50,000 prize that Henry Kremer had put up 17 years earlier. And then, one day I happened to notice that at that time the pound was worth just two dollars. And suddenly, this great light bulb just glowed over my head — the prize was $100,000! My debt was $100,000! There just may be some interesting connection between these two. My interest in human-powered flight suddenly zoomed up to high level. I fussed away at it, and eventually it worked.