From paper clip to microchip

I was writing a speech for a top public official, and it occurred to me that I would illustrate his subject with the value of inventors and inventions to society – and so I looked for a few examples.

My first example was Thomas Edison, who had thousands of patents to his name, and who had the executive and marketing ability to sell and manufacture his inventions.

Then I recalled that I bought a book about inventions, looked for it – and, yes, the book, all of 320 pages, proved to be a treasure trove of inventions in Planet Earth.

The book is aptly titled,  “Who Invented What When,” which thus promises that it has a list of noted inventors, a gallery of earth-shaking or earth-saving inventions, plus useful and interesting accounts about when every invention began and when such invention “saw the light of day and the color money” (my words).

“Seeing the light of day” means the invention had promptly or belatedly been recognized as a useful invention, and the “color of money” tells us if such a created device made money for the inventor, made a millionaire for the “intellectual thief” – or established a multimillion enterprise for the capitalist!

There were sad cases when the inventor died a poor man, while the invention had to wait for market acceptance or for some innovations that will qualify it for mass production.

Who invented the paper clip

“Who invented the paper clip?” is a question invariably asked when talks shift to inventions. I thought this book did not bother with such a simple twisted wire, but I checked the index anyway – and, lo and behold, the account is on page 130 of the book, lumping it with two other important inventions – which explains the title: “The Staple, the Paperclip and the Safety Pin.”

The paper clip inventor, in turns out, was Norwegian inventor Johan Vaaler, who secured a patent in 1899. The book however clarifies that the paper clip that we know now is described by author Ellyard as “double oval Gem model” devised by an English firm also in 1899.  Read, too, the interesting account of the safety pin, which the author wittily says, “usually holds things other than sheets of paper.” We all know that safety pins have many ways of holding garments covering the human anatomy.

What about the most outstanding invention of all time in human history – the microchip? The book credits the development of the “logic chip” to Intel, holder of the patent on the integrated circuit. Intel was asked by Japanese manufacturer Busicom to make a set of integrated circuits to power hand-held calculators.

The job fell on the lap of Employee 12 of Intel, Marcian “Ted” Hoff. With the help of Stan Mazor, Hoff designed what would then become the “microprocessor” or “central processing unit.” The legendary 4004 chip was launched by Intel in 1971.  Other companies had their own innovations in the microchip.

Impact on lives

There are more than 200 inventions in this book, so selected by the author with one criterion: They had impact on people’s lives for the last half of a millennium.

“I concentrated on technologies that have made a real impact on you, on innovations rather than just inventions,” Ellyard says in his introduction.

One that has made quite an impact, especially on the young, is the MP3, which the author describes as “more music in less space.”  MP3 is shorthand for MPEG1 Audio Layer 3. And MPEG means Moving Picture Expert Group. “Unlike a CD player,” Ellyard adds, “and MP3 player has no moving parts; the data is embedded in a microchip.

Frequently mentioned in the book is Moore’s Law, but is not explained in the book. I checked such a law on the Internet – and here’s the law: “The number of transistors and resistors on a chip doubles every 18 months.”  More information stated that Gordon Moore made this comment in 1965 – and proving Moore to be accurate, Intel placed 1.7 billion transistors on its titanium chip.

We will not bother our readers with more IT discoveries and products, and yet it is enough to say that this book gives us one- or two-page accounts of the inventions – and these are “leads” to other sources for details of such technological breakthroughs.

Some inventions were products of serendipity. One is seeking a solution to something, and then another invention comes out of the experimentation and re-experimentation. The book says: “No one was asking for e-mail when it was devised. Some inventions are, at least initially, solutions in search of a problem –the laser for one. Radar in Britain began as a “death ray.”

This book also makes distinctions about inventions that somehow are credited to one scientist when it was another inventor who came up with it. We have assumed that Edison, for example, invented the device to harness direct current (DVC) and alternating current (AC).

Only the other day, lawyer Arnel Casanova (now CEO of Bases Conversion and Development Authority) said that the inventor of the AC was Croatian-born Nicolas Tesla. I checked this book, and the account relates that Edison and Tesla disagreed fundamentally over electricity, with Edison committed to DC and Tesla to AC. It turned out Tesla’s AC was simpler. Read about the resulting rivalry between General Electric and Westinghouse, one committed to DC while the other to AC. Well, in this country, there is also this debate on the “AC-DC,” but that is another matter altogether!

Naturally curious

This book will be interesting to the naturally curious creatures, wanting to know every development about and achievement of the individual. This is actually a sequel to Ellyard’s earlier book, “Who Discovered What When.”

This book will also prove handy to speechwriters who want to spice up a speech on human ingenuity, to professors or teachers who want to impress their students about the wealth of information at their fingertips. Or, this book will be useful to people who will realize that Steve Jobs, an impressive inventor, has predecessors back into the last 500 years.

This brings us to the next question: What happens into the next half millennium?  The author has a quick answer: There will be “new and better solutions to our needs.”

“Better” more compact, safer, more convenient or user-friendly, more efficient, using fewer resources, less polluting.

Costs will continue to fall. Gadgets, which were once expensive, will be cheap decades later. Read about the invention of the cellular phone, which the author identifies as “talking while walking.” When the prototype of the cellphone burst into the scene, “it was the size of a brick and weighed a kilogram,” notes the author.

The cellphone prototype is “far short of today’s mobiles that weigh 100 grams or less and able to slip into a pocket.”

I have a cellphone with so many functions that I really could not use. This is the trend, says the author, adding, “There will be fewer devices but more functions in the ones we have.”

The microchip

We earlier talked about the microchip. The book says, the chip will contain much more data than we can ever imagine. Consider this trend that will be true well into so many decades. The trend of “microminiaturization (or now the nanominiaturization) of processors and memories – that cram ever more components – have fallen from about 1000 nanometers (millionths of a millimeter) to around 50 nanometers over several decades.

The number of transistors on a single chip will shortly pass a billion and may reach 10 billion the next decade. Memory sticks will hold as much data as today hard drives.

Driven by advances in optic fibers, lasers, LEDS and other optical devices, IT will be increasingly transformed by “photonics.” This is the use of light in place of electric currents and charges to process, store, and transmit information. These will continue the twin trends of lower costs and greater capacity. (Remember, “photo” as in photosynthesis, using the sun, and “photo” as in photograph using light?)

Our constant worry about inventions was once expressed by John F. Kennedy in his memorable inaugural address, when he said that our invention of “the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace.”

The good news is in the technological forecast of Ellyard, the book author. On the future of inventions and innovations in medical treatment, he predicts that “medicine for prevention, diagnosis and therapy will continue into advance, driven by biotechnology, surgical techniques, monoclonal antibodies, medical electronics and nuclear medicine (which is the use of radioactive materials).”

Yes, octogenarians, they will result in increasing life spans and healthier old age – especially with implantable hearts, pacemakers and hearing devices. These may well be joined, according to the author, by implantable artificial kidneys, pancreases (to deal with diabetes) and vision aids.

No doubt, the world is better off. Our lifespans are longer, our existence is more comfortable.  Pain can be dealt with by pain relievers, and insomnia can be solved by sleeping pills. One friend of mine, however, told me that there must be an invention that will deal with heartaches, and one that can give us peace of mind. Another friend said that this has been available since 2,000 years ago. ([email protected])