The fonds consists of Kay’s personal papers; his ideas as an engineer; the records of the N.E.W. Systems Ltd. company which he founded with two partners; patent applications for his inventions; files containing his designs and working papers for his original ideas, such as an expandable mobile housing unit, alternative energies, pyramidology, geodesic dome structures, and the magnet motor; files containing his work history, designs and working papers for projects such as helicopter design for Hiller Helicopters, the Boeing 747 Drone Carrier, the high sea system with capsule for Lockheed Petroleum Services, the Trident Amphibian aircraft, and his work at TRIUMF, Canada’s meson facility based at the University of British Columbia.
The photographs in this fonds are of the construction and finished prototype of the expandable mobile housing unit, and of the modified Boeing 747 commercial aircraft redesigned as a Drone Carrier.
Blueprints include 12 hand-drawn plans on graph paper for the testing of the components of the expandable mobile housing unit, 53 diazo plans related to the Boeing 747 Drone Carrier project, and 1 diazo plan for the Trident Amphibian aircraft.
The sound recording is an interview with Mae Trelle, in January 2011, regarding Kay’s life and work.
The files were retained in their original format, as Mr. Trelle had created them, with the same file label on each individual file. The order within the files, and the order of the files themselves were sometimes adjusted for date as Mr. Trelle appeared to keep the more recent files in a different location, as if he was working on the current files.