Center for Management Services and Applied Research, Inc. Records

Center for Management Services and Applied Research, Inc. (CMSAR) was a strategy for revenue generation for Beloit College that existed only very briefly, from 1972-1974. A high risk investment project for new technologies, marketing, and manufacturing, CMSAR was a subsidiary corporation wholly owned by and located at Beloit College. It was concerned with the internal development of new products to be sold or licensed for manufacture or marketing, as well as the development of marketing-manufacturing channels for externally developed products. According to Henry M. Crossen, the first president of CMSAR, the idea behind the Center was that private education was, "the last bastion of independent thinking and freedom, the principle need for the success of such an endeavor as we are beginning," and therefore was the perfect nesting ground for innovation.

The Center planned to derive its income in several ways: through fees charged for consultation; for selling rights to internally developed patents; and by accepting equity rights in newly developed firms for externally produced patents and products. Its initial funding came from the Cullister Funds, managed by the Beloit College Development Office.

The new corporation was an extension of the Hinckley motor project, also called the HBH Engine (for Hinckley-Beloit-Hornbostel). Henry Crossen, who has been working on the rights of the Hornbostel-Hinckley patents, became president of the firm, and Lloyd "Hap" Hornbostel Jr. was vice president.

The Hinckley Engine Project was a rotary steam engine developed by John Hinckley, combined with a new steam boiler, developed by Hap Hornbostel, and aimed to provide the solution to the need for pollution-free power for automobiles. Beloit College acquired the patent rights from Hinckley in 1968.

Besides the HBH Engine, CMSAR-related projects included Can-Cycle (invented by Lloyd Hornbostel), the Citizen's Alarm System (CAS), Fire-Tek, a Digital Dynamics Analyzer, and Con-Tec (a machine tool industry product).

Just two years after its formal establishment, Beloit College sold the Center for Management Services and Applied Research, Inc. to a new corporation, Resource Management, Inc. of Beloit. President Miller Upton cited that the Center concept no longer fit with his revised long-range fiscal management plan then underway at the College. Upon the dissolution of the CMSAR, Beloit College sold the HBH Engine rights to a California corporation, which subsequently defaulted on their payments.