There is no such thing as inconveniencing a person when they’re moving at the speed of light.  In the middle of changing fire alarm batteries, Bob receives my phone call not as an interruption; rather he viewed it as a way to occupy his brain while his hands were being kept busy.

Part One of a Season-Long Monthly Interview With a Legend

Has Marker Technology Reached a Plateau in Electro-Pneumatics?

By Lorrie Lee Jones

Meet Bob Long, a man of many talents and a treasure trove of anecdotes. Here is an extraordinary intelligent, ambitious and humble man whose wellspring of knowledge, expertise, personal experience… and so much more so… his prevailing attitude left an immediate impression on me.

“You learn something off of somebody every day of your life,” says Bob, not skipping a beat. “There’s knowledge everywhere, and it’s in sharing that knowledge that we can make progress.”

Have we maxed-out on marker technological advances? Not according to Bob. There are so many ways to utilize technology and, as long as there is room for improvement on a product, he is certain that the end-results are limitless.

“Take the Marq series,” cites Bob, “I developed that three years ago and it’s already seen three versions since then. Why? Because after creating the original, I wanted to work through the design flaws I saw with it, and then I developed the next one… which was then produced, and with that I saw the opportunity to make it more efficient and, so you see, it’s about taking something you’ve created and finding ways to make it even better.”

Conceptualizing a change and manufacturing a new marker, or drafting up and overhauling an existing design while seated in front of a computer isn’t Bob’s style. Instead, in each situation all Bob’s projects have begun as a nagging “what if” question in the back of his mind. Using this as an inventive catalyst, his passion for ingenuity becomes activated and he starts creating and drawing up plans inside his own head.

For the most part, Bob’s think-tank is wherever he can find momentary places of peace. It’s where all his ideas generate, and he’s emphatic about using moments of quiet and solitude to dream up solutions to problems. Even when he’s otherwise occupied, such as driving his car or changing batteries in a fire alarm, Bob’s mind remains active. The birth of the Marq series began with such a instant when Bob found himself in North Dakota in a tree-hung hunting blind, weathering out 32 degree-below-zero temperatures, and with a lot of time to think about things other than “freezing his butt off.”

With the Marq marker series, Bob prescribed to the idea that a marker could be created with better gas consumption. From there he envisioned that a poppet inline valve would be more advantageous over a spool value to achieve this end.  Taking this into consideration, he came away from his hunting trip and spent then next month revisiting his concept, eventually arriving at the production of the first Marq marker.

As the market was calling for a single-tube marker, Bob capitalized on this by not recreating the wheel – he simply modified it. Blending a new lightweight design with greater eye appeal, functionality and superior firing efficiency triggered Bob’s imaginative process that resulted in one of the most competitive markers available on the market today.

“Everyone thought that everything was already invented then,” says Bob. “I made one small change by setting down one simple goal and that was to improve on marker gas usage. By switching to a poppet valve instead of a spool valve, the airflow in the gun was altered. The resulting back pressure held the chamber open for half a second longer, and that meant the difference between 10 pods and 15 pods of paint, and overall more efficient gas utilization.”

When Bob began drawing up his concepts on paper, he brought them to an independent engineer to confer as to whether his theories had validity. With the engineer’s additional input, the Marq went through a few more modifications and a prototype was then created. When Bob was still working for National, the prototype was initially tested in their warehouse. Bob recalls that moment of truth:

“After we fired it for the first time, I knew we were on the right course. It went ‘bang’ and it worked as planned. Here I went from thinking up an idea to actually holding it and firing it… and it performed! We released the first Marq series at Huntington Beach and we produced our first 2000 for the market.”

Since then the original Marq has evolved into two other hybrids that offer advantages over their predecessor. In each new generation, like a mutated DNA gene, Bob’s markers progress in one or two distinct areas.  There are a lot of variables and options to consider in general marker function, and Bob realizes that not all of them can be addressed at one given time. Objectives that have crossed Bob’s mind include marker accuracy, weight, speed and gas consumption. However, he is not inclined to tackle them collectively.  Lots of theories can emerge, but each one needs to be approached individually.

“There is too much to fathom at one time,” Bob admits. “You can put all of the best top engineers onto each aspect all at once and say; ‘fix this or that’ and nothing would get accomplished. Why? That’s too many directions to be going in at any one given time. So I set myself up with a solitary goal, one aim, and put that sole challenge in front of me. I focus on that one thing and set about trying finding ways to improve upon it.”

Bob’s axiom is to continually strive and think of different approaches to what already exists. And if it doesn’t exist, then create it. With this in mind, he believes that there is always room for something new, better, different. While he feels the market isn’t being flooded with variations as it once was it it’s early stages, nor does he feel we are seeing the same strides in advancements as we had over the past 20 years, he is confident that we are nowhere near bottoming out.

“I’m like the bear that has to go over the mountain to see what’s on the other side,” says Bob, and he goes on to further stress that every person, no matter how good they are or how great their mind works, always has room for improvement.

For more information about Bob Long markers and accessories, visit www.boblongdirect.com.