Discovering the Truth About Discoveries
by Mad Dog

We all enjoy discoveries. They’re fun, they’re educational, and they let us sit back and say “Damn, just when I thought I’d seen everything.” This in turn causes us to spend the rest of the day wondering exactly when it was we passed the halfway mark of turning into our parents. We like discoveries so much there’s even a cable channel devoted to them, the aptly named Discovery Channel, though these days most of their shows seem to involve analyzing evidence found at crime scenes. If they continue this trend there will be a great big discovery hole in the cable line-up because they’ll have to change their name to the Crime Re-creation and Forensic Science Channel. Hopefully the acronym CRFSC will start to feel familiar before they redo the signs on their mall stores to go with it. Don’t be surprised if this Christmas, instead of asking for a Croc Hunter remote control truck, your kids have a very different wish list. “Mom, can I have Lab-Rat Larry’s DNA Polymerase Chain Reactor Kit? Ple-e-e-ase? All the other kids have one.”

The truth is, most discoveries are very run of the mill. Every year since 1973 the National Inventors Hall of Fame (motto: “We sure hope someone invents a more original name soon.”) has been honoring people who made important discoveries. After running through the biggies early on, including Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and the Wright Brothers, they found themselves honoring inventors like Henry Timken, who came up with the tapered roller bearing. This past December they got so desperate they inducted Patty Sherman and Samuel Smith for having invented Scotchgard.

There’s no question Scotchgard is a good thing. After all, without it we’d have to leave the clear plastic on the new couch, couldn’t eat tacos while driving, and would still have to lay newspapers on the bedspread each time we rented a hotel room by the hour. But it can hardly be called history-changing. Perhaps the Hall of Fame will make up for it next year by inducting Bill Bissell, the band director for the University of Washington who invented The Wave and, unfortunately, died this past year without ever receiving the widespread acclaim he deserved. It was a shame he couldn’t call his stadium arm-raising movement The Bissell, but the carpet cleaning machine manufacturer would have filed suit in a heartbeat.

It’s not as if there’s a shortage of new discoveries. Recently, Dutch scientist Marc Van Roosmalen discovered two new species of monkey. And David E. Cummings of the University of Washington discovered that the hormone ghrelin may be a major factor in obesity. But there are still many things yet to be discovered. With luck, someone will discover how a 13-year-old boy in Ohio managed to spend $2 million buying a helicopter, a jet, and other items using a computer at school and a friend’s mother’s eBay account. Maybe someone else will discover why a Gallup poll found that the average person on the West Coast has 0.8 fewer personal friends than the national average. And how that eight-tenths of a friend manages to stay alive. And who knows, maybe someone will discover how to use an empty cigarette carton, worthless stock certificates, and an orange jumpsuit to brighten up a dank and dreary jail cell. Someone named Martha, for example. That would be certainly be worth a nomination into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

©2002 Mad Dog Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country. Read them while playing with a tapered rolling bearing.