Last Friday I wrote a short blog post about one of my favorite quotes: Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
He (Thomas Edison) should know. Everyone has heard of him. As one of the greatest and most prolific American inventors, Edison acquired 1,093 patents. That’s a hell of a lot of good ideas sweated into tangible, useful, products. Imagine life without electric light bulbs.
The word genius used in the quote is pretty interesting. It’s defined as exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability. Certainly, Edison has that, but so do thousands and thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of other people. But most of them don’t combine that 1% inspiration with anywhere close to the 99% perspiration.
I have lots of ideas, some of them pretty dang good, if I do say so myself. But when the rubber meets the road, I just like to think and generate ideas, not actually work on them. Like the time I asked Randy why planes don’t have parachutes that can be deployed when they get in trouble. Years later, he showed me an article in Popular Science or some such magazine that described how it was possible. Ballistic Parachutes proved someone besides me had the same idea, but added perspiration to the inspiration.
I would like to brag a bit about my very own sweaty genius. Randy, my clever and creative husband, has had many, many (many) inspired ideas. Unlike me, he goes out and works up the sweat required to test and bring a lot of them to stuff that actually works.
Twenty-some years ago he spent a lot of time trying to get his truck to run on two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen (that’s water for you not too sciency folks). He perspired buckets of sweat on that one. It didn’t work. It seems that computers in vehicles these days sense the extra oxygen and adjust the fuel flow to negate any increase in mileage that would otherwise be gained. He couldn’t find a way to outsmart the truck’s computer.
For the record, getting a vehicle to run on water wasn’t Randy’s original idea. He heard about it from a fellow named Stanley Meyer. Stan, who is no longer among the living, invented a water powered car. He was terminated “prematurely” (he was 57 at the time of his death), officially by a brain aneurysm caused by high blood pressure. More likely, the conspiracy theorists think, Meyer was murdered by guardians of the oil and gas industry who are majorly threatened by vehicles that could be fueled by water. Here is a short video of Stan’s working water powered car.
Randy did invent several pressure washing innovations when we owned and operated a business called All American PowerClean. Those inventions, though unique, were in a very niche industry and we didn’t believe would ever earn enough to cover the cost of obtaining a patent. We made a lot of Hurricane Deck Brushes in our garage though and sold enough of them to make a positive difference in our financial situation at the time.
Randy also won an award (including a monetary payment) through the Air Force Suggestion Program for improving a process the military used to clean and recycle a piece of equipment used for collecting atmospheric air samples. There was a nice certificate, and the money, several thousand dollars, was enough to buy one of the first rear projection big screen TVs of the time. It was a monster that weighed about 200 pounds. He enjoyed that thing a lot until it died years later.
Randy is always thinking about improving how things work, how they can be arranged for efficiency, how repairs instead of replacement might be feasible. He can fix or jerry-rig almost anything. Sometimes it’s not pretty, but it works. He’s a master at repurposing things.
After Hurricane Ian Randy saved all the decent salvageable pieces of our destroyed aluminum pool cage. He used some of them to build a bike garage inside our fenced side yard. It’s pretty slick. He also used the salvaged cage parts to build a framework for an outdoor kitchen. The framework surrounds a couple of grills and his “Breath of the Dragon” propane wok burner. He took the old granite countertops from the remodeled indoor kitchen and also used them in the lanai kitchen. Randy seriously enjoys experimenting with cooking outdoor and designed and built an efficient setting for himself to get the best results in the easiest ways.
Years ago, Randy designed a patio cover he dubbed Deck Blinds. The idea was a framework with a roof consisting of louvers that could be tilted to take advantage of or block the sun, or that closed completely to keep the rain out. He talked about it relatively often for a long time, but never did anything but talk. He added no perspiration to his inspiration on that project. Just a few weeks ago he ran across an advertisement in a magazine describing a rotating louvered shade roof on a pergola. They were expensive, but almost exactly what he’d envisioned. Someone took the idea, sweated through the development and implementation stage, and is probably getting rich. Good for them.
Randy says most inventions are a result of laziness or frustration. He’s always looking for ways to make routine things easier and/or less frustrating. And most of the time he succeeds. With a personal stake in the outcome, his willingness to sweat (especially in Florida) is high.
I’m grateful for his cleverness and mechanical talent, his ability to figure out how things work, and his hard work and perspiration in making our life over the years easier and more exciting. So, in this post I’m celebrating Randy. I’m certifying him as a genius. MY genius. My sweaty genius.
P.S. Making progress up here in Wisconsin. Mom’s health is improving, we brought home a new (used) car for her yesterday. Thanks to everyone who’s praying. I’m planning to return to Florida just before the 4th of July.
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