[MLUG - DISCUSSION] Re: another way I could have become a millionaire...

["John Kimball" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

jking> ... All I can say is: Crud! I had this very idea.

When I was little, I read a series of biographies of scientists
and inventors, and just about every one focused on the long slog
to that big creative insight; the climax of the story was the
moment of the Great Idea. Everything after that was wrap up. And
around that same time I heard the saying "Build a better mousetrap
and the world will beat a path to your door". The implication:
birth a Great Idea, and you're set.

But I was also told the story of great-great-uncle James Kimball, a
blacksmith. Down in the Missouri bootheel, in New Madrid, the old
folks said he was the true inventor of the sewing machine. And in
fact, the machine he made still exists -- I donated it to the
county museum a few years ago, and it's on display there.

But uncle Jimmy was a 19th century geek's geek; he invented his
sewing machine, then he it let it gather dust while he moved on to
the next project.  (He made a steam powered tractor and tooled
around the county on it, till it blew up -- and then, again, he moved
on to the next project.)  Meanwhile -- the story goes -- Elias Howe
was travelling down the Mississipi by steamboat, and he saw the
sewing machine, and went off and patented it. And he's the one in the
history books -- except in New Madrid.

(I don't know if it really happened that way.  My own guess is that
several people, building on the state-of-the-art, were simultaneously
developing better and better sewing machine like devices, so Mr Howe
may or may not have seen Uncle Jimmy's, before he perfected his
own machine.)

I didn't correlate Uncle Jimmy and the mousetrap till much later.
When I went to work at the Honeywell R&D center, I gradually saw that
the mousetrap saying is seriously misleading, and Uncle Jimmy's
experience is telling.  There's an awful lot of work that usually has
to be done after the Great Idea -- patenting, and implementing a
business around it, and the marketing to convince people it's worth
putting money down. Making almost all of that happen involves
mostly salesmanship and ambition (alternately, greed). Geek's geeks
usually fall down there.

I roll my eyes at Microsoft claiming ot be "innovators" -- their
bankroll is built on other people's Great Ideas. (In fact, most of
the innovations of Bill and his inner circle have been innovations
in shady business practices.) But they have usually done a good job
of that post-Great-Idea stuff that Uncle Jimmy didn't bother with.

(As for me, I'm still in R&D, and I'm no millionaire -- maybe it's
genetic.)


John K
// j j k i m b a l l @ a c m . o r g



 
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