Issue #42: Traits of Our Radio Innovators

Ahem

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0071230/

Hedy Lamarr

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr

 

There is no Hedley LaMarr.

That is a character in a movie.

 

Sorry about the typo!

BTW, you missed you're que
'It's not *Hedly*, it's *Hedy*' (adapted from Blazing Saddles)

 

Oh gawd, now you got me going!

Welcome, Sheriff

"Man, these people are so dumb!"

"I'm... So .. Tired..."


I think we boys were 10 years old, one of the dads took us to see Blazing Saddles, The Producers, and 12 Chairs, Friday night triple header.

Man my ribs were sore for a couple weeks from laughing. I think the in jokes and arm punches lasted through jr high... Good times.

 

I know who Hedy LMarr is. Most here do.

Ms Lamarr was a brilliant person but as an inventor (and there is actually some controversy on whether she invented spread spectrum--a fellow ham on Zed may pipe in) she was NOT a sufficient 'self promoter'. Hence she got ripped off and her SS invention ORIGINS got 're-discovered' decades later. After it was appropriated without attribution, and in use.

You think that unsavory behavior is historical? Nope happens probably more now then back then.

Example: I've had the same thing happen to me on fractal antennas. Recently. One of the responses was: "I thought you were dead". My response?" No. I am very much alive and will remain so, just to piss you off.' It was not a moment for being gracious.

Point of information: never tell someone 'I thought you were dead'. It is hardly a defense, and is an insult of the highest order.

Again: if you are not ALWAYS self promoting ,you are being erased. Self promotion by inventors is reality, not Calvinistic sin.

Fact.

Inventors are like the guy at the chalk board writing creation with the right hand while the devil is guiding the erasing with the left.

 

You have your data wrong. Tesla was broke. Edison died a wealthy and famous man.

 

They both died poor. Edison's family members held onto most of the remaining stock, before he died.

Edison lost most of his fortune on his mining machine in his later years.

Who said Edison wasn't famous?

 

Although he evidently lost money on the mining deal, he still died rich enough to be on the Forbes 400 (had it existed then) - according to Forbes...

 

Badges? Badges! We don't need no stinkin' badges!

 

My understanding is that the estate was either in his wife's name or jointly held. One of those cases where he turned over GE stock earlier on and his own shares were sold to fund the mining operation.

But yes, it is very true that many pioneers die penniless.

The problem with 'inventors' is that there is no great body of knowledge on their pitfalls. Many years ago I spent a fair amount of time trying to piece that together for my own knowledge base. Not pretty! But what I saw as 'lessons learned' has been a huge personal life benefit, much of it counterintuitive.

'Self promotion' was one of those lessons learned. Of course, as the saying goes, you have to have the &&&& to back it up.

I did produce a manuscript on this. My son, the former Bainie guy, told me I will be foolish to publish it: why give the info away? I will probably get a publisher when I turn 75. A while...

73
Chip W1YW

 

Let's talk about the stuff in the shadows...

Succesful inventors get blindsighted and invoke a common fallacy: success at one time and or in one situation, means they have the golden goose to future successes.

Success breeds erosion of risk management. Edison was the 10 sigma example. He was not the 'good example' that success breeds success as how things USUALLY happen. He was the exception. He was the plunger, convinced his ore machine, in his later years, would transform the world. He went all-in.

It failed.

MOST 'plunger' activities by successful inventors, after they become successful, fail. But the successful inventor often lays most of the cards down on the new invention/enterprise and looses his or her shirt. Or worse. The woman from Theranos is the best known poster child for said plunger, resorting to lying to keep the illusion--her illusion-- going.

Inventors tend to be risk takers so learning this lesson often fails to happen, because all they have are unapplicable examples like Edison. They do not dig deep to find out the stories and the failures.

Again, there is no 'primer' for inventors and their continued success. The 'primer' I assembled for myself is being kept close at hand. At least for 5 more years. It has saved me millions of dollars.

And I keep on inventing.

I am sure there re others here that have their own inventor stories. It is interesting that you see no other volunteers for relevant comments on same.

What does that tell YOU?

73
Chip W1YW

 

BLAZING SADDLE "We don't need no Badges" (youtube.com)

 

I think this whole topic is very noisy. Many people who became famous are sometimes thought of as inventors and sometimes as businessmen. A lot depends upon the desires and habits of the individuals. The common link is that they found ways to solve problems.

I have lots of opinions about those who came before us, but this isn't the place - so I will confine my comments here to my personal experiences.

I have several dozen patents, including the original patent on the bar code scanner and, later, on SmartTV and the Digital Video Recorder. In the case of the scanner, people came to me with a knotty problem and asked if I could solve it. I did.

In the case of the Digital Video Recorder, I became overly irritated by commercials and I wrote the code for the prototype on my laptop over the course of a few months while sitting up in bed watching my large screen TV while eating M&Ms (so says my mother-in-law while simultaneously asking my wife "why doesn't he just go get anther job like regular people?").

In the one case I was just being an engineer. In the other case, I was solving a problem for my own satisfaction.

In both cases, I made my money on the companies I built, based on my innovations, rather than on patent royalties. I don't, and never did, give a damn for fame or for a patent for its own merits. My motto has always been "you can have the fame, I'm after the fortune". For some people, it is reversed - they care more about the recognition. Examples that come to mind quickly are Tesla and Shockley.

Of course, I never knew Tesla. But I certainly knew Shockley. The most prolific pure inventor I've known personally was Bob Widler, who singlehandedly created the analog integrated circuit universe as we know it. Jim Hobart is up on that list too, although he is not a pure inventor - his inventions are always in service to moving his companies forward.

Others who care (or cared) more about the business that can be built rather than the individual recognition related to innovation and invention are more plentiful and, to me, memorable. Some who have been personal friends are Bob Noyce, Eugene Kleiner, Gary Kildall, Gordon Moore, Steve Jobs, Jim Hobart, Bob Metcalf, Ken Oshman, Jugi Tandon, Al Shugart and others. All of these guys were (or are) innovative and did things that count as inventions, but were interested in those innovations primarily to the extent that they facilitated growth of their companies. Certainly they had pride in their work and their ideas, but those were simply a means to an end.

Steve probably deserves special mention in this regard. His name is on 230+ Apple patents, but I don't believe he ever invented anything. When I said this to him sometime around 2005 over a nice Claret while sitting on my motoryacht in Fort Lauderdale, he laughed and agreed with me. Then he said something to the effect "... but I facilitated them all and my name is going to stay there...". It was a point of pride and self-promotion. Or maybe just self-promotion. He was forever incensed that Gates stole the Mac GUI for Windows. But, of course the irony is that he stole the GUI from the Star We used to sit in my hot tub in Woodside and call Bill Gates in the middle of the night to tell him what an asshole he was (is).

So, in my mind, this whole topic of innovation and invention is an unsortable mishmash. It is what it is. Some value innovation for itself - the satisfaction, some see it as personal validation - and intimately related to self-worth, some value innovation as a method of problem solving that let's them achieve other (usually business) goals. If you are a doer, you are solving an unending series of problems. Whether or not those solutions take the form of patentable inventions seems of little consequence to me.

So, do what you want to do. In the end, what matters is the mark you leave.

Personally, my greatest innovation had nothing to do with invention. I solved a seemingly unsolvable business problem in a creative way. This had a much greater effect on the world than all but a fairly small number of patentable inventions. Ultimately it was very rewarding, both in pecuniary and spiritual terms. It allowed me to build a multi-billion dollar company quickly and it saved between 10,000 and 40,000 lives. I am more proud of that than of any of my patents.

Why is there little innovation in Ham Radio? I don't agree with that premise - there IS innovation. But, be realistic, it is a tiny pond. It is a hobby. I'm about to introduce some Ham Radio products that are innovative to some extent. But, I readily admit that it is primarily an ego project. I won't be filing any applications...

I will be happy if people find the products useful.

Whether or not innovators die poor is a matter of their business focus. Most people die broke. Most people are lousy businessmen. Why would it be any different among innovators?

 

Yeah, I think the original was from "Treasure of the Sierra Madre". It was famous enough at the time so that Blazing Saddles could reference it to great effect...

 

I feel happy that I contributed to 'outing ' you.

Thanks for fillimg us in. I was aware of your patents. I do think its important that some hams, especially younger ones, know that this a path, albeit a 'tortuous' one. There is insight there for those with the interest.

Your new stuff on ferrite is cool.

I have had consistent luck with ferr-rite and ferri-shield as sources.

73
Chip W1YW