Father of Invention : Shopkeeper-Scientist Specializes in Gizmos, Gross-Outs and Keeping Creativity Alive

BURBANK —  Shopkeeper wants to slit your wrist.

He is not the Dr. Kevorkian of Burbank, however. Mr. Wizard is more like it.

Ira Katz, 81, is the owner of Tri-Ess Sciences, a company that has been providing hobbyists, schools, magicians and the movie industry with supplies for 46 years. Budding scientists have been known to drool over his mail-order catalog, which is full of kits, chemistry sets, skeletons, bottled bodies of small animals for dissection, anatomy charts and a wide variety of laboratory equipment, from professional microscopes to single test tubes.

Katz doesn’t just sell the stuff--he also makes use of it.

Through a door in the back of his shop is his well-stocked laboratory, where he invented numerous gizmos and special effects such as the richly colored smoke now commonly used in films and music videos. Taped to one shop wall, near thank-you letters from students he has helped with science projects, is a picture of Cher singing against a backdrop of his purple smoke.

In a high-tech era when most scientific research is a group effort requiring contributions from a host of specialists and data-crunching computers, Katz is one of the last in a long line of inventors who worked wonders in back rooms, basements and garages, letting their curiosity and creativity lead them into whatever endeavor might strike their fancy.

“Let me show you something,” said Katz, addressing a visitor. It’s probably the most oft-repeated sentence he utters.

With a sly smile, he led the way into his lab. Pulling out a small pocket knife, he asked his visitor to bare a wrist.

“The movie people love this one,” he said, reaching for a couple of unmarked chemical bottles. Using a Q-tip, he painted a line of one potion across his intended victim’s wrist. Then he covered the blade of the knife with the other. Both solutions were clear, leaving no trace.

“Imagine you are coming around a corner on a dark night and I jump out at you,” said Katz, suddenly running the dull blade across the wrist.

Instantly, the chemicals react to make an absolutely convincing line of simulated blood. It would not take much acting to pretend the wrist had just been slashed.

“I call it ‘A-B blood’ because it takes two chemicals to make the effect,” said Katz. With gusto, he described its use in a recent movie in which a woman scratched deep cuts into a man’s face with her fingernails.

But the product is not limited to secular use. Katz also gets orders for “A-B blood” from fundamentalist church groups.

“They use it for their reenactment of the flagellation of Christ,” he said. “Sells very well around Easter.”

An assistant came to summon Katz to the shop, where a man was seeking advice on floor-polishing compounds. Meanwhile, Katz’s daughter, Kim Greenfield, offered a tour of the store.

On industrial shelves and in glass display cases were stacks of products that could be purchased by customers who visit the mostly unadorned shop. There were some novelty items, such as ChemSlime, a “slippery, slimy” substance the store stocks for inexpensive holiday gifts. But most of the products have at least some serious intent.

“We try to find things that are based in science,” said Greenfield, 40, vice president of Tri-Ess. “We don’t want to load up on magic kits and things like that.”

For younger students, there were kits designed to demonstrate the principles of solar energy, crystal formation, electric motors, weather forecasting, magnetism and telescopes. For the older set, there were genuine science lab tools, such as electronic balances, flasks, hydrometers and forceps.

On one shelf were samples of animal specimens for dissection and animal parts floating in a preservative. Whole bullfrogs were priced at $11.10 apiece, a fetal pig was going for $9.60 and a sheep’s eye was only $1.

Lab chemicals are a specialty of Tri-Ess, but there were only a few children’s chemistry sets for sale.

“Most of the sets on the market aren’t worth having,” Greenfield said. “They show how to make an effect, but they don’t explain why it works. It’s just hocus-pocus; it has nothing to do with scientific principles.”

Instead, Tri-Ess packs its own, plain-wrap chemistry kits, meant to be used in experiments explained in a long-out-of-print basic chemistry book. Katz tried to get permission from the original publisher to reprint the book, but when negotiations fell through, Greenfield said, she and her father simply waited for the copyright to expire. Now they sell photocopies.

But he worries about the state of science education today, concerned that students are not learning the basics the way students did years ago.

“Nowadays kids in schools use calculators. What happens if the calculator breaks down? They can’t add up a column of numbers.”

The tour ended in Katz’s office. “This is the last place you look for him,” Greenfield said.

On the walls were pictures from several films that used his special-effects products, celebrity pictures autographed by the likes of comic Jay Leno and TV weatherman George Fishbeck, and commendations from several law enforcement agencies for whom he works as a consultant on training exercises (he creates the explosions for emergency drills) and bomb analysis.

Stuck to one shelf was the bumper sticker, “I (Heart) Explosives.”

“Pyrotechnics are very popular,” Katz said, walking into the office.

He has worked extensively with stunt people over the years. One of his recent consulting jobs was for the “Waterworld” stunt show on the Universal Studios tour. “They were having a problem because the stuntman was supposed to be on fire during a 40-foot fall. But the fire kept going out before he hit the water.

“I figured out how to fix it.”

Katz had earned college degrees in chemistry and biology, he said, before opening his first business, a toy store, in 1950. “I thought it would be fun,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. It was the Hobby Shop, located in Atwater Village.

A few years after it opened, students began to ask his advice about science projects. “The kids had been told by their teachers that they had to do a project, but they had no idea what to do,” Katz said. “I don’t think the teachers knew, either.”

After the Soviet Union put Sputnik, the first space satellite, into orbit in 1957, the United States put increased emphasis on science education. But supplies were still hard to come by.

“There was not a place in Los Angeles at that time where a kid could walk in and buy a single test tube,” he said. “So I thought, ‘This is a need that needs to be filled.’ ”

In the early 1960s, he devoted a section of his store to science projects. Eventually, it took over the entire operation and he changed the name to Student Science Services.

“Then we started to take on more and more industrial work and movie business,” Katz said. “The name didn’t seem right for approaching those kinds of companies. So, you can see how we got the name we use now.”

In need of more space as Tri-Ess grew, the company moved to its present location in 1981.

Katz appeared to enjoy talking about his company’s successes, but after only a few minutes in a sitting position, he was heading back to the lab.

“C’mon,” he said. “You’ll like this.”

At one of his workbenches, he took a few small pieces of rock-like substance and ignited them. Each piece produced plumes of colored smoke--yellow, green and purple. Even against the drab background of the utilitarian lab, the smoke was undeniably beautiful. The substances (their chemical makeup was a secret, of course) burned with little heat or smell.

“It’s the only colored, nontoxic smoke in the world,” Katz said proudly, turning on a fan to vent the smoke from the room. He then demonstrated a set of liquids he could burn, producing flames of different colors.

The one thing missing from his lab and his store was a computer.

Katz doesn’t like them.

“I believe in science, 100%,” he said. “But computers, they make you lazy. They keep a kid from learning everyday, basic things. How to add up a column of numbers, for instance.”

He watched the colored flames dance in the quiet lab for a few seconds.

“This so-called sophistication, it’s not always a good thing,” he said. “When you get your head out of a computer, it can open up a whole new world.”