 |
Image of
open human head with various objects belongs to IPOwatchdog.com
|
By Kenneth Nwachinemelu David-Okafor
Welcome to the fifth installment of this post.
I hope
you are having as much fun reading, reflecting and, hopefully, grasping as much
insight from this super-lengthy post as much as I am.
In the fourth post, I elaborated on three
prospective sources which even though a prospective inventor in Nigeria might not readily
have access to the following three ideas’ sources but they are no less valid as
veritable source of "buildable" ideas.
The sources I considered in that post include: a)
Reverse Engineering, b) University-Industry Collaborations, and c) National Science
Festival/International Technological Exhibitions/Demonstrations.
There is so much more to write about National Science
Festival/International Technological Exhibitions/Demonstrations however we
would restrict ourselves to just whetting appetite rather than spooning
feeding. I will prefer you to dig along with me, for more information and even
more learning.
In this post I would consider a final source of "buildable"
ideas as we conclude our thoughts on the big question is: HOW DO YOU SOURCE
GOOD IDEAS? In this installment I rather which to elaborate on a less
publicized source of ideas¾SPIRITUAL SOURCE. This should
resonate in a country which portrays high levels of religiosity.
I observed that many inventors worldwide who are
engaged in transcendental meditation and other forms of esoteric modes of
spirituality are never shy of attributing their achievements to these beliefs
but the Judeo-Christian faith was rarely referenced.
I particularly noted inventors and innovators engaged
in transcendental meditation and other such modes of spirituality were never
shy when attributing their successes to their spiritual observances. The case
seemed obverse with the followers of the Judeo-Christian God who appeared less
forthcoming in attribution of their accomplishment to their faith. As a matter
of fact in some certain atheist/humanistic European countries, Asiatic
countries predominantly inclined toward eastern religions/other esoteric spiritual
worship and other nations with proclivities to other faiths, they do not even
acknowledge the God of heaven and earth at all.
I realized the challenge were two-folds¾the
first was that there was under-representation of the accomplishments of
inventors of the Judeo-Christian faith in literature and the other was the
issue of political correctness which made some people shy to speak up boldly
about what they really professed.
In his seminal work published in 1973 "Art and the Bible" the respected
Francis A. Schaefar wrote:
“The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond
the stars.” (pg. 61)
This thought echoes the words of Robert Grudin who in
his 1990 treatise "The Grace of Great Things: Creativity and Innovation" wrote:
“Creativity is worship insofar as it is, at its
essence, a response…In the call to be creative, a call that goes out to all
God’s children, we sense the call to listen to him and, in childlike naiveté,
to imitate our father by creating works that will magnify his praise.”
Then Professor Gary Oster in his "Christian Innovation: Descent in to
the Abyss of Light" wrote:
“Innovation may be redemptive. Scripture and the
personal experience of Christians worldwide show that God uses innovation for
humans to know more of Him, to communicate with Him, and to ultimately
accomplish His earthly will for mankind. What makes innovation Christian
innovation? . . . innovation is Christian when it is ultimately aligned with
God’s purpose and methods. . . .We [Christians] are not satisfied to observe
God’s innovative perfection, but seek to lovingly mimic Him...”
This makes complete sense to me and validates my
personal experiences and testimonies. But I have thought it much more illustrative
in an unbiased manner to tell the story of another man on this particular
occasion. AT THIS POINT I WOULD AGAIN STEP BEYOND NIGERIA; REMEMBER YOU MAY DRAW
RESOURCES FROM THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. The story of this African-American
inventor should inspire a fresh consideration of the prospects of inventive
ideas from the God of the Judeo-Christian faith.
 |
| George Washington Carver c1910 Image source: Wikipedia |
Let me share the incredible story of George
Washington Carver, the man whom some called "The Wizard of Tuskegee" and Time magazine in
1941 dubbed Carver a "Black Leonardo".
How did George Washington Carver receive his own
prolific ideas?
His faith in God, by his own admission, was what
inspired the Master inventor, George Washington Carver.
Carver was reported to have confessed that he
once asked God to show him the secrets of the universe. However, according to
Carver, God started him out with something smaller ¾the
peanut.
Carver took those secrets and produced hundreds
of inventions that are still in use today.
His research at the Tuskegee institute resulted in the creation of more
than 300 products from peanuts¾products like cooking oil, paint and, yes, peanut
butter. In addition, he created more than 100 products from sweet potatoes.
Carver was also responsible for inventing synthetic materials, such as marble
and plywood. He even invented the dye which is still used in Crayola Crayons.
Also a talented artist, Carver created some of his own art paints using local
clays. In deed he
was recognized for his many achievements and talents.
Carver
made a significant mark and admitted to friend, colleagues and brethren, faith
in Jesus Christ inspired him. He believed he could have faith both in God and
science and integrated them into his life. He testified on many occasions that
his faith in Jesus was the only mechanism by which he could effectively pursue
and perform the art of science.
Here
is the story pieced together from multiple sources the Carver Museum. The Black
Christian News.com website wrote (excerpting biographical information from the
book, “100 Most Influential Black Christians in History”) a summary about George
Washington Carver which read thus:
George Washington Carver said, “Our creator is the
same and never changes despite the names given Him by people here and in all
parts of the world. Even if we gave Him no name at all, He would still be
there, within us, waiting to give us good on this earth.”
George Washington Carver, a U.S. agricultural
chemist and agronomist, was born a slave in Diamond Grove, Missouri, around
1864. While he was a baby, he and his mother were kidnapped by raiders. His
owner, Moses Carver, paid for their return, but only George was returned.
A frail child, George was late to talk but showed
so great an interest in plants at an early age that neighbors brought him their
problems with their plants. The Carvers taught him to read, write, and do math.
When they could teach him no more, he decided that he would need to leave to
find a school that would teach African-American students. He was about ten or
twelve years old.
While working menial jobs, he worked on his
education. He graduated from high school in his late twenties and earned
Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Iowa State Agricultural College in 1896.
Although he loved botany, Carver was a well-rounded student who excelled in
music and art. Two of his paintings appeared in the 1893 Chicago’s World Fair.
He participated in YMCA, debate, and the campus’ military regiment.
After graduation, Booker T. Washington invited
George Washington Carver to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to be the director of
agricultural research. Arriving at Tuskegee, he found that the agricultural
department consisted of a barn, a cow, and some chickens. With the help of
students, Carver scrounged and made tools and equipment. He taught farm
management and programs on nutrition and health, even visiting farms and
communities to help the people.
A devout Christian, Carver considered his
laboratory “God’s little workshop.” He discovered that peanuts and soybeans
would restore soil fertility, but farmers complained that they had no market
for these products. To provide markets, Carver developed 300 products from
peanuts and 118 from sweet potatoes. By 1940, peanuts had become the South’s
second largest crop.
In 1916, he was honored by being appointed to the
Royal Society of Arts in London. In 1923, he received the NAACP’s prestigious
Spingarn Medal. In 1938, a feature film, Life of George Washington Carver, was
made. Before his death in 1943, he received the Roosevelt Medal for Outstanding
Contribution to Southern Agriculture. The Hall of Fame for Great Americans
inducted him in 1977. The National Inventors Hall of Fame inducted him in 1990.
Carver’s dedication to God and his people led him
to patent only three of his 500 agricultural inventions because he wanted his
products to benefit all. He left his life savings to Tuskegee Institute.
 |
During
World War II, George Washington Carver worked
alongside American industrialist Henry Ford to devise a way to make a rubber
substitute from goldenrod, a plant weed Image source: atlantablackstar.com
|
However I wanted to also include the fuller story
which highlighted certain details I think a prospective inventor in Nigeria
would consider insightful. Here is what I learned of George Washington Carver:
George Washington Carver (by January 1864 – 5th
January 1943), an American scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor, became
a Christian when he was ten years old. As a young boy, he was not expected to
live past his twenty-first birthday due to poor and failing health.
Nevertheless, he lived well past the age of twenty-one, and his belief deepened
as a result.
Carver was often heard to say “The Lord has guided
me,” and “Without my Saviour, I am nothing.”
George Washington Carver was born to slave parents
near Diamond Grove, Newton County, near Crystal Place, now known as Diamond,
Missouri, possibly in 1864 or 1865, though the exact date is not known. His
master, Moses Carver, was a German American immigrant who had purchased
Carver’s parents, Mary and Giles, from William P. McGinnis on October 9, 1855,
for US$700. Carver had 10 sisters and a brother, all of whom died prematurely.
When George was only a week old, George, a sister, and his mother were
kidnapped by night raiders from Arkansas. George’s brother, James, was rushed
to safety from the kidnappers. The kidnappers sold the slaves in Kentucky.
Moses Carver hired John Bentley to find them, but
he located only the infant George. Moses negotiated with the raiders to gain
the boy’s return and rewarded Bentley. After slavery was abolished, Moses
Carver and his wife Susan raised George and his older brother James as their
own children. They encouraged George to continue his intellectual pursuits, and
‘Aunt Susan’ taught him the basics of reading and writing.
When the Civil War ended a year later and times
were hard for blacks¾something from which
Carver and his family were not exempt. He grew up poor and was denied an
education, because of his race. But that didn't stop him from learning. Carver
fell in love with the wonders of nature. It was a passion that earned him a
nickname that lasted a lifetime. Carver eventually went to high school and
later attended college at 30. He earned a degree in agricultural science from
Iowa State University.
“He was considered the ‘plant doctor’ as a
youngster,” explained Tyrone Brandyburg of the Carver Museum. “He pretty much
had a green thumb¾everything he touched
grew.”
In 1896, he completed his master’s degree and was
invited by Booker Taliaferro Washington to join the faculty of the Tuskegee
Institute, a trade school for blacks in Alabama. This institute is now known as
the Tuskegee University, a private, historically black university located in
Tuskegee, Alabama, United States, founded by African-American educator Booker
T. Washington.
His research at the institute resulted in the
creation of more than 300 products from peanuts— products like cooking oil,
paint and, yes, peanut butter. In addition, he created more than 100 products
from sweet potatoes. Carver is also responsible for inventing synthetic
materials, such as marble and plywood. He even invented the dye which is still
used in Crayola Crayons.
Carver reputedly discovered three hundred uses for
peanuts and hundreds more for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes. Among the
listed items that he suggested to southern farmers to help them economically
were adhesives, axle grease, bleach, buttermilk, chilli sauce, fuel briquettes
(a biofuel),
ink, instant coffee, linoleum, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, metal polish,
paper, plastic, pavement, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum
powder and wood stain. Three patents (one for cosmetics; patent number
1,522,176, and two for paints and stains; patent numbers 1,541,478 and
1,632,365) were issued to George Washington Carver in the years 1925 to 1927;
however, they were not commercially successful. Aside from these patents and
some recipes for food, Carver left no records of formulae or procedures for
making his products. He did not keep a laboratory notebook.
Carver developed techniques to improve soils
depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. Together with other agricultural
experts, he urged farmers to restore nitrogen to their soils by practicing
systematic crop rotation: alternating cotton crops with plantings of sweet
potatoes or legumes (such as peanuts, soybeans and cowpeas). These both
restored nitrogen to the soil and the crops were good for human consumption.
Following the crop rotation practice resulted in improved cotton yields and
gave farmers alternative cash crops. To train farmers to successfully rotate
and cultivate the new crops, Carver developed an agricultural extension program
for Alabama that was similar to the one at Iowa State. To encourage better
nutrition in the South, he widely distributed recipes using the alternative
crops. In addition, he founded an industrial research laboratory, where he and
assistants worked to popularize the new crops by developing hundreds of applications
for them. They did original research as well as promoting applications and
recipes which they collected from others. Carver distributed his information as
agricultural bulletins.
Carver’s research was intended to provide
replacements for commercial products, which were generally beyond the budget of
the small one-horse farmer. A misconception grew that his research on products
for subsistence farmers were developed by others commercially to change
Southern agriculture. Carver’s work to provide them with resources for more
independence from the cash economy presaged the “appropriate technology” work
of E.F. Schumacher.
Carver marketed a few of his peanut products. The
Carver Penol Company sold a mixture of creosote and peanuts as a patent drug
for respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis. Other ventures were The Carver
Products Company and the Carvoline Company. Carvoline Antiseptic Hair Dressing
was a mix of peanut oil and lanolin. Carvoline Rubbing Oil was a peanut oil for
massages.
During his more than four decades at Tuskegee,
Carver’s official published work consisted mainly of 44 practical bulletins for
farmers. His first bulletin in 1898 was on feeding acorns to farm animals. His
final bulletin in 1943 was about the peanut. He also published six bulletins on
sweet potatoes, five on cotton, and four on cowpeas. Some other individual
bulletins dealt with alfalfa, wild plum, tomato, ornamental plants, corn,
poultry, dairying, hogs, preserving meats in hot weather, and nature study in
schools.
His most popular bulletin, How to Grow the Peanut and 105
Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption, was first published in 1916 and
was reprinted many times. It gave a short overview of peanut crop production
and contained a list of recipes from other agricultural bulletins, cookbooks,
magazines, and newspapers, such as the Peerless Cookbook, Good Housekeeping,
and Berry's Fruit Recipes. Carver’s was far from the first American
agricultural bulletin devoted to peanuts, but his bulletins did seem to be more
popular and widespread than previous ones.
He created some of his own art paints using local
clays. Unfortunately, in December 1947, a fire broke out in the Carver Museum,
and much of the collection was damaged. Time Magazine reported that all but
three of the 48 Carver paintings at the museum were destroyed. His best-known
painting, displayed at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago,
depicts a yucca and cactus. This canvas survived and has undergone
conservation. It is displayed together with several of his other paintings.
In 1948 and 1998, he appeared on U.S.
commemorative stamps, and he was depicted on a commemorative half dollar coin from 1951
to 1954. Two ships, the Liberty ship SS George Washington Carver and the
nuclear submarine USS George Washington
Carver (SSBN-656) were named in his honour.
Carver viewed faith in Jesus as a means of
destroying both barriers of racial disharmony and social stratification. He was
as concerned with his students' character development as he was with their
intellectual development. He compiled a list of eight cardinal virtues for his
students to strive toward:
A monument to Carver at the Missouri
Botanical Garden in St. Louis
o
Be clean both inside and out.
o
Neither look up to the rich nor down on the poor.
o
Lose, if need be, without squealing.
o
Win without bragging.
o
Always be considerate of women, children, and
older people.
o
Be too brave to lie.
o
Be too generous to cheat.
o
Take your share of the world and let others take
theirs.
Beginning in 1906 at Tuskegee, Carver led a Bible
class on Sundays for several students at their request. He regularly portrayed
stories by acting them out. He responded to critics with this: "When you
do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention
of the world."
In 1977, George Washington Carver was elected to
the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. In 1990, Carver was inducted into the National
Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1994, Iowa State University awarded Carver Doctor of
Humane Letters. In 2000, Carver was a charter inductee in the US Department of
Agriculture Hall of Heroes as the “Father of Chemurgy”.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed George Washington
Carver on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. In 2005, Carver's
research at the Tuskegee Institute was designated a National Historic Chemical
Landmark by the American Chemical Society. On February 15th, 2005, an episode of
Modern Marvels included scenes from within Iowa State University's Food
Sciences Building and about Carver's work. In 2005, the Missouri Botanical Garden
in St. Louis, Missouri, opened a George Washington Carver garden in his honour,
which includes a life-size statue of him. Many institutions honour George
Washington Carver to this day. Dozens of elementary schools and high schools
are named after him. National Basketball Association star David Robinson and
his wife, Valerie, founded an academy named after Carver; it opened on 17th
September 2001, in San Antonio, Texas.
Remember one of my key interest is that I am keen
on Nigeria pursuing the cultivation of inventiveness in whatever available
platform whether formal, non-formal or informal learning platforms.
As I said in the first post, Nigeria sorely needs
for the activity of inventing to take root and take off, explosively. I am
hoping all the last three post would have inspired even a glimmer of the nugget
of a "buildable" concept in your mind!
TO BE CONCLUDED
No comments :
Post a Comment