Think you might want to be an inventor?
Good! I’m glad to hear it, and I’m here to talk about it. But I’m also guessing that if you’re reading this, you already are an inventor, and I think I can prove that to you.
Hi, I’m Daniel Geery, inventor of the Aquaglider. I’ll tell you how the Aquaglider came to be, and also why I’ll bet you are already an inventor, at least in some ways. Near the end I’ll talk about making a living at being an inventor, and some behaviors and ways of thinking that lead to inventing, which you can start immediately.
The idea for the Aquaglider came to me rather indirectly, from a book I read in 1995. The book was written by John McPhee, one of my favorite authors, and the name of this book was The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed. I won’t give a long book report here, but just say that the book was about a group of people trying to make airships (also called Zeppelins, dirigibles, or blimps), and trying to design in such a way that they would glide up!
Of course everyone knows that things glide down. We see it all the time. Birds, leaves, hangliders, parachutes, large or model glider planes, feathers, dust, and so on. But who ever pictures something gliding up? It is not a sight we normally see, and it never crosses most people’s mind.
But it did cross the mind of a 17 year-old young man, sometime near the middle of the 1800s. That young man was Solomon Andrews, who later invented many things, including cigarette filters, vaporizers, and the combination lock. Somehow, perhaps because of all the news about the civil war and the fact that few people seriously considered flying, this amazing individual got lost from the history books.
Fortunately, John McPhee’s Deltoid Pumpkin Seed brings Solomon Andrews back to life, along with some other fascinating characters, and discusses many of Andrews’ achievements. If you’d like to know more about the history of this Solomon Andrews, and his ideas about gliding up, I recommend that you read The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed. It was one of those rare books which kept me up late into the night, and that I couldn’t put down till I was done. You’ll see that the concept of gliding up has a long and fascinating history indeed, especially as Mr. McPhee tells it.
As described in McPhee’s book, a company was formed in the late 1960s, called the Aereon Corporation, in an attempt to make a helium-filled airship, based essentially on Andrews’ ideas and results, that would glide up. Then, in theory, by changing density (for example, releasing helium and becoming heavier than air), the airship could glide back down. There would be no need for traditional motor or propellers, just a means to change density, to keep the airship moving forward, gliding alternately up and down.
The question for me, the morning after I read this fascinating book, was, “Can things really glide up?” And I wondered, “Why not? If something’s lighter than air, and shaped the right way, it would seem like it could.” And I didn’t see any reasons for an opposite conclusion.
While I was thinking about this, it dawned on me that if things could glide up in air, they should be able to glide up in water, if they are lighter than water—which is to say, if they float. Many things float, but would it be possible to find or make a shape, such that a floating object would float up sideways?
My next thought was, “Why not get something that floats, but something that is rather thin and flat, and release it flat underwater and see what happens?” I’d ask you to ponder that for a minute, and see what you come up with. Is there anything in your house or apartment that might fit this description?
Well, it was actually quite a few minutes, probably ten or twenty, before I thought of a flat, wooden yardstick. So I stole one of those from my son’s room (I returned it later, I think), and took it out to a little pond we had on our property, in southeast Idaho. I recommend you try this in your own bathtub, to see the result for yourself.
I held the yardstick about two feet underwater, at a slight angle lengthwise, and released it. Behold! To my surprise, it did glide up, sideways, reminding me of the Starship Enterprise while the numbers scrolled by. It about two feet or so, then leveled out, and glided back up the other way, going back and forth till it reached the surface. And so in a matter of minutes I proved to myself the basic principle was correct: Yes, things can glide up!
And the same thing should happen in air, I reasoned, since I knew that air behaves in many ways like water (I later learned that a basic aerodynamic principle is that if something happens in water, it is likely to happen in air, though at a different speed).
So the trick for me became how to take that simple principle—that things can glide up sideways—and see just how far I could take it. Could things really be made that would glide almost completely sideways? And how fast could they be made to go? What kind of lifting power would it take?
It was a most absorbing question to me, for many reasons. If things could glide sideways, this might mean a new means of transportation, and thus a great savings of energy, which as everyone knows, is getting to be in shorter and shorter supply (I was living in an earth-sheltered solar-powered home at the time I read The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed, and I had built a solar-heated greenhouse, and several windmills, so you might guess that I was most interested in energy-related issues).
Also, I have to admit, many things were not going well in my life at the time, so this turned into a project that was something of a mental escape, which helped keep my mind out of depression. (One of the bigger lessons I learned was that I am better off doing something constructive, rather than filling my head with destructive thoughts—which I had been doing after I was fired from a job that I really liked.)
Over the next several years, I ended up making over 5,000 models, from wood and later from insulating foam, which was easier to work with, and various kinds of materials. I lost track of how many shapes I played with for wings and fins. I made double and triple-bodied affairs, flying saucers, what I called flying toilet seats (that’s what they looked like!), triangles of every shape, rectangles, squares, untold combinations of these things, and all these various bodies with traditional and crazy-shaped fins and wings, attached in different places. And this does not include the many hundreds of air models I’ve made since.
It was both interesting and frustrating that almost every design made of floating material behaved very similarly to that original yardstick. It would go back and forth and work its way rather quickly to the surface. Some objects would glide more than others, but then they’d head back the other way, then back and forth, back and forth, till they broke the surface!
It became maddening. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to give up, or did give up, only to wake up the next morning and find that some new idea had popped into my head that I just had to try.
I wound up going to a pool in a neighboring town, the Blackfoot Swimming Pool, and each time took along a dufflebag of new models. I’d jump into the shallow end, and play with these new models for an hour or so, comparing one to another, asking myself why one did this, and the other that, changing fins and later wings; then going home and shaving off some foam here or foam there, cutting this wing a slightly different shape, then thinning out another wing, and so on and on. I’m sure a lot people thought I was nuts, but at least no one made fun of me to my face, and many people at least acted interested (some I believe really were interested, particularly one high school guy who said he had tried some similar things with wood himself—and got similar results, but still thought about it a lot).
I often thought of a book I had read not long before that time (hey! books really do stimulate your mind and get you wondering about all kinds of things!) on Thomas Edison. That particular book described the principles that Good Old Tom based his experiments on. Of course all experiments worth doing are based on logic, which simply means clear thinking, and it would even be fair to say that all of science is an extension of logic, the same basic logic that humans use even before they get out of the crib.
It turns out that Mr. Edison actually didn’t have too many principles for his inventions, according to that book. Mainly, he claimed that invention was “99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.” Meaning, of course, that inventing is a lot of hard work, testing, trial and error, thinking about all of it, and doing that over and over and over and over, until you get satisfactory results. The 1% inspiration would be the good ideas that come to you when you do think and work hard enough on a problem. It is my experience (and it sounded like Tom would agree) that the good ideas come to us because the universe somehow really does work with us, when we respect and work with it.
Tom’s other essential principle can be summarized in two words: “Try everything.” Which means just that—try everything, even things you are pretty certain, or even very certain, won’t work. But then when you do “try everything,” always study those trials and ask why things went the way they did, and consider how you might change them a little, or a lot, or something in between, and then try those things, once more studying results carefully and asking more questions about why whatever it is works the way it does, or doesn’t.
And you just go on and on and never stop! If you run out of ideas, go on to something else, and sooner or later new ideas will pop into your head on the original project, and you’ll soon be trying those ideas and adjusting and readjusting the “new variables,” whatever those may be. The more you do it, the more you’ll see that ideas really do come to you, and the more you’ll have faith in the whole process, and the less time you’ll waste doubting and wondering if better ideas will come along.
Ok, they are often not “better” ideas that come along—just different, but ones that you have to roll up your sleeves and work with to learn what “really happens,” and hopefully why. That’s the “perspiration” part, and the part that most people seem to avoid. As the old joke goes, “Hard work doesn’t scare me—I can lay down right beside it and watch someone do it all day long!” Let me assure you that I’ve avoided an awful lot of hard work myself!
On the other hand, I’ve been engaged in the creative or inventive process all my life, but didn’t always see it that way. But in the last ten years, and particularly with the Aquaglider and airships, I can tell you that, as sure as I’m sitting here, this is how its been—more ideas come along when I continue working with existing ideas.
But please don’t take my word for it—this is something you can check out for yourself, and something that can effect your entire life for better or for worse. Pick some area that you already are involved in, be it school work, mechanics, cooking, sports, or even playing video games. Study and try to improve what you’re doing and how you do it, and keep it up for, let us say one month, and see what happens. I’d be very surprised if you weren’t very pleasantly surprised at the results!
Human beings are inventors by nature. It’s one huge difference between us and other animals, and possibly the hugest difference. It looks to be what made our species both unique and successful, at least so far, in the long history of life on earth. If you think about this even a little, you’ll see that we humans “invent” constantly. If your mom or dad is cooking dinner, she or he is almost certainly trying something new or slightly new on a regular basis. Hey! I just started cooking about three months ago, and I can tell you for sure that it is a continually creative and inventive process, absolutely identical to what I do as an inventor. While cooking, a person is forced to create new things, either because you run out of something, you mess something up and yet still have to eat, you accidentally add or forget something, and so on. Any serious cook is a major inventor. Absolutely!
So is a writer. I’m sure you’ve had to write things in school. Maybe you love it, or maybe you hate it, like I did. My essay about my summer vacation in sixth grade—and it was a very good vacation!–was 75 words long, the minimum allowable. I did get past that eventually, and now I like to write, but I’m just pointing out that writing is an inventing process. So if you ever wrote anything, even a letter to Santa or Grandma, you are an inventor to some degree. If you are a best selling author, or if you write like one, you are positively an inventor of the highest order!
If you’re fixing a machine of some sort, you are inventing as you figure out what’s wrong and how to make it right. If you’re planning a slumber party, you’re inventing—you’re thinking about a particular thing that hasn’t happened before, at least not exactly the same way, and you’re asking yourself questions about how to improve it and make it better.
If you’re drawing a picture, making something from clay, figuring a new way to win a video game, designing a kite or a dress or making a birdhouse, you’re using your mind as an inventor would. You’re picturing would might be in the future, playing in your mind with ways to improve something, making combinations that haven’t been made before–at least not quite in the way you’re doing it now, usually sleeping on it and coming back to it again and again. You’re persisting, just as Thomas Edison said inventors do. You’re trying new things, maybe not “everything,” but a lot of things, at least in your mind and maybe in reality as well.
If you’re playing sports and coming up with new strategies or techniques, you’re inventing. When I ski, for example, I look for new ways to focus my attention and new things to concentrate on, which make me a better skier. Same with rollerblading. Learning to go backwards was a big deal for me, and involved a lot of trial and error and thinking about what was happening. Sometimes when I watch skateboarders, I want to tell them they need to try something a little different, if they want that board to stay under their feet—doing the same thing over and over isn’t going to change the results. The better boarders are somehow able to think about what’s going on and invent new movements to get different and more desirable results. Tony Hawk didn’t get the way he is by doing the same thing over and over! He studied, tested, re-tested, over and over and over and over. I don’t know him personally, but I can tell you this true, because there simply is no other way to improve.
When I was in elementary school, like many or most kids, I was an active inventor but didn’t know it! I made slingshots, peashooters, birdhouses, some simple electrical things such as bulb and buzzer circuits (with my Dad’s help), bows and arrows, forts to hide in out of trees and branches, or blankets in our room. I made things from clay, I tried my hand at animated cartoons, and of course I played games like cowboys and Indians, where you had to be inventive just to keep up with everyone else. Those things were always more fascinating to me than school. In fact, my “inventive ideas” in school involved how to get out of work or how to get things over with! Given that I’ve now been an elementary school teacher for twenty years, I have little doubt that sounds familiar to you! I do try hard not to bore kids as much as I was bored, but it isn’t as easy as it sounds—and it is true that many kids could make school work more interesting for themselves, if they decided they actually wanted to.
Well, ok, sorry, this isn’t supposed to be a lecture. Once you’ve picked something you want to improve, and do the things I’ve suggested above—pay attention to what’s going on, actively think about ways to improve it, try new ways, study the results, and keep on doing so for a month or so—you’ll see for yourself that the universe does respond to your efforts. If you like what you see, and you think you might develop better ways of doing things that would be helpful to others, you’re well on your way to being an inventor.
I won’t get into cooking, writing, painting, being a better mechanic, and so on here, except to say that you can apply this process in those and other fields, to whatever extent you want, including making it a way of life.
But let’s say you want to focus on making something that you could make and sell, such as I’m doing with the Aquaglider. Start by thinking about something that needs improvement, or if you pick something that you have an idea on that hasn’t been done before, use that. I’ll give you a couple of items to think about, which I’ve considered but haven’t had the time to pursue.
How about a doormat or some system that you can put in front of doors to get shoes totally clean? Is there anyone in the world who would not want that? We all want a clean house, and so much of the dirt gets tracked in from the outside (ok, some other cultures have already figured it out—just take off your shoes and leave them outside! That’s great, but many of us find that impractical for one reason or another—I go in and out too many times in a day, and I’d have trouble asking others to cooperate). Take off your shoe and take a look at it. How hard can it be to get the bottom of it clean each time you go in and out? I’ve thought of several ideas, from rotating brushes, to water spray, to some kind of microwave device, to clip-on shoe bottoms, but nothing seems practical, the more I think about it. But most of the time I do seriously think about, some new idea does enter my head, that ought to be tested, or modified and tested.
That’s another point to consider. Can you test your basic idea in some simple way, such as I did with the yardstick, to show that things can glide up? I often find that ideas that might be very expensive to test in final form, can actually be tested in a much simpler manner—and often developed one small and inexpensive step at a time. In regards an airship that would glide up, millions of dollars were spent, with a team of engineers and a sizeable company being formed, when in fact it cost almost nothing to work with water models that actually resulted in something that worked.
Another idea: How about a trap for food particles in the sink which actually works? I say “which actually works” because all the traps I’ve even seen, when you lift them to let the water out, also let many food particles slip by and go right down the drain. Do the dishes in the sink tonight and check it out if you don’t believe me (I still do dishes by hand because I can do them quicker, can wash a smaller amount, and use less water than a dishwasher does). The dish drain clearly needs a stopper that lets the water out without letting the food particles out.
How about a pencil sharpener that is quiet and actually works? You know from your own classroom what an ordeal it is for everyone to have a sharp pencil. Maybe you’re one of the few who has mastered the mechanical pencil, but most kids still use the Number 2, Made in China, yellow stick with an eraser on the end. The points break or get dull all day long, and the sharpener is noisy enough to wake the dead. I can’t tell you how many I’ve bought for the classroom, and they all wear out quickly, don’t work well from the start, sharpen the pencil crooked, and it seems like a hundred other things go wrong. Not to mention kids jumping up and down like frogs all day long and disturbing everyone around them.
How about a small, hand-held sharpener, one that collects the shavings in a way that won’t accidentally dump them out, and that actually sharpens pencils well and doesn’t wear out? How hard can this be? Maybe there’s one out there now that works like this, but I’ve been looking for years and haven’t found it yet.
Some years ago I heard of a kid who put glow-in-the-dark stickers on a toilet seat (or perhaps it was the toilet rim), so the user could find their way in the dark! What a great idea that was, though it might be difficult to get a patent and protect the patent, since it would be rather easy to copy.
Look around all day long and think about the things you do and use. Is it possible to find a better way to do something? One of the most amazing things about the universe, at least to me, is that there are always new and different and often better ways to do things. And those ways and means come to those who are tuned to looking for them. Many new ideas are so simple, we look at them and say, “That’s so simple, I could have thought of it myself!” Which is generally true, but it’s also true that it was someone else who did think of it.
Getting a patent on a new and useful item—and that’s what you need to get a patent, a “new and useful” item—may be a good idea if you can afford it. But they cost about $6,000 if you pay an attorney, and the truth is you may not be able to protect the patent in court if a large company with lots of money steals your idea and makes the same or similar product. I had that decision to make with the Aquaglider, and decided to get the patent because it was such a novel idea and I figure I could defend it against anyone who tried to steal it. But my patent is only good in the United States, and I couldn’t afford to get the patent around the world.
Some people say that the best thing to do is to forget the patent, and “go for it” in terms of getting the item manufactured and out in the market, where people can buy it. I’m not an expert in this area and don’t pretend to be, but I should point out that it is fairly easy these days to get many things made, which ten or twenty years ago would have been impossible to do on your own. There are so many new materials, and so many companies that can make all sorts of things out of all sorts of plastics, that many doors are now open that which people don’t even know about. You can look in the Yellow Pages and find many places that make things from plastic, with many different processes, and they can give you a good idea about how feasible your idea is (you can find a standard non-disclosure agreement on the internet if you’re worried about a company stealing your idea. Any company I’ve come across would be glad to sign such an agreement, and many of them do it all the time).
The biggest obstacle for the inventor, as near as I can tell, based on my experiences and what others tell me, is marketing an invention. Once you have the item made, how do you get people to buy it? Again, I’m no expert, but this is clearly an area where you have stay open and creative and continue with the inventing process. I’m taking the Aquaglider to a toy fair soon, where there supposedly will be toy buyers from all over the world, looking for new toys. This is costing many thousands of dollars, between renting space there, getting plane tickets, hotel and meal expenses, advertising brochures, large screen tv, and the list goes on. I don’t have to do this, and might do just as well going to pool stores around the country. Well, I plan to do that too. I plan to use the internet (if you’re reading this, I obviously am), and, hopefully, get some news articles about the Aquaglider.
Using the internet alone, you can find whole books on the subject. It is a new and astounding tool (and I would vote for it as the most single important invention since the plow!) that has yet to be fully considered, and which I imagine will be around and improving as long as the human race is around (and I hope improving).
One thing that amazes me, as an inventor, a teacher, and a parent, is that so many things which ought to be taught in school aren’t. Inventing is near the top of the list. It is a skill that can be learned and practiced and improved on, just like any other skill. Sure, some people will be better at it than others, but it is those who explore and practice their given abilities who will meet with the most success. Those who stay focused and keep trying new things and keep an open mind are the ones who are likely to do well at inventing.
When I think of all the things I’ve contemplated over the years, I’m completely amazed, even though I can hardly remember them all. Then I consider that I did these things with absolutely no idea that I would “be an inventor,” and that I wasn’t truly focused on getting something manufactured that I could sell to others, it is amazing—at least to me!—that I ended up getting the Aquaglider “out the door” and into the marketplace almost by accident. Well sure, there was a great deal of persistence, but the whole chain of events was somewhat “accidental,” with one thing leading to another. And I didn’t start on the project until I was almost 50 years old!
Now consider: If you are in elementary, junior or senior high school, you can easily pursue “a normal career,” going on to college or getting some sort of training, while at the same time you work on inventions. If you keep the goal in mind of producing something that others might want or need, and be willing to pay for because it helps them in some way, it is more than likely that you will have several good or excellent ideas over the course of your lifetime. And they need not even be that great for you to make a lot of money with them—just something that is better than what people have now. And remember: If one ideas doesn’t work out, there are an infinite number of other ideas out there waiting for someone like yourself to discover!
More examples: I’ve been truly happy with the shape of containers for liquids that has come about over the past ten years or so. These simple changes make life in the kitchen more pleasant for all of us, and they are often asthetically pleasing as well. Same with the shape of toothbrushes, and for the first time in my life I have been able to floss my teeth because of a bow-like gizmo that someone somewhere invented! This morning I just read of the death of a scientist who invented a drug I am taking for stronger bones. I never knew the guy, and yet he has very likely added many years to my life.
Imagine! Everything around you is an invention, made by someone somewhere sometime (and countless other people invented the processes to make those things), to the extent that we would literally be living in caves if it were not for the inventors of the world! Are all these people somehow special and different, or are they just ordinary folks who have somehow gotten focused and pursued the ideas that came into their heads?
I think we’ve answered that question well enough. And now I encourage you, dear reader, I strongly encourage you, to think about being an inventor yourself. Develop your talents and abilities by focusing on them and on the many things you can improve, both in your own personal life, and on things you might offer to others in the form of new and useful inventions. It is ever so much more pleasant that getting stuck in the rut of belief that you can’t do this or that, or that you have to spend your time “getting even,” or thinking you have to prove yourself, or spending your days watching ridiculous tv shows or movies (not that I’m against movies—I watch a lot of them myself and find it an excellent way to relax my brain, but I do try to watch a lot of educational videos, such as those put out by PBS or BBC or companies that specialize in teaching us about the world around us and about the history of that world).
Ok. Got more questions? Email me and I’ll try to answer them. Meanwhile, enjoy the Aquaglider and (assuming you like that) check out my other “big project,” which you can find at www.hyperblimp.com.
Best wishes,
Daniel Geery
