A decade ago, Philip H. Rittmueller was a man on a mission. By the early 1990s, the automobile industry knew that airbags, while successful at saving lives in crashes, could also prove deadly to children and small adults (SN: 9/26/98, p. 206: http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc98/9_26_98/bob3.htm). As an engineer with NEC Technologies Automotive Electronics Division at that time, Rittmueller was looking for a technological fix for this lethal threat.
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