"Tom Gardner" wrote:
I'm seeing previews for the movie about the invention of intermittent
wipers in '63. Think how things have changed in 45 years. Today, a
manager at a design firm would tell a group of engineers to design such a
system and have several designs on his desk by the end of the day. True,
they didn't have 555s in '63. So, is it that a unique idea is a lot more
important than the actual design?

If you remember some of my previous posts about nurturing ideas that lead
to designs, this has been an area of extreme interest to me. In the
movie, it looks like Ford screws the idea/design guy, which makes me
sick. Designers and model builders need more respect but idea guys need
to be revered! (coming from a guy that has had very, very few, if any,
original ideas)

I remember hearing about how the guy who invented intermediate wipers got
screwed by the auto companies maybe 20 or 30 years ago. My reaction then,
and pretty much my reaction now is - any idiot could have thought that one
up.

Whey I see something like that, my thought is that this "inventor" was no
inventor at all. He had one idea in his life, and expected to get rich
from it. Real inventors create 10 ideas a day better than that one. Yes,
some people are much better than others at creating good original ideas,
but what's hard, is finding the one which is practical at the time you find
it, and which isn't so obvious that 10 other guys didn't think it up at the
same time. Dreaming up new ideas is easy. Finding new solutions which are
practical is not so easy. That requires a lot of research and
investigation to understand what will be needed, and at which point in time
it will become practical. And then creating a design that works, and is
affordable for the application.

At the same time this guy made the invention of his life - a timer to
control a motor, real inventors and creative engineers were at work
creating the SR-71 blackbird - something so advance and creative it
probably included a 1000 items more noteworthy than this timer, and none of
the engineers creating all those inventions every day expected to get
anything in return except another day's pay.

Now maybe there's more to this story and I'd like to see the movie to find
out. But mostly, I think the inventor probably had a greatly over inflated
ego. I don't doubt the auto companies ripped him off, but I also don't
think he deserved much more than about a day's pay for his "invention"
(from what I understand of it).

I think mostly, the movie is just an attempt to leverage the appeal of the
old theme of "little guy being screwed by large corporation and standing up
for himself" angle. I only wish it was over something more significant
than the "invention" of interment windshield wipers.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/