Is there any public information about Larry after the production of
his invention ceased in the mid eighties? Is it still possible to
contact Larry?  Thanks

The Classic Rendezvous web site, devoted to classic bicycle designs,
has a page on the PowerCam, with the following address:

"POWERCAM~ Houdaille, Inc.
2310 Minnis Drive 120
Fort Worth, Texas 76117
Larry Brown's second invention utilizing a Cam...It was equally
successful in the marketplace (!)"

http://www.classicrendezvous.com/USA/PowrCam_main.htm

However I wasn't able to find any other relevant reference to that
street address on Google, and I wasn't able to come up with a listing
for it using whitepages.com and another address lookup tool.  Though
there numerous references to "Houdaille Industries, Inc.", it doesn't
appear that the company exists anymore.

I would suggest to contacting the webmaster of the Classic Rendezvous
web site and ask if they know of any contact information for Larry
Brown:

oroboyz@aol.com

If you were looking to purchase one of the PowerCam cranks or a
bicycle based on it, there may be some on eBay, when I looked there
were three available:

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?query=POWERCAM

I found some mention of Houdaille Industries on various bicycle
newsgroups, and the vast majority were positive about the PowerCam,
though not all:

"Here's another, from the same era... the 'Houdaille Power Cam'
chainring/crank. This cockamamie idea had a chainring with a swinging
'ramp' portion on it that supposedly adjusted itself to your power
output
and somehow made you go faster for the same amount of effort. This one
actually succeeded for a while, because you could retro-fit it onto an
existing bike, and they actually co-sponsored a team for a while. Like
most of these loony ideas though, they soon died out."

"It reminds me, somewhat, of the 'Houdaille crank' that was
manufactured back in the early 80's by a company in Fort Worth, TX.
They were popular for a while and a guy in our bike club, the Fort
Worth Bicycling Association, actually won the 'Paris - Brest - Paris'
race while using one."

The Fort Worth Bicycling Association web site can be found online,
perhaps contacting them could help:

http://www.fwbaclub.org/member/member.htm

The only other piece of information that I was able to gather is that
there are still various resellers where you can purchase the PowerCam
crank, though I was not able to easily figure out which ones these
were.

As a general search for "Larry Brown" would be rather pointless being
that it is far too common of a name, I can only suggest trying the two
contacts I listed above for more information.

G'day.

I reread some promotional material from Houdaille re the Powercam. 
Larry has a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT.  Larry made a
presentation to the International Scientific Symposium on Human Power
titled: "The Effect of Cam-Governed Torque Modification on Human Power
Generation in Bicycle and Similar Drive Systems.  No year given.  This
presentation was from a paper by L. G. Brown (MIT and Univ. of
Heidelberg) and A. C. Brown (Univ. of Hawaii and Virginia Polytech). 
Several patents were listed: 4133550, 1060677, NI-11399, 1581560,
428145, 30701, 21760, 136250, 862440, 4290507, 4309043, 233246,
406879, 406880, 4206660, 441908, 405696, 3244309, 406881, 410655,
3339492 and 420766.  Patent #'s 4133550, 4281845 & 4309043 appear on
the back of the right crank arm.

The powercam was also written up by "Bicycling" Sept/Oct 1984.  Larry
colaborated with frame builder Roland della Santa to build several
prototypes.

Larry was about 63 years old in 1985.  He may be dead. If he is dead,
then an obituary, hopefully would have been written about him.

If he is alive, I would ask him the following question: besides the
obvious design changes, what design changes would you incorporate in
the next powercam?

Thanks,

The Steinmonster

Here's some more info I found via the US Patent office. 

Real name: Brown, Lawrence G.

Patent 4,309,043, filed October 30, 1979, Brown's address was 1629
Kuhilani St., Honolulu, HI 96821

Patent 4,461,375, filed August 15, 1977, Brown's address was 3285 Old
395 N., Carson City, NV 89701

So, it appears he moved around a fair bit, which makes it very
difficult to verify if he is still alive. The Social Security Death
Index has someone with his name, DOB 24 May 1923, died in New Haven
CT, 18 Oct 1994.