Society has a curious attitude towards inventors. Their brilliance over the centuries touches all of our lives in countless ways, yet we mostly take their efforts for granted. Indeed, more often than not in Britain we caricature them as eccentric boffins, like Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. This ambivalence is a mistake; to me, they are perhaps the greatest heroes of all.
It is a great shame that so much innovation now seems to stem from nameless teams inside large corporations. The whole idea of technological progress had so much more personality in the era of giants like Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. There are too few such inspirational figures around today to dazzle and excite. Perhaps the solitary ideas of one man (or woman) are not enough to produce real technological progress in the 21st century.
Yet the spirit of independent innovation springs eternal. I recently saw Flash of Genius, a movie based on an article (also now a book) by John Seabrook. It tells the true story of Bob Kearns, the professor who pioneered the intermittent windscreen wiper for cars. He showed it to the Ford Motor Company in 1969, but subsequently entered into interminable litigation with it, almost reminiscent of Jarndyce and Jarndyce in Charles Dickens' Bleak House. More than 20 years later, he settled for $10.2m, but only after his legal actions had taken over his life.
