[Ferro List] List Digest, Vol 2, Issue 119

[colin]

list-request at ferrocement.net wrote:
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>  I'm on some kind of "truth finding mission". So from this point of view I'm really thankful for your reply. Unfortunately, all the input I've received so far doesn't tell me how to proceed...
> Uwe
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> Hi Uwe.  Doesn't the "truth" depend on where you are?  It all depends (and that is only a half- facetious response). We use the phrase "to reinvent the wheel" as if a first wheel happened as a unique event and that the value of the new device was so self-evident that it's use was immidately apparent to all who came in contact with it.  Those are two completey unfounded assumtions.  A wheel was only part of a number of other developments, paths on which to move them  being one, that led some folk to adopt their use and to continue using the device.  Wheels have come in to use and then been discarded as the situation changed.  They don't work well in snow or ice or on muddy terain and wheeled transport requires more energy to move a given load than moving the same load using watercraft. What is self-evident changes.  It all depends.  Even the "Ah Ha!" experince of invention is very much dependent on the particular circumstances of the moment let alone the particular education and experience of the inventor.  do you think female when you think inventor? I don't.  Yet the more succesful patent holders that I am aware of are female.  Government and all its works is mostly a extortion (and that includes patents) but it has it's positive aspects. We have to proceed accordingly. It all depends.  Colin 
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