Bruce Hedgepeth, MDGreat things happened last month: April showers brought May flowers; Mother’s Day; May Day(whatever that is); kids graduated from schools pre-K to college; Memorial Day and the three day weekend it brings, aka the official start to summer, boating, and grilling seasons; and the Indianapolis 500 race which celebrated its 99th running this year.
But wait, there’s more, and it’s important to all of us. May was National Inventors Month. I bet you forgot about that one; or maybe, like me, you just never knew. According to Mary Bellis on inventors.about.com, it was started in 1998 as a way “to help promote the positive image of inventors and the real contributions they give to this world.” It created an avenue to “recognize those talented, brave individuals who dare to be blatantly creative, and therefore different, and whose accomplishments affect every facet of our lives” according to Joanne Hayes-Rines of Inventors’ Digest on that same website.
I’ve always thought inventors had a positive image: Alexander Graham Bell getting us to the iPhone; Benjamin Franklin and those bifocals helping Nicolas Cage as Benjamin Franklin “Ben” Gates in the movie National Treasure; Leonardo Da Vinci and his “code” thing; Thomas Edison with his light bulb and the saying of umpteen ways not to make a light bulb; and Nikola Tesla with his sharp-looking newfangled electric cars, along with putting his name on MRI magnet strengths such as 1.5 and 3 Tesla machines. Impressive, talented people indeed, with real contributions too.
It’s been said that necessity is the mother of invention. Wikipedia lists Plato, in his writings from The Republic, Book II, as stating “…and yet a true creator is necessity, which is the mother of our invention.” But what if the invention was the mother of necessity? And what if mother was the invention of necessity? Think Mother’s Day. Or, hey mom, is it really necessary to clean my room – now? This last statement takes me back to a chemistry lab class as an undergraduate at Arizona State University. My graduate assistant Jamie stated that he told his mom that by cleaning his room that he would be interrupting, sabotaging, and going against the laws of entropy; i.e., he would be going against the laws of ever increasing disorder! That would be a bad thing and could lead to dysfunction of the whole universe. He apparently wanted maximum entropy and disorder in his bedroom. My youngest daughter must be secretly studying under Jamie and his rogue philosophy. See, she used Mr. Bell’s initial invention to google Jamie and affect that facet of my life. Arrgh!
If this entropy idea seems new to you then you may want to review your thermodynamic lectures from many years ago, or expand your brain and take a class in it now. Either way you will be bringing order to your mind and thereby defeating the laws of entropy and/or disorder. Bizarre conundrum isn’t it? But I digress. Continuing the permutations, what if mother was a necessary invention? Eve was a necessary creation for Adam, and we are all thankful and better off for it.
A little more investigation on that site shows that perhaps this “necessity” phrase got its more common vernacular start as an old English Proverb. Continuing, Wikipedia cites Alfred North Whitehead, in a 1917 speech as arguing that “the basis of invention is science, and science is almost wholly the outgrowth of pleasurable intellectual curiosity.” Whoa. I think that artists and other non-scientists might argue that point about the basis of invention. What about creativity, imagination, originality, and vision coming from the other part of the brain; the so-called non-science side or “right-brained” people. Actually that whole “brain sidedness” thing has been debunked – I think, sort of. But I digress – again!
And I don’t remember all of my science classes in junior high, high school, college, or medical school for that matter being a pleasurable outgrowth of anything; intellectual, yes; pleasurable, no. Grade school science maybe, but those were different experiments and that’s a different story and topic. Wasn’t that like the golden years with vinegar and baking soda or dry ice and water? Uh oh, digression rears its ugly head again.
Anyway, as an inventor, or more correctly stated, as one lucky enough to have been able to chase an idea and dream and then get a patent on an idea-turned-product, I find myself pondering all these thoughts and their combinations and permutations. First and foremost, I have to be truthful and recognize that while it might take a village for Hillary Clinton, it just took a team for me. Oh, and it also took money and someone willing to foot the bill.
I can’t say enough about the team. These are really smart people with insight and knowhow – or at least it seemed that way to me because I’m just an average guy who had an idea, saw a need, and guided them to where we wanted to get to and why. A funny thing happened along the way too: I learned much from them about so many things, topics, and processes that I had not known nor cared about before. Even more funny is that the final product didn’t look like what I had imagined or drawn up (and there were many drawings for sure). It looked better. It was more functional. And, it was more innovative. The team gets the credit.
So here’s my advice: make sure that you have a good team around you to get the project off the ground and moving. They’ll help to keep it flying even if it is a circuitous route; they’ll fly it through the turbulence; and then they’ll bring it in for a landing. Hopefully it’ll be a soft and lucrative one for you. Then write to me and let me know how to do that last part, and in return I will tell you where to go to buy my invention so I can retire comfortably and not have to write these articles to live on. Oh wait, I’m doing this for free too. My mistake.
Now go forth, multiply, and invent. Oh, one more thing: does Hallmark have a card for this?
Happy Belated Inventors Month to everyone.
Bruce Hedgepeth MD Part I
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