Robert Louis Stevenson: Son of a Lighthouse Engineer

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850. His father, Thomas Stevenson, and his grandfather, Robert Stevenson, were distinguished builders of lighthouses. Thomas wanted his son Robert to follow in the family tradition and study to become a lighthouse engineer. But young Robert did not have the aptitude or physical stamina for the profession. He had life-long respiratory problems, perhaps inherited from his mother.

Robert Louis Stevenson (he changed the spelling of his middle name from Lewis to Louis when he was 18) was always interested in literature. His father tried to discourage the boy but when Thomas saw that his son was not going to become an engineer he encouraged him to study law just to have a profession to fall back on. Young Stevenson completed his law studies at age 25 but he never practiced.

Robert Louis Stevenson translated his family's love for the sea into many of his stories and novels. He always felt proud to be part of such a strong technical tradition. In his essays, Memories and Portraits (1887), Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of his family:

[H]olding as the Stevensons did a Government appointment they regarded their original work as something due already to the nation, and none of them has ever taken out a patent. It is another cause of the comparative obscurity of the name: for a patent not only brings in money, it infallibly spreads reputation; and my father's instruments enter anonymously into a hundred light-rooms, and are
passed anonymously over in a hundred reports, where the least
considerable patent would stand out and tell its author's story.

Robert Louis Stevenson was quite correct about his father's contributions. Thomas Stevenson not only designed dozens of lighthouses and shore lights, he also invented the revolving light that allowed a beacon to give a time signal in addition to a location. This added significantly aided mariners to be certain of their position. Thomas Stevenson also invented the Stephenson Screen for enclosing meteorological instruments.

Robert Louis Stevenson never left the sea. His many novels and stories including Kidnapped and Treasure Island celebrate a nautical life that he learned as a young man at his father's side. Robert Louis Stevenson died in 1894 in Samoa at age 44 . Both he and his father changed the world in their own ways. But each provided light to the world.

[Image: Chicken Rock Lighthouse off the Isle of Man built by Thomas Stevenson in 1875. Image from Wikipedia]

Galileo's Door

I was in Rome in September. We were walking from the Forum to the Pantheon when our guide, Francesca, commented almost as an aside about yet another Catholic church that we were passing. The door on the side of the church was the very door that Galileo Galilei had passed through when he was called by the Catholic Inquisition in 1633. This literally stopped me in my tracks. I had just seen the eyepiece of Galileo's telescope at the Science Museum in Florence.

Galileo was called to Rome to defend himself from charges of heresy. He had observed that the sun, and not the earth, was at the center of the solar system. The Catholic Church had objected to Galileo's science as early as 1616 but it was not until 1633 that he was forced to recant under a threat of death. By then, Galileo was an old man and very ill. To survive, he swore that the earth indeed was the center of the universe and that all of his prior teachings were in error. He was sentenced to house arrest in Florence for the rest of his life.

This story gives an extreme example of the reaction to any revolutionary new idea that threatens the status quo. At first, the church tried soft techniques to get Galileo to change. But when more of the Enlightened actually started listening to what Galileo had to say, and particularly when Galileo started to make the Pope look foolish, the Inquisition used all of its power to squelch his ideas.

How often does this still happen today? The church no longer has an Inquisition but the majority of people still reject revolutionary ideas as being "heretical, or crazy, or simply wrong. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if an idea hasn't been initially rejected, it probably isn't revolutionary. Modern physics provides many examples. Relativity Theory, the Big Bang, Quarks, and the duality of photons come to mind. Each was met with derision and skepticism. The authors of these ideas were probably not threatened with their lives but they were threatened with their livelihoods.

Why do revolutionary ideas upset us so much? One possible reason is that we need to remain in control. We have a mental model that explains how the world works. If that model is wrong, we are clearly out of control...and hence vulnerable. Another possibility is that that powerful individuals and groups are highly vested in the status quo, with their remaining in their positions of power.

Revolutionary ideas are never accepted without a fight. But at least we don't burn the idea's originator at the stake. But each one of these people has walked through his or her own form of Galileo's Door.

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.

- P.B. Medawar

(Photos: Galileo's Door, Painting of Galileo Inquisition from Wikipedia)

Quote for the Day

"These familiar examples [of the atomic bomb, cotton gin, steam engine] deceive us into thinking that other major inventions were also responses to perceived needs. In fact, many or most inventions were developed by people driven by curiosity or by a love tinkering, in the absence of any initial demand for the product they had in mind. Once a device had been invented, the inventor then had to find an application for it. Only after it had been in use for a considerable time did consumers come to feel that they "needed" it. Still other devices, invented to serve one purpose, eventually found most of their use for other, unanticipated purposes. It may come as a surprise to learn that these inventions in search of a use include most of the major technological breakthroughs of modern times, ranging for the airplane and automobile, through the internal combustion engine and electric light bulb, to the phonograph and transistor. Thus, invention is often the mother of necessity, rather than vice versa.[Italics mine]"

- Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel)

Stop the Train!

I guess I never thought about it. I always assumed that trains had brakes. Not so it seems. In the early days, when trains wanted to slow down or stop the engineer used the force of the steam engine to provide braking power. But when trains started pulling more than a car or two and the cars got heavier, well, the steam engine just didn't have the muscle to deal with all that inertia. Somebody figured out how to add simple brakes to the train cars. The brakes were manually applied on each car by a team of brakemen who ran the length of the train turning handwheels on each car. Because they had to run the length of the tops of the cars (which had no handrails), it is no wonder that so many brakemen had short careers..and lives.

Even with these simple brakes, trains running into each other or objects on the track was a regular part of early railroading. The problem was well-recognized and various ideas were tried to improve the situation but none of them worked. Then, George Westinghouse got into the act.

Westinghouse was an energetic young inventor who worked on solving the problems of the rapidly emerging railroad industry just after the Civil War. Westinghouse had invented and patented and improved component for a switch called a "frog". He also invented a "car replacer" that helped to put derailed cars back on the track more easily.

Westinghouse understood the need for better brakes while he was waiting on a train that was delayed. Two other trains ahead of his train on the same track had collided. He figured that better brakes might have prevented the accident.

Setting to work, Westinghouse tried a number of brake ideas that didn't prove to be useful. He worked on the idea of connecting the brakes to the couplers between the cars. When the cars naturally clumped together as the train decelerated, the compressed couplers would put on the brakes. Like a lot of logical ideas, this was better in theory than in practice. He next thought of using steam pressure to activate the brakes. That had problems with loss of pressure over the long steam lines as the steam cooled.

Westinghouse was nothing if not tenacious and wouldn't give up on a solution. By chance, he saw an article in a magazine about the use of compressed air to run the drills that were being used to bore a tunnel through Mount Cenis in Switzerland. He immediately saw the advantages of compressed air over steam and set about putting together an air brake system.

Working out of a shop in Pittsburgh, he built a demonstration model in 1868. But no railroad owner was willing to test the fool thing. Then W.W. Card of the Panhandle Railroad offered to let Westinghouse put the system on one of the shorter passenger trains that ran from Pittsburgh to Steubenville. As luck would have it, on the very first run, a horse and wagon got stuck on the tracks ahead of the train and the engineer had to make an emergency stop. The engineer grabbed the brake lever and brought the train to a halt four feet from the horses and wagon. Needless to say, this made a big impression on the railroaders and Westinghouse had obtained their interest.

Westinghouse was able to quickly capitalize his new company to the tune of half a million dollars and presided over the Westinghouse Air Brake Company at the age of 23. You might think that the new air brakes were an overnight success. But nothing is an overnight success, not even an invention as clearly needed as this. It took years but finally, all trains were equipped with his revolutionary air brakes. Congress even mandated railroad brake safety standards in the 1890's that could only be met with a system such as Westinghouse's.

Westinghouse was never one to live on his laurels. He quickly turned his attention to the next big problem in railroading: signaling and train control. Engineers needed a way to know if the track ahead was clear. Westinghouse formed the Union Switch and Signal Company to bring a modern control system to the railroads.

Westinghouse went on to making inventions and starting businesses in natural gas for lighting. But perhaps his greatest achievement was the formation of Westinghouse Electric Company to make AC power a practical reality. While Thomas Edison rightfully deserves the credit for demonstrating the utility of an electric power system, his DC system could only power a grid that was within a mile of the power station. Westinghouse saw the advantages of AC power for long distance transmission of power over smaller, more affordable wires. After a long dual between AC and DC systems, Westinghouse's AC approach finally carried the day at the turn of the 20th century.

Westinghouse was a man who was not defined by a single technology or industry. He was not just an inventor but also a business innovator. He truly was one of the greatest of the 19th century technologists.

(Image of George Westinghouse from Wikipedia)

Quote for the Day

I'm always amazed that there aren't more people who work on technology and science because I think that's the easiest way to change the world.

Larry Page, Google Co-Founder

It Takes Three to Tango

In my years as an R&D director at a global new products corporation, I had the opportunity to see many great ideas emerge from the labs. The old saw that "ideas are a dime a dozen" underrates good ideas, but a new idea certainly never guarantees that it will find it's way to the marketplace.

New ideas are very fragile. The more radical the idea, the more it lies outside whatever the company is currently doing, the more the "corporate immune system" rises up to quash the embryonic upstart. The reasons given are manifold "Its not our business." "We don't have anybody to work on it." "Its not in the budget." "We already tried that." New ideas have to run a long gauntlet to make it to commercial success.

Where I come from, there were three key roles that have to be filled to give any idea half a chance of getting over the obstacles. These roles are the Inventor, the Champion, and the Sponsor. Each is critical and each is different.

The Inventor is pretty easy to understand. It is the person with the idea. But sometimes it may not be the person who had that first Spark. Maybe that person put the idea down, but not before mentioning it to a few of his or her friends and colleagues. Someone else may have thought more of the Spark and built on it. This may actually have happened multiple times. Finally though, someone had enough passion to be willing to push the (perhaps greatly modified) idea through the development and commercialization process. This person, in my book, is the Inventor. And they are worth their weight in gold.

The Champion is someone a little higher up the food chain who usually has more insight, experience, and pull in the organization. This might be the Inventor's boss or the head of the R&D unit. But it has to be someone who has credibility with senior management. The Champion puts their neck on the line along with the Inventor to push the idea. The Champion can put some local resources into the project that the Inventor doesn't have. The Champion often is the one who builds a business case around what is largely a technical idea. In some ways, the Champion takes a bigger risk than the Inventor because pushing bad ideas can be a real career killer.

The Sponsor is someone in senior management who has far more resources at their disposal and has the ability to fend off the corporate immune system. Often the Sponsor has the ability to move the idea to someplace in the company where it can be nurtured and protected. The sponsor is high enough up to have not just R&D resources but also manufacturing and marketing resources to augment the effort. The Sponsor protects not just the idea but the Champion and the Inventor in case something out of their control goes awry.

Without the Inventor, there are only incremental product modifications. Nothing really new appears. Without the Champion, the Inventor is left unprotected and under nourished. The very thing that makes the Inventor great, a gift for new product ideas, is what keeps them away from the management chain (with all of its bureaucracy and politicking). Without the Sponsor, at least in larger companies, the incessant demand to resource today's products and business demands leaves nothing for the next generation.

In many of the examples I have written about, these roles can get muddied. Mostly, the vignettes I have presented pre-date the modern company. But even in most of these older examples most of the roles can be found if you look for them. Yesterday, I wrote about Drebbel and the submarine. His patron (translate to Sponsor) was King James I. But Drebbel also had a Champion. He worked directly for the Admiralty's armament group and there he found people who were willing to support his ideas. In fact, when one of those people died late in Drebbel's life, he lost his Champion and eventually his Sponsor as well.

The bottom line is that new ideas never make their mark on the world without a team of people playing different roles. It doesn't matter if we talk about a modern corporation or about an idea back in antiquity. No one does it alone. The myth of the "lone inventor" is just that, a myth. The more these three roles are recognized and consciously filled, the better the chances the idea has of making it into the world we live in every day. Or so it seems to me.

(Image: The Dancing Lesson, from Wikipedia)

You've Heard of the Nautilus, How About the Drebbel?

Cornelius Drebbel died on this date, November 7th, in 1633. Who was Cornelius Drebbel? Born in 1572, Drebbel was a prolific Dutch inventor who spent many years in the the court of King James I of England. Drebbel earned the patronage of King James for his invention of a "Perpetual Mobile" which ran without ever needing winding. Drebbel himself explained that the mobile derived its power from a mechanism that depended on differences in atmospheric pressure. Nonetheless, the curious device attracted a lot of attention and even brought him later patronage from the court of Rudolph in Prague.

Drebbel (unlike Ritty who I wrote about a couple of days ago) seems to have been a prolific inventor. He is credited not only with his perpetual mobile but the compound microscope, the thermostat, new dyes, a new thermometer, and the first successful example of a submarine.

Drebbel was not the first to describe a submerged vehicle but he seems to be the first to have actually built one that worked. The largest of his three prototypes actually made a submerged trip down the Thames from Westminster to Greenwich and back. The vessel could carry 16 men. It was basically a modified row boat with the sides of the boat extended upward over the heads of the rowers to form a watertight compartment. The boat's buoyancy was controlled by pig bladders under the rower's seats. The bladders were filled with water to submerge. The water was expelled by hand pressure to re-surface.

While King James seemed to be impressed with the submarine, the admirals of the Royal Navy were not and Drebbel's idea went nowhere. Submarine ideas kept re-surfacing (bad pun, I know) over the next several hundred years with plans from multiple inventors including Robert Fulton of steamboat fame.

Like most inventors, Drebbel never prospered financially from his many inventions and he died a near pauper in 1633. But the idea of a submarine had been demonstrated and it would long outlive him. So you may have heard of the Nautilus (either Jules Verne's version, Fulton's design, or the more recent nuclear powered sub) but Drebbel was where it all began.

(Image from Wikipedia)

Quote for the Day

Scientists investigate that which already is; engineers create that which has never been.

-Albert Einstein

Some Observations on Innovation

I'm curious about invention and innovation. We enjoy the fruits of not only today's innovations but also the world that was created by past innovations. Here is a list of a few of my thoughts about innovation. I invite you to add to the list or correct me if I am off base.

1. People have always been innovative.
2. People were just as intelligent 5000 years ago as they are today.
3. Innovation arises from both need and the desire to create.
4. Innovations can be lost as well as gained.
5. Innovations must be received by the community to succeed.
6. Applied innovations are mostly based on serial improvements.
(Who really invented the ------?)
7. Innovations do not depend on scientific understanding (but can be greatly aided by it).
8. Innoations often come from the diffusion of ideas.
9. Successful innovation seems to couple an inventor with an entrepreneur.
10. Innovation is more likely when there are multiple sources of sponsorship.
11. Patents are not a good measure of innovation.
12. Innovations are constrained by the tools of their day.
13. Money is not the root cause of innovation.
14. Innovation runs in cycles which can be reinforced or dampened.

Understanding these factors can help would-be innovators and inventors achieve their goals: having their work make a difference.

George Selden and the Automobile

Yesterday, I wrote about the invention of the cash register. Today marks another important patent anniversary. On this date in 1895, George Selden was granted his patent on the automobile. This was to prove to be both highly lucrative and highly contested in the seminal automobile industry.

As a young man, Selden was more or less pushed into Yale Law School by his father, Judge Henry R. Selden. Young George did not do too well at the law, he was more interested in tinkering in his shop. But he did finish law school and actually practiced for awhile, even representing George Eastman's photography interests.

Selden was interested in the idea of an automobile, long before such a machine was practical. Many people were interested in this same concept. Working with some skilled mechanics, he developed a prototype and filed for a patent in May, 1879. He did not commercialize his automobile though. At that point in time, no one could build a practical automobile because there wasn't a light enough gasoline engine to power such a vehicle. Selden must not have been asleep during all of his law classes because he recognized that for the patent to have commercial value, it must issue just before automobiles started to be manufactured in quantity for commercial sale. Selden amended his patent claims four times, delaying its issuance for 16 years! When it finally did issue in 1895, the automobile industry was about to be born.

Selden licensed his patent rights to William C. Whitney who was proposing to build electric taxi cabs for the New York market. Whitney and Selden together formed the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM). They intended to extract an upfront payment and a 0.75% royalty on every automobile built in America. Most car manufacturers agreed to the terms rather than fight it in court. But a group headed by Henry Ford decided to fight ALAM. Ford and his group eventually won because the engine in Selden's patent was based on a type of gasoline engine using the Brayton Cycle and the engine actually used by commercial auto makers was based on the Otto Cycle. ALAM was defeated in appeals court in 1911 but not before ALAM had collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties. The Selden patent was never declared to be invalid but it expired in 1912 shortly after the appeals court ruled in favor of Ford.

Did the Selden Patent (and the formation of ALAM) help the fledgling automobile industry? No, in fact it inhibited the industry. It was a classic example of extracting value from what was arguably not an invention at all. Many people had envisioned the coupling of engines with wagons to make a self-powered vehicle. It took a very strong man, Henry Ford, to stand up to ALAM and defeat what was essentially an attempt to control the early automobile industry.

Image from Wikipedia

Where Do Inventions Come From?

On November 4, 1879, James Ritty of Dayton, Ohio received a patent for the "Ritty Incorruptible Cashier", the first cash register. Ritty ran a saloon in Dayton in which he billed himself as a "Dealer in Pure Whiskies, Fine Wines, and Cigars". Ritty's problem was that the hired help kept purloining the cash from the customers. Ritty needed a way to insure the money made it to the till. Except there wasn't any till, perhaps just a cash box. Recording transactions left a lot to be desired.

Ritty took a steamship to Europe in 1878. While aboard ship, he was shown a device that through the use of rotating disks could give a readout of the revolutionary speed of the propeller shaft. [This was most likely a modification of the planimeter which had been adapted to this purpose in about the same period]. When Ritty got home, he immediately set to work with his brother, John, who was a skilled craftsman to use the rotating disk idea to keep count of the money in each customer transaction. It took three prototypes to get it right but they finally did develop a successful machine. The first cash register had no cash drawer, just a clock-like dial [see picture above from the Smithsonian Instiution] and a bell to signal transactions. Ritty and his brother started a company to manufacture his invention but the going was slow and Ritty soon needed to spend his time on his saloon business. He sold the company to Jacob Eckert who formed the National Manufacturing Company. Eckert in turn sold the company in 1884 to John H. Patterson who changed the name to the National Cash Register Company. NCR, of course, exists to this day as a major player in the cash register and computer industry.

So my question: "Where do inventions come from?" Ritty seems to have invented nothing else in his life. Why would this seemingly common problem that every small businessman had to deal with stick with him in such a way that he would see a connection with the speed indicator of a ship's propeller shaft? What spark went off in his head that said he could convert the idea to a cash counter? Ritty didn't even have the technical skills to make his idea real. That was left to his brother.

Inventions are strange. The spark that creates an idea can be almost a mystical event, one that lies in the same realm as that of the great writer or composer. No one seems to be able to define where this spark of creativity comes from. But where would we be without it? Because of a propeller shaft speed indicator, the cash register...and later NCR...was born.

S.S. United States

I was in Philadelphia over the weekend visiting my son. We made a trip to Ikea to pick up a bookshelf for his apartment. Directly across from the Ikea store in South Philly is the berth of the S.S. United States. This once-proud ship now looks like a forlorn relic of some bygone era. Her fading paint and rust-encrusted hull belie the fact that just 50 years ago, she was the fastest ship afloat, clocking speeds that were documented as exceeding 50 mph!

The S.S. United States was built as both an ocean liner and a troop transport. The U.S. government helped to underwrite a huge part of the cost to build the ship. The reason was to have a readily available troop carrier that was so fast it could outrun anything else on the seas. The ship still holds the Transatlantic surface crossing speed record of 3 days, 10 hours, and 42 minutes.

But the United States was a classic example of the perfecting of one technology while another (the jumbo jet) was making it that perfection obsolete. The United States sailed for only 17 years and made its final trip in 1969. Many ideas were put forth on how to bring her back to her old glory but none have succeeded. At one point, the U.S. Government nixed the sale of the ship to foreign cruise lines because it would mean the divulging of her capability that was considered a military secret.

Since 1996, the S.S. United States has sat in the old Navy Yard in Philadelphia under the care of the S.S. United States Foundation, a non-profit organization intent on finding a way to preserve the ship. In 2003, she was sold to Norwegian Cruise Lines which still has not announced what they intend to do with the ship.

It seemed ironic to me that I was visiting one Scandinavian company's property (Ikea) while I was looking at the legacy of our shipping glory now owned by another Scandinavian company (NCL). Maybe it would be best that the S.S. United States follow the fate of so many other famous ships and be sent to the scrap yard. The memories of her are easier to take than the current reality.

Engineering Our World

Something puzzles me. I like to read about science and technology. I scan newspaper headlines and websites to see what's happening. Finding science news isn't hard. One of the best sites I've found is SciTechDaily, a compendium of news and opinion on the topic. But technology has come to mean computer/software/web technology. HiTech. As though that is the only form of technology. Mostly, HiTech is in the news because this where investors hope to make a buck. Nothing wrong with that. It's more about the money than the technology.

What seems to me to be missing from almost all of the news and websites I scan is information about engineering. Engineering is what converts all the science into useful products, structures, applications, materials, and services. Yet, there seems to be little or nothing written about engineering. Maybe that's consistent with the low profile of engineering as a profession. Engineers tend to be quiet people who are more interested in getting the project done than in drawing attention to themselves.

My contention is that with all of the news about science breakthroughs and the investment-driven HiTech news, engineering has become almost transparent to our society. Even the National Academy of Engineering has a low profile to most people. That is until something like a bridge collapses or a product failure forces a massive recall. Both have happened in my town in the last couple of months. On August 1st, the I-35 Bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River. Just a couple of days ago, Medtronic announced a recall on implantable defibrillators due to potential leadwire failures. This is NOT the kind of attention that engineering needs. But unfortunately, this is pretty much the only time that engineering makes the news. People don't stop to be thankful that their cars running reliably 99.999 percent of the time. People assume that the electric grid will always be on (and it virtually always is, at least in this country). People have no trouble getting into an elevator and assuming it will get them to their floor without mishap.

Engineering is everywhere around us. It permeates every corner of our lives. We are all consumers of engineering. Too bad it doesn't get more positive press on a regular basis. If you know an engineer, thank him or her sometime for the good work.

(Image of Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco from Wikipedia)