Ellington

A photo of David's Cole's niece, Jessica Harvery, who was deployed in the U.S. Army in Iraq in 2006, inspired him to create the Cole Tempera Helmet and Vest. Cole's invention is a combination garment and ambient cooling device, with an internal fan system that also dispenses a cooling agent inside the garment to combat extreme heat.

"I saw the full military gear," Cole says, "and I said, 'Wow.' She had often complained about how hot it was over there, to have on the full headgear, boots, helmet and the other gear with the extreme heat being 120-plus degrees. I thought about what could be used to cool an individual subjected to that type of environment."

Cole, a native Jacksonian who graduated from Jackson State University with a bachelor's degree in science and communications in 1981, did not have an engineering background.

"I just started doing drawings of the product and how I thought it would work or how I thought it should look," Cole says. From there, he hired an attorney named Ashkan Najafi to make sure a product like Cole's wasn't already on the market; there wasn't.

"The patent process was long and arduous," Cole says. "It just takes time because they have a backlog that's unbelievable. The time really didn't matter because we knew it was going to get the patent."

The Cole Tempera Helmet and Vest is not currently in use or available on the market, nor does it have a working prototype.

"I'm looking for a manufacturer or some research and development team to secure a license agreement," he says. Cole is hopeful that his product will become a reality in the future. "I just wish somebody would really look at it and have the nerve to go out and pursue it," he says.