A
mortally wounded William Long is attended to by fellow officers.
Photos by William Baker
Other photos courtesy of Bill Long
By Donald Dewey
There are two Bill Longs. The first is the 54-year-old head of Clever Devices, a multimilliondollar corporation that paces the field in tracking and monitoring systems for mass transit. If you have ever had to catch a bus in places like Chicago, Baltimore or Washington, chances are that you have come into contact with some of the digital information supplied to and from the vehicles by Clever Devices circuitry. Someone equipped with a PDA, for example, can forego the usual habit of stepping out into the gutter to see if his bus is coming; instead, because of the electronic impulses being given off by the bus, he just has to press a key to determine exactly how many more seconds he should have to wait. The company has also been a pioneer in New York City and other places in safety announcements for blind and handicapped bus passengers.