The following is a collection of anecdotes about innovations and inventions I've collected over the years. While persistence and the "scientific method" produce innumerable products, the real breakthroughs more often come from inspiration, accident, and discovering the exceptions to the rule. In the following examples, note how the products were developed from new conceptual frameworks. The second section cites  some of the remarkable resistances to changes that were later overcome. A new section provides some interesting links.

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Honda merged the concepts of automobile design and human evolution to create the slogan, "theory of automobile evolution." This slogan stimulated unconventional thinking about the next step in developing their product line and then production of the Honda City, their urban model.

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In 1985, Osaka-based Matsushita Electric were trying to develop a new home bread baking machine. They were having trouble getting the machine to knead dough correctly and as a result the crust was overcooked while the inside was underdone. They even tried x-rays comparing bread kneaded by machine and expert bakers, but to no avail. Finally, software developer Ikuko Tanaka noticed that the head baker at the Osaka International Hotel had the best reputation for baking bread. Tanaka observed the baker for about a year and finally discovered the stretching and twisting technique that make the dough work. The machine was then developed with special ribs inside the machine to produce the stretching technique, and the "twist dough method" set record sales for the bread maker in its first year.

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Canon's revolutionary minicopier was based on the premise that the photosensitive copier drum (which is the source of 90% of maintenance problems), had to be disposable. Therefore it would have to be inexpensive and easy to produce. The breakthrough came when task force leader Hiroshi Tanaka ordered out for some beer. He held up a beer can and asked how the can could be made so inexpensively. The team continued this line of questioning-how a copier drum is and is not like a beer can--and manufactured a low cost aluminum copier drum. By 1987, only five years after the introduction of the drum model, 74% of Canon's revenues came from its business machines division.

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In the 1940's inventors at General Electric were working on a new material that bounced and stretched because they wanted to find a new rubber substitute. It didn't develop as they hoped and it wasn't until Peter Hodgeson bought some in 1947, that it was successfully packaged and sold as "silly putty"--still selling well after more than 40 years.

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In the 1960's at 3M, developers were trying to find a powerful glue. The chemist assigned to the project, Spence Silver, often experimented with variations in formulas--one resulting in a substance that would only weakly stick and could be easily pulled apart. He worked on it for ten years but despite improvements in its stickiness, it went undeveloped. In 1974 Arthur Fry, one of Silver's co-workers, was trying to make a bookmark stick in his church songbook and in a flash of recognition discovered the application: Post-It Notes. Silver later stated, "If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."

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Kodak color film was developed by a team of two unlikely inventors. Since their high school friendship, Leopold Godowsky and Leopold Mannes had tinkered with photography as a hobby. The sons of musicians, they both aspired to be musicians but were sidetracked by success. In contrast to most inventors experimenting with three layers of film (red, yellow, blue) to get a color range, they tried three layers of chemical treatments on a single film. To time various parts of their experiments, rather than using a clock they sang songs to an exact meter. They produced the first color film in 1935.

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The fold down Murphy Bed was invented by a stage coach driver who lived in a single room. While he was on his coach runs, his wife liked to entertain friends. Since Murphy was a tinkerer, he devised a bed that could be stored in the wall when guests were visiting, and later be pulled down for sleeping.

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In the 1870s grape growing in the San Joaquin Valley was quite popular. However, in 1873 a severe heat wave struck the area damaging the grape crop beyond retrieval. The grapes typically used for eating fresh or in wine had shriveled completely on the vine. One dedicated (desperate?) grower picked the shriveled grapes and sold them to a grocer in San Francisco who discovered that they made a wonderful and profitable treat--raisins.

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A metallurgist, Harry Brearly, in 1913 was trying to find a metal appropriate for making gun barrels that would not rust. He was experimenting with a variety of metal combinations or alloys, but most were not useful so he threw them into a junk pile. Months later, Brearly noted that while most of the rejected metal had rusted in the pile, some did not. On analysis he discovered that the unrusted ones contained 14% chromium, and stainless steel was invented.

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William H. Mason had worked with Thomas Edison, and the waste products from lumber mills was a concern to him. Rather than burn the scrap wood, Mason proposed to "explode" the wood into fibers and try to find some use for them. He experimented for months, successfully exploding them, but frustrated that he could not find an application beyond possibly using them as insulation. By accident, he left a pile of fibers in a press that had a leaky steam valve. The extended period of pressure and heat formed a firm and durable board. Mason tried to pound, cut, bend, drill and otherwise work with the new substanced, finally convinced that he had created something useful out of waste products--which was named after him--Masonite.

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In 1849 Jean-Baptiste Jolly spilled oil from an oil lamp (distilled turpentine) on his wife's tablecloth. Fearing that he'd damaged the cloth he tried several times to wipe it off. Each time the cloth became cleaner. Jolly was a cloth drier and realized that he had discovered a new cleaning process that was better than the soap and water that would shrink, fade or damage fragile fabrics. Since lamp oil was dangerous and left an odor, other solvents were experimented with, resulting in what is now known as a $2 billion a year business of "dry cleaning."

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Johannes Keppler discovered a mathematical proof for the elliptical orbits of the planets around the sun by trying to find a practical way to measure the area and volume of wine in different shaped wine casks.

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Gaslight was originally discovered by accident when an inventor, Sir Archibald Cochrane, was cooking coal to get coal tar. He was attempting to condense the tar so it could be applied to English ship hulls to stop the destructive damage of worm rot. Instead, his experiment exploded, destroying his lab. Writing to a distant friend about the incident, the potential was not lost on the friend who capitalized on the burning gas. This invention alone made better lit streets safer, enabled work at night (including night classes), and fostered evening entertainment.

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During WWII an American, Percy Spencer, made magnetrons that were used in radar systems to detect planes and ships from the beams that were bounced back from their surfaces. He noticed that hands could be warmed by holding them close to the magnetron, and also discovered that a candy bar had melted in his pocket. Recognizing the potential for cooking, he experimented on popcorn and pork chops. In a demonstration to the members of the board of his company, he microwaved an egg--which exploded--and convinced the board of its cooking power. It was patented in 1953 as the High Frequency Dielectric Heating Apparatus.

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A Swiss engineer, Georges de Mestral, was trying to discover a better fastener for clothes. After walking in the woods one day he noticed burrs sticking to his clothing. Using a magnifying glass he found that tiny barbs on the plant were hooked into the threads of his fabric. After eight years of experimenting, he designed two pieces of fabric: one with tiny hooks, the other with tiny loops, that would adhere when touched but could be ripped apart. Velcro was patented in 1957.

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Growing up in the early 1800's in New England, Charles Goodyear was fascinated with the properties of a new substance from the sap of tropical plants. Products made from the rubber substance usually became sticky in hot weather and cracked in cold weather. Goodyear began experimenting with mixing the rubber with numerous substances to soften it. Totally absorbed with the project, he sometimes sold his children's schoolbooks to raise money, and even spent time experimenting in jail for not paying his debts. By accident one day he dropped a piece of rubber mixed with sulphur and white lead on a hot stove. The next day when he picked it up it was soft and flexible. In 1844 he patented his process called "vulcanization" for the vulcanized rubber.

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In 1978 an employee at Proctor and Gamble went on lunch break and forgot to turn off one of the machines that stirred soap. When he returned the soap mixture had more bubbles mixed in it than usual. It was so light that it floated, and delighted the customers with Ivory Soap. Even the crease in the soap was accidental--it used to be used to mark the soap for cutting in the factory until it was discovered that customers also liked its convenience.

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Oscar Levi Strauss saw the need for tough pants in the gold rush era of 1849 California. To respond to the miners' complaints that the knees wore out of regular pants he used tent canvas. The fabric was ordered from Nimes, France (de Nimes, or denims). An old miner named Alkali Ike complained that the pockets ripped off too easily when he stuffed his pockets with heavy tools. As a joke, Ike's pants were taken to a blacksmith and the pockets put back on with rivets. The idea worked so well that Strauss soon put them on all the jeans.

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Brazilian Indians recognized the value of tree sap which they put on their feet and let it harden near a fire. The sap "resoled" feet helped protect them. European explorers returned the substance to England where, in the 1700's, Joseph Priestly used it to rub out pencil markings. First called "lead eater" it was later referred to as "rubber." In 1832 Wair Webster in New York patented a process to attach it to the soles of shoes, although the process wasn't successful until the first pair of sneakers made in Connecticut on 1868. Bill Bowerman became obsessed with making the perfect sole and one day was impressed with the design in his breakfast waffles. After his wife went to work he poured some rubber into the waffle iron and made the first waffle sole shoe for improved traction (the Nike Waffle Trainer).

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In 1762 a gambler named John Montagu had the habit of becoming overinvolved in card games and was reluctant to take breaks to eat. Prepared for such an event he brought slices of bread and meat and played while he ate. His invention was named after him (his formal title was the fourth Earl of Sandwich).

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In the mid-19th century several people tried to invent a carpet cleaner to take the drudgery out of beating carpets outdoors. There were several attempts to brush dirt out and blow dirt away but these caused more noise and mess than they did benefit. An Englishman named Cecil Booth got the idea of reversing the blower and create a vacuum. He put a handkerchief over his mouth and got down on the carpet a sucked air. Sure enough, the handkerchief filtered the dirt. His 1901 vacuums were huge and required towing by horses from house to house, so in 1908 they were improved and miniaturized by American James Spangler.

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In 1869 an Ohio dentist, William Semple, patented spruce sap gum as a means of "jaw exercise" but it never caught on for that use. Around the same time, a relative of two US presidents, Thomas Adams experimented with a new type of rubbery sap called chicle from the sapodilla tree of Central America. He tried to vulcanize it the way Goodyear did, but it just wouldn't stretch or bounce. Overhearing a young girl asking for the scarce spruce gum, he covered the chicle gum with flavoring and called it Blibber-Blubber, later to be called Chiclets.

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John and Will Kellogg believed that American's diets were unhealthy. John's special interest was breakfast. He set about making special breads for breakfast by experimenting with wheat in the barn behind their sanatorium. Trying boiling, mashing, and rolling the wheat to no success, they left it in a pot to mold. By accident he rolled out a moldy specimen which made a separate flake which they browned. By refining the process the Kellogg's were able to make wheat and corn flakes.

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In the 1920's Charles Birdseye was puzzled with the problem of keeping frozen meat from becoming damaged by the cells becoming punctured by slow forming ice crystals. During a trip to Labrador, Birdseye watched how native people froze fish quickly. He developed a fast freezing process that reduced crystal formation and started selling small packages of frozen vegetables that still bear his name.

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About the 1820's when extensive research was being conducted with coal tar, it was discovered that naphtha could be extracted. Experiments were often conducted on just about every material available, and it was about that time that rubber was just being introduced to England. The naphtha was found to dissolve rubber, and in 1823 it was spread between layers of cloth to produce the first water resistant fabric, named after the investor--MacIntosh.

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In 1838, John Gorrie noticed that malaria (mal-aria: Italian for "bad air") was related to the hot humid weather and foul odor rising off the swamps in Florida. He mistakenly assumed that cool air would remedy the condition and immediately set about using the newly invented piston engine to produce ice. Although his premise was wrong, he had invented the prototype for refrigeration and air conditioning.

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In 1852 the nutmeg plantations near Ceylon grew rapidly as the surrounding forest was cut down. The resulting warm pools of water were also perfect for promoting the expansion of the anopheles mosquito that carried malaria. England attempted to grow cinchona to produce quinine to control the symptoms of the disease, but it was difficult to get people to drink the bitter mixture until they added gin for flavoring. The gin and tonic caught on rapidly!

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The production of coal tar in the 1850's in England and Germany left a residual sludge until William Perkin attempted to create an artificial quinine by adding an aniline solution. The resulting red and black powders, when added to water created colorful artificial dyes. In the 1870's the German chemical industry created more colors, and suddenly, colorful fashion was in! (Incidentally, fertilizers and pain killers later grew out of these German labs).

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Gutenberg, the inventor of movable printing type, disliked the idea of hand engraving an entire page of text on a single slab of wood. Intrigued by coin-making, in which plain discs are stamped by a coin punch, he devised a method for stamping out metal letters that could be reused. Combined with an idea obtained by observing a wine press, he developed the printing press.

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In the 1850's George Bissel grew tired of inefficiently drawing oil from shallow wells with buckets and wringing oil out of soaked towels. He noticed a brine pump at a salt plant and designed a similar one for raising oil.

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James Watt's steam engine was inspired by the jangling lid of his mother's tea kettle.

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Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of the TV, got the idea of line by line refreshing of a TV screen from noticing the rows made by a horse-drawn plow.

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Luigi Galvani's wife placed a steel knife on a tin plate, accidentally touching a frog's leg and making it jump. Galvani deduced that the different metals created electricity and he set about developing the battery. (His young son deduced that the frog was still alive and smacked it with a cleaver).

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Sir Marc Isambard Brunel was struggling with the problem of constructing tunnels under water. He observed a shipworm constructing a tube for itself as it moved forward through a timber. Seizing upon the idea, he contrived a short steel cylinder that could be pushed forward through the tunnel as work progressed.

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Samuel Morse's first telegraph messages became weak after traveling only a few miles. He metaphorically considered that if stagecoach relay stations added fresh horses to the team, he could add relay stations that could ad more power to the fading signal.

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Charles Darwin noted that animal breeders could selectively breed in or out certain characteristics that improved the market value of their animals. He extended this observation, concluding that a similar process could occur during natural selection in nature.

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Watching a cat trying to catch a chicken through a fence inspired another inventor. The cat missed the chicken, only to come back with a paw full of feathers. It suggested to Eli Whitney that he could have hundreds of "claws" reach through a tight fence and pull cotton away from the seeds--his cotton 'gin.

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After surviving a head-on train collision, George Westinghouse learned of a Swiss rock drill that was powered by an air hose 3,000 feet from the compressor. He immediately designed the Westinghouse air brake that was powered throughout the length of the train by compressed air.

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Scotsman Dunlop's first tire was not only inspired by the flexibility of a garden hose, it was a piece of garden hose wrapped around a wheel.

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Wine grapes, which ferment only when crushed, suggested to Louis Pasteur that human flesh would not putrefy unless an open wound allowed putrefying agents to get in. An experiment confirmed this novel idea, which led to an improved understanding of infections and the use of Band-Aids to prevent them.

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Charles Duryea, looking for a better way to squirt gas into engine cylinders, used the analogy of his wife's perfume atomizer to develop a spray injection carburetor.

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The Schick injector razor, invented by an army person, was inspired by the loading mechanism of the repeating rifle.

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Wet leaves, which pack together snugly without breaking, metaphorically led to the development of Pringles Potato Chips.

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Josephine Dickson was somewhat accident prone and collected a more than average number of minor cuts and scratches. Her husband, Earle, was not always home to help with extra hands to apply bandages, so he prepared three lengths of surgical tape with a piece of gauze in the middle of each and cloth to cover them for sterility. The dressing was easily applied with one hand. James Johnson, Earle's employer quickly saw the advantage and in 1924 Johnson & Johnson produced the familiar Band-Aids.

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During World War II there was a strong effort to find substitute for hard to obtain rubber. James Wright, a chemical engineer, mixed silicone oil and boric acid to discover a gooey polymer, but it was not firm enough for rubber--it only bounced on the counter. With high hopes of turning it into something productive, GE sent samples of the substance around the world, but the scientists could not create an application for this "bouncing putty" as it was called. Corning Glass received a patent for a similar substance which eventually made its way into the hands of Peter Hodgson. Hodgeson borrowed $147 to purchase a batch of what he now called "silly putty" and sold it in plastic eggs. Sales went from a hundred eggs sold a day to hundreds of thousands! In addition to its use as a bouncing toy, it has been used to strengthen hands in physical therapy and make casts of gorillas' feet.

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Cross disciplinary cooperation works. Bunsen, a chemist, used the color of a chemical sample in a gas flame for a rough determination of the elements it contained. He described the shortcomings of the technique to Kirchhoff, a physicist, who immediately suggested a prism to display the entire spectrum for more detailed information. This led to the science of spectrography and has contributed greatly to science of cosmology.

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Alexander Graham Bell was inspired to develop the telephone when he read an account, written in German, describing an invention which he thought had the function of a telephone.  After demonstrating his first telephone, Bell learned that, because of the language barrier, he had misunderstood the report and the German invention had an entirely different function.

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In 1976 Armond Marriott was using a large water spraying machine to keep his fruit trees from freezing in a cold weather spell. The sprayed water turned to snow, giving him the idea for snow-making machines that are now used for producing early snow on ski slopes.

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Competition to develop new farming technology using bigger and bigger equipment led Benjamin Holt to try to find a way to get the large equipment from getting stuck in tilled farm soil. By laying down a series of planks, the huge machinery could roll right over the soft ground and not get enmired the way huge steel wheels or tires would. Observers said it "looked like a caterpillar" and tha name stuck --Caterpillar Tractor. When General Pershing requested something that could traverse all kinds of terrain, a secret tread-rolling machine was developed for warfare. When asked what the new machines were, but not wanting to give away the new development, military personnel answered, "They're water tanks for Mesopotamia." The name stuck--Tanks.

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Roland Moreno in 1974 was a young inventor who was trying to keep his new electronics business in operation, but he was flat broke. He decided to make the best of this situation with no money, and developed a credit card with a chip in it to keep a record of total funds and expenses--the smart card! His ideas have been applied to ATM's, autotelephone booths, and even turnpike booths. He doesn't have to worry about cash flow problems anymore.

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"Creative failure methodology" is a recently coined phrase describing the serendipitous effects of researching one application and discovering another. At Bell Labs, a multidisciplinary team was formed to invent the MOS transistor, and ended up instead with the junction transistor and the new science of semiconductor physics. These eventually led to the MOS transistor and then to the integrated circuit. Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate Physicist, stated: "To develop working ideas efficiently, I try to fail as fast as I can."

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In 1820 it was a "well known fact" that electricity and magnetism were independent phenomena. Oersted was conducting a public experiment to demonstrate the "fact"  but it failed--an electric current produced a magnetic effect. He was observant enough to notice it, honest enough to admit it, and diligent enough to follow up and publish it. Maxwell used these studies to develop Maxwell's Laws and opened the electronics age.

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Eric Von Hipple of the MIT Business School extensively studied the sources of innovation in the electronics industry and concluded that more than 70% of product innovations came from users. They couldn't find the tools or equipment they needed on the market and were forced to develop their own.

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While Edward Land was taking pictures of his family during a vacation in the southwest, his daughter asked why they had to wait so long for the pictures. "Good question!" he thought and returned to Boston to try out some rapid development ideas--finally developing the Polaroid Land Camera. Kodak didn't think customers minded waiting to get their pictures, and it cost them billions of dollars for late market entry and patent infringement lawsuits.

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In the 1500's, Phillippine natives used a four pound rock with an attached 20 foot line for hunting. They could throw the weapon toward the legs of an animal and, if missed, retrieve the weapon easily. In the 1920's Pedro Flores  moved to the US and worked as a bellhop at a Santa Monica Hotel. Like many Phillippine youth, he played with a wooden version of the weapon. His antics during his lunch hours drew large crowds leading him to eventually form his own company for producing the amusing device. He used his native Tagalog language to name the device "come-come," or as we know it, yo-yo. Donald Duncan, a promoter who had already pushed the Eskimo Pie and Good Humor Ice Cream, started the boom in 1962 when he took commercials to television. The 70-year history has led to more than 600 million sold.

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During WWII there was intense research conducted to find a substitute for rubber. Although there is some dispute over who specifically invented the product, one version states that at a General Electric meeting a rubber substitute was passed around that felt and bounced like rubber, but when left on a table it melted flat. Although a patent was granted in 1947 to McGregor & Warrick, the rubber was considered a "loser" product and was kept around primarily for its amusing properties. In 1949 it was placed along side crayola crayons in a catalog and immediately outsold all other items as Silly Putty.

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 About 1860 a young chemist in Brooklyn had lost his income due to a shortage of sperm whale oil from which kerosene was derived. The petroleum industry was just coming into prominence when the chemist became fascinated with rod wax, the sticky substance that stuck to and seized up the drilling rigs. Having heard the old stories about its healing properties, he extracted a translucent material from the tarry product. He combined the German word for water (wasser) and Greek word for olice oil (elaion) to create the exotic sounding Vaseline Petroleum Jelly. The young Robert Chesebrough then took his medicine show on the road, cutting and burning himself in demonstrations before the awestruck public, then daubing his wounds with the healing jelly (Lindsey, 2000).

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Although the origin of the writing stylus can be traced to early Egypt and Greece, the pencil using graphite, probably made its first appearance in 1564 when a graphite deposit was discovered in England. Much of the graphite uses was of poor qiality, often breaking or crumbling. In 1795 when Napoleon's army was cut off from its English and German pencils, a French Army officer was commissioned to find a substitute. He mixed various proportions of clay with graphite, fired it, and created the graded hardness of pencils we use today.

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Wet Blankets

In October, 1903 an astronomer named Simon Newcombe said human flight was "utterly impossible."

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In 1949, Popular Mechanics magazine forecasted a bleak future for computers, stating that, "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." The 1943 Chairman of IBM was even more dubious, commenting, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." By 1968, an engineer at IBM commented on the microchip, asking, "but what...is it good for?" Finally, Ken Olson, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation asserted, "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

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A Western Union internal memo in 1876 stated, "This ‘telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." The attitude had not changed much by the 1920's when David Sarnoff's associates, in response to his urgings for investment in the newly developed radio, said, "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value--who would pay for a message sent to no body in particular?"

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Before Warner Brothers became the innovative movie production studio for which it is now known, H. M. Warner in 1927 asked, "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"

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"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides the market research reports say America likes crisp cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make."--Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.

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It's hard for new ideas to get off the ground. "Heavier than air flying machines are impossible."--Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895. "Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value."--Marchal Ferninand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

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"So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you. And they said, ‘No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don't need you. You haven't even got through college yet.'"--Apple Computer founder, Steve Jobs describing early attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

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"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training."--Response to Arthur Jones who solved the "unsolvable problem" by inventing Nautilus.

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"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy!"--Drillers who Edwin Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

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"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon."--Sir John Eric Erickson, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873.

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"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."--Decca recording Co., rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

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"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"  --Harry M. Warner, Warner Brothers (1927)

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"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."  --Robert Milliken, Physics Nobel Prize (1923)

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"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."--New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work, 1921.

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"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."--Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

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"640K ought to be enough for anybody."--Bill Gates, 1981.

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"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure
you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." --The editor in charge of business books
for Prentice Hall, 1957 ~ "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.
The device is inherently of no value to us." --Western Union internal memo, 1876. ~ "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to
nobody in particular?" --David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the
radio in the 1920s. ~ "We hope that Professor Langley will not put his substantial greatness as a scientist in further peril by continuing to waste his time and the money involved in further air experiments. Life is short, and he is capable of services to humanity incomparably greater than can be expected to result from trying````````````` to fly. For students and investigators of the Langley type there are more useful employment's with fewer disappointments and mortifications than have been the portion of aerial navigators since the days of Iccarus." New York Times, December 10, 1903 (The Wright Brothers Kitty Hawk Flight was on December 17, 1903) ~ "If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that
said you can't do this." --Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It"
Notepads. ~ "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction". --Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at
Toulouse, 1872 ~ "What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?" --The Quarterly Review, England (March, 1825). ~ "The abolishment of pain in surgury is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it... Knife and pain are two words in surgury that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient." Dr. Alfred Velpeau, French Surgeon, 1839. ~ Radio has no future." --Lord Kelvin, ca. 1897. ~ "Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value." --Editorial in the Boston Post, 1865. ~ That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced." --Scientific American, January 2, 1909. ~ "Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic."  --Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1838), Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College, London. ~ "When the Paris Exhibition closes electric light will close with it and no more be heard of."  --Erasmus Wilson (1878), Professor of Oxford University. ~ "The foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd length to which vicious specialization will carry scientists working in thought-tight compartments."  --A. W. Bikerton (1926), Professor of Physics and Chemistry, Canterbury College, New Zealand. ~ "While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming."  --Lee DeForest, 1926 (American radio pioneer). ~ "But what...is it good for?" --Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip. ~ " I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't lastout the year."  --The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957. ~ "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." --Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943. ~ "There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will."  --Albert Einstein, 1932. ~ "Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 19,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weight only 1.5 tons."  Popular Mechanics, March 1949. ~

And the most impressive pronouncement, "Everything that can be invented, has been invented."--Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U. S. Office of Patents, 1899.

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Say What?

"If you don't learn from your mistakes, there's no sense making them." --Anonymous

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought." --Albert Szent-Gyorgy.

"Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts." --Nikki Giovanni

"America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else." --The Oxford History of the American People

"Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them." --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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References

Burke, J. (1978). Connections. Boston: Little Brown.

Cerf, C., & Navasky, V. (1984). The experts speak: The definitive compendium of authoritative misinformation. Pantheon.

Davis, G. A. (1992). Creativity is forever. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.

Freeman, A., & Golden, B. (1997). Why didn't I think of that? New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Http://www.quantumbooks.com/creativity.html

Jones, C. F. (1996). Accidents may happen: Fifty inventions discovered by mistake. New York: Delacorte.

Lindsey, D. (2000). House of invention: The secret life of everyday products. New York: Lyons Press.

Mitroff, I. J., & Linstone, H. A. (1993). The unbounded mind: Breaking and chains of traditional business thinking. New York: Oxford.

Nadler, G., & Hibino, S. (1990). Breakthrough thinking. Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing and Communications.

Roberts, R. M. (1989). Serendipity: Accidental discoveries in science. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Wyatt, V. (1987). Amazing investigations: Inventions. New York: Simon and Schuster

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Links on Invention & Innovation

Concoctions & Inventions (collection of sort stories of origins)

Impact of Innovation (MIT report)

Gizmos (humor)

Nadler's address to the World Congress on Thinking & Creativity

Invention Dimension (MIT links)

Mining Company's Guide to Inventors

     Inventor's Index

Long term trends in business economics notes (note invention section)

Generalizations about the innovation-decision process

Unusual page on invention and thinking info

The Head Shed (creativity resources)

Basadur Creative Problem Solving Style (online inventory)

The Brain (software for thinking)

Model of Bell's path to inventing the telephone

Quotations from Inventors

Annotated bibliography on creativity and innovation

Creativity in Science & Engineering--

Developing a culture for innovation--

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Last updated 2-17-02

David X. Swenson Ph.D.

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