Louisville, Ky. ? Clad in a denim apron, a measuring tape clipped to his side, Wilfred Greenlee prepares for the assistants who will help him build dozens of machines that promise to make life infinitely easier for communion Sundays.

The Greenlee Communion Cup Dispenser is just the latest of his many projects.

Greenlee started inventing when he was 10 years old and living on his parents’ farm in southeast Missouri. His first invention was a miniature haybaler, which bound 2- to 4-inch bales of hay.

Today, at 79, he can’t seem to stop. This is the way an adventurous engineer copes with retirement and the changing times: He keeps inventing.

Last year, Greenlee invented, marketed and sold a communion-dispensing machine, which allowed volunteers to fill communion cups with grape juice for 10,000 people in just 32 minutes a task that once took 21 hours.

The new cup dispenser accompanies the liquid dispenser, Greenlee’s first church-related project. It’s similarly built of stainless steel and Plexiglas but combined with the cup dispenser, it allows the trays for Holy communion to be prepared in several easy steps.

Walk through the basement of the home Greenlee shares with his 62-year-old wife and business partner, Melita, and it’s like being transported through time to the workshop of Albert Einstein.

A four-track railway hangs from the ceiling, on which model trains travel under a 16-foot-long replica of the Golden Gate Bridge a project Greenlee toyed with between versions of the two communion machines. Along the walls hang patents for the communion machine, a tractor transmission, a helicopter camera mount and a vacuum blow dryer invented in the days before hand-held hair dryers.

There’s also the Lay-Down Bicycle, invented in the 1970s, that allows the rider to lay on his stomach while pedaling.

“I’ve always had all of these ideas. It’s fun for me,” said Greenlee, who retired from the former International Harvester plant in Louisville, which manufactured tractor parts. “Especially knowing that I’m helping so many churches with my latest projects.”

Marketed to churches with congregations in the thousands, Greenlee’s cup dispensing-machines have been sold in more than a dozen states.

First, the cups are placed into the machine, which holds up to 2,000 cups. With the push of a lever, 40 cups drop into the cupholes of a communion tray. Then the tray is placed into the liquid dispenser. With a pull of a lever, the grape juice is distributed evenly into each communion cup.

“The best thing about this is that human hands never have to touch the communion cups,” said Melita Greenlee. “You cut the top of the bag, dump the cups into the machine and pull the wrapper from the cups.”

The disposable cups are key to the dispenser’s success.

“I needed cups that could stack but not stick together,” Greenlee said. “When you push the lever, the cups have to be able to fall into the tray without another one sticking to it.”

The Greenlees buy a tapered cup and sell it with the machine as the Greenlee Free-Fall Communion Cup. Three different models of the machine one for each of three types of commercially produced communion trays (Artistic, Broadman and Sudbury) sell for $2,995 each.

‘Near genius’

The Greenlees and one of Wilfred Greenlee’s assistants, Reed Butler, are members of 15,000-plus-member Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, the first church to use both machines.

“Wil is near genius,” Butler said as he stood along Greenlee’s makeshift assembly line. “He’s spent hundreds of hours developing these machines. They’ve helped the church so much.”

Melita Greenlee has supported her husband’s work through 12 years of marriage but recently has taken on a larger role.

“You could call me an editor,” she said. “I have a checklist of what has to be checked on every machine before they are mailed to our customers. I check for holes or dents; I test the liquid dispenser for leaks. You know, I watch for the minor details.”

With a master’s degree in home economics, she also handles the money and paperwork for the business. Although retired, she still works more than 40 hours a week.

Other interests

Several years ago, Greenlee sold art sketches made from his Geometrograph a machine designed before computer plotters to produce contrast of movement and contrast of light and dark. The machine, about 8 feet long, 5 feet wide and 3 feet high, produces a sketch of mathematically programmed geometric designs in various colors.

“I used to live in this apartment years ago before I was married,” Greenlee said with a laugh. “The machine took up the entire apartment, I even had to leave some doors open when I was operating it.”

In the 1970s, Greenlee was an adviser for the national Junior Achievement organization.

His students produced and sold two of his inventions a lamp with an attached meter to measure electrical use and a toothpick dispenser, which won a national award.

But not all of Greenlee’s inventions are built for financial gain. Hidden underneath the Geometrograph sits an invention close to Greenlee’s heart.

“My grandkids just love all of this stuff,” he said, pulling out the go-cart sized vehicle.