INVENTIONS
It has been said that man has learned what he knows largely through accident. I'd be tempted to disagree with that premise. I believe it was not by accident, or even by chance that new discoveries were made, but that they have come about mainly through deliberate, diligent, dedicated and devoted application of curiosity.
So often we are told that the invention came to be because a doctor, chemist, or wild-eyed professor added the wrong ingredient at the right time or the right ingredient at the wrong time and we are using the result of his carelessness today. That's the sort of thing you'd expect to see happen in a Â?Three Stooges ComedyÂ? but inventing, discovering and formulating is not a fun-thing or a joke. Discovery is serious work.
I remember, as a kid, being told how Thomas Edison spent years going though thousands of substances searching for the exact material which would serve efficiently and safely as a filament in his new incandescent lamp. No doubt he tired scores of materials many, of which would seem almost laughable today, but which he considered to have the potential to meet the need he had firmly in mind. Certainly was not by chance he ended up where he did, but rather he succeeded because he kept seeking after been disappointed time and time again. He was dedicated to the task he had set for himself, he was devoted to the principles on which the search must be conducted and determined to find the substance needed. Each step in his quest however fruitless it seemed - was taken deliberately.
For us to live and work with the idea that good things will happen if we simply endure whatever is not happening a while longer is a costly error from every angle. True enough, that may be what religious persons as total submission to the will of God. It is often called Â?blind faithÂ?, but it strikes me that those seeking blessings from the utmost Power do so in relation to their own ideas what they need. We seek gain; not wait for it. We invent things because we see, or sense, a need that such a thing become a reality.
The door is being held wide open at all times. What is your idea of something that is needed into today's seemingly Â?over-thing-edÂ? world?
If you simply sit around and wait for that idea to become a reality, you will have a long wait, but if you get busy and form some ideas of how it may be made a reality, you are inventing. Inventors are not a special breed.
Curiosity makes inventors of all of us.
A.L.M. June 21, 2004 c550wds]
