Dreamers and Inventors

In regard to dreamers and inventors the saying, not worth a tinkers damn, comes readily to mind. Throughout most of our history inventors were dreamers who tinkered with things. They were not highly thought of unless they invented something people wanted. Until then most of the people who knew them thought they were peculiar folks who whiled away their time on one fool thing or another.

Let us suppose for a minute that your neighbors, Orville and Wilbur, are bicycle mechanics. All right, they have the mechanical skill to repair bicycles. Such skill is not all that impressive. As Joe, the barber, used to say:

“Those contraptions are fine for exercising but not much good for transportation. It seems to me that you work your legs off just to propel yourself forward while sitting down. I’d rather have my horse work his legs off to get me where I’m going while I’m sitting down.”

Now let us suppose that those neighbors, those bicycle mechanics are always banging on things and making a racket by running an internal combustion engine. And when you ask them what they are doing they tell you they are making a flying machine. Your reaction is likely to be, “What, do they think they’re Daedalus and Icarus?” It is easy to see why you might refer to them as those crazy bastards who live next door. I can almost see you sticking your head out of your bedroom window and yelling:

“Go peddle your bicycles, at least they’re quiet!”

The next time you are getting your hair cut you complain about your noisy neighbors and express some skepticism about man’s ability to fly. The man who is waiting his turn to get his hair cut is less than sympathetic about your complaint. He does not find it interesting. Complaints about noisy neighbors are common, whereas trying to fly is unusual.

“I suppose it’s possible to fly,” he says. Birds do it, don’t they?”

Seeing that your complaint is not well received you go along with the change of subject.

“What do you think, Joe? Is it possible to build a flying machine?”

“I can’t say one way or another. The only thing I know for sure is that if they go up they’re going to come down.”

Since you are still feeling a bit peevish about the lack of sympathy your reply is a bit more petulant than you intended.

“And with my luck they’ll make even more of a racket by coming down on my house.”

This inspires laughter rather than sympathy. You are tempted to say it is easy for them to take a wait and see attitude when they are not the ones being inconvenienced.

Orville and Wilbur eventually get off the ground but fly only a short distance. While this is quite an accomplishment the benefits of it are still remote. Furthermore, flying is dangerous. It is not something most people would want to chance. You are smart enough to realize that once someone figures out how to do something this person or others will rapidly improve our ability to do it, but you do not get too excited about this short flight because it does not have an immediate impact on your life, whereas the noise the Wright brothers are making does.

The point is that people are selectively myopic. What we see most clearly are the things we deal with on a daily basis. We do not remember the names of many of the aviation pioneers who died in crashes. What we remember are the successes and the breakthroughs that advanced our knowledge and made flying a viable means of transportation. Reading old newspapers tells us what was being reported about those breakthroughs, but they do not tell us what one of our ancestors thought about such accomplishments or what it must have been like to live next door to Orville and Wilbur Wright. As you can probably tell, I am having some fun conjecturing about that.

First published in macsbackporch.fictionforall.com on Jul 26, 2011