The Lost Inventors

I have come to the conclusion that common sense is the illusion that other people share the same values as you. There are a few things in life that are so plain and obvious that everyone can agree on the simplest, or safest, or smartest way of doing it. As things get more complex, the whole idea of common sense gets fuzzier. Values and life experiences become just as much a part of common sense as practicality.

Politics is at its root a battle over competing versions of common sense. If you believe people are inherently lazy then you would see social spending as waste of money because it rewards people for not working and creates a state of dependency. If you see people as dangerous and any society is only nine missed meals from a revolution, then some social spending is necessary to maintain law and order.  If you believe all people are God's children, then you might see social spending as an obligation of the state.  As you can see it can get complicated real fast.

History is a narrative. It's a story we tell ourselves to explain why things are the way they are. Today's world is like the way it is -because. History is even more colored by values than common sense.  Look at George Washington, almost universally considered the "best" President of the United States by both American history books and US citizens. Because George Washington was a leader on the side that won the Revolutionary War, history has been very kind to him. 

If the British had won the war George Washington would have be hung as a traitor. He would have also be hung as a war criminal. Washington's victory at Trenton was seen as an atrocity because he attacked on Christmas Day.  In the 18th century Christmas Day was seen as an automatic day of truce and only a barbarian would conduct war on a scared day.

I can almost hear Jack Nicholson from his performance in A Few Good Men, "you want the truth -you can't handle the truth".  I'm not too sure people can't handle the truth often it's more like people are just bored or uninterested in the truth. A simple answer can easily trump the minutia of the whole story.  Valor and bravery always sounds better than talking about battles that were won or lose due to shipping orders, miscommunications or the rivalries and egos of commanding officers.

Among the heroes of modern history are the inventors. A scientific discovery, the refinement of a principal or the creation of a machine that makes life easier have all been transferred into social and economic engines of change. Inventions that made people more productive have raised the general standard of living and conversely made war more deadly.  So it should be no surprise a man like Hiram Maxim can make a fortune improving the sewing machine and then make a second fortune by manufacturing the first true machine gun.

Still people prefer simple answers. Ask the average person who is the inventor of the airplane? If you're anywhere other than Bridgeport Connecticut, the answer is the Wright Brothers.  In Bridgeport there is a counter claim.

It is believed that Gustav Whitehead (aka Gustav Weisskopf ) had built and flown the first powered aircraft two years before the Wright Brothers.  There were a few news paper article  in New England announcing the fights and years later people signed affidavits that they saw Whiteheads aircraft flying in 1901. 

The historian are split. There are inconsistencies and flaws with the story, a grainy photograph that has a framed photograph in the background with Whitehead's aircraft in the sky  has turned up and even a rumor of a secret conspiracy between Orville Wright and the Smithsonian Institute has been whispered about.

Supporters of Whitehead's claim have built replicas of the original aircraft. Here critics have been very vocal because some modern improvements had been incorporated. Also the replicas imply the possibility of success but can't be taken as positive proof Whitehead did fly.  Still for the 100 anniversary edition of Jane's All The World Aircraft will credit Gustav Whitehead to build an operational heavier than air aircraft.

Have you ever heard of Nathan B Stubblefield ? It's kind of a funny name you think a comedian would make up.  He was distrustful of the US Patent Office as he worked on his invention of a wireless telephone in the 1880's. It has been claimed Stubblefield invented radio  long before Tesla or Marconi.  Most scientists believe Stubblefield's devices used "ground conduction or audio frequency earth conduction" instead of actual radio waves. Either way he was only a step away from success but now forgotten.

As a bit of trivia Alexander Graham Bell and Charles Sumner Tainterin were the first to transmit the human voice wirelessly. They did it with a beam of light. Interesting but kind of impractical in the 1880's but the basis of fiber optic communications today.

Another lost inventor was Philo Taylor Farnsworth. Nor the first to invent Television but the first to devise an entirely electronic system for both the camera and the receiver.  Before Farnsworth TV was a impractical dream that worked something like an old fax machine.

Philo Farnsworth had his first ideas on how to make TV work when he was a high school student Idaho. Over his life time he was granted 165 patients mostly in radio and TV. Some remember Farnsworth from his court battles with David Sarnoff. Many of Farnsworth's TV patients expired shortly after World War 2 just as America discovered this new media .

As one of those punishing ironies of life Farnsworth appeared on the CBS quiz show I Got A Secret.  It was a show were a panel of celebrities asked questions of the guest and had to deduce his secret. Philo Farnsworth was introduced as Dr X and in the end the panel could not guess he was the inventor of electronic television.