From Herborg Blacksmith to Vestas - Wind Power for the World: The Rise of Modern Wind Energy - page 274

Some years earlier Karl Erik had sufered from a serious form
of cancer, which had left him with some disabilities and a full-
disablement pension; but that did not keep him from working full-
time and often more. Full of curiosity and energy he tackled various
tasks, and it was evident in many ways that he had not forgotten
how to play. He had built his own home with direct access to
the workshop from the kitchen and bathroom. An old war-time
German diesel generator had been reconstructed in such a manner
that the heat from cooling and exhaust provided central heating
when the generator was producing power for the workshop. All
thermal energy of the fuel was used, and the exhaust was smooth
and cool—a high-efficiency forerunner of the present decentralised
combined heat and power stations. During the heating season the
generator, for obvious reasons called by the family “æ dunderværk”
(a Jutlandish expression, meaning something like the roaring
noisy machine), was more economical than purchased power and
heating.
Karl Erik could become choleric when things were not as he
wanted. The family used to tell (when he did not hear it) how he
had lost his little finger. Once, when he ran the machine pool his
little finger got stuck in the V-belt of a combine harvester. The finger
broke and consequently got stif. Later on, in his machine shop his
stif little finger was often in his way when working with the
machines, and of course it would happen that one day it was stuck
in the lathe and got somewhat battered. Karl Erik drove to the
doctor in Videbæk but the doctor was convinced that it was a job
for the emergency clinic of the hospital in Herning. Karl Erik
said that he was working on an important task, which had to be
finished and that he had no time to drive to Herning, sit there and
wait. Could he not just have the finger of as it was always in the
way anyhow. The Videbæk doctor was less willing to do that; no,
he had to go to the emergency section. Karl Erik's answer to that
was that it was something he was going to decide for himself, and
at a glance he reached across to the doctor's desk for a pair of
cutting nippers, ready, perhaps for cutting toenails, and cut the
finger of himself. After a hasty patch-up, done by the nurse (the
doctor refused) Karl Erik could go back to his lathe.
9.6 Entering the Inventors' Bureau
Karl Erik and I soon discovered that we had common interests.
Right from the beginning we got on well together, he was an