Slashdot Mirror
On Afghanistan's Thomas Edison
13.7BillionYears writes "The Institute for War and Peace Reporting details on the exploits of Ghulam Sediq Wardak, a 62 year old semi-literate Afghan with 341 clever inventions to his credit. His first was a radio powered by the low voltage produced by the human body. His most recent is a 1980 Volkswagen rigged to run on solar power. A handful of others are mentioned. Like many a Slashdotter, his parents were once very worried and he eschews patents. 'The main purpose of my inventing is not to earn money,' he says. 'I want to render a service to my countrymen and to all people in the world.'"
If he wanted to that more completely, he could have gone about patenting his inventions and through that legal ownership making them freely available for all to use.
No kidding. It's almost always the 'assignee' who causes all the trouble, not the 'inventor'. Problem is, it's pretty damn expensive to get a patent, at least in the US.
But edisons invention were very groundbreaking... Edison's Inventions
Edison made 1,093 patents in his lifetime. That averages out to 1 patent every 4 weeks of his life.
That definitely doesn't sound like this guy.
Notice that the article says 25kph, not mph. 25kph =~ 15.5mph. Sounds more reasonable like that, doesn't it?
FYI: Nikolai Tesla invented AC generators, not Edison. Edison pushed DC, and publicly electrocuted stray dogs using AC as a demonstration of AC's "inherent dangers" (keeping in mind that DC of the same voltage would have been just as deadly.)
Without knowing what kind of engine is being used, its specs, and other details, it's hard to say. The Beetle is a very modifiable car and it's not that heavy -- it was designed, after all, for a small 34hp engine to be able to push it to cruising speeds on the Autobahns and yet be easily maintained by the ordinary people who would buy them.
The Beetle changed little from its mid-1930s beginnings as the KdF-Wagen to the final version that rolled off the Puebla assembly line in 2003.
i am a soviet space shuttle
While there's nothing groundbreaking about the 'inventions' themselves, the fact that he has persisted with his tinkering in the midst of an Arab culture speaks of incredible curiosity, freethinking, and persistence.
Errrrr... since when is Afghanistan "Arab"?
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
It depends.
Volkswagen is a brand, not a model. In 1980 there we're at least the Polo, Golf, Passat and Beegle models (and their respecive subsets). The first Golf VWs were very lightweight, my family owned one in the 80s.
www.enterweb.pt
Except that Microsoft's patent has nothing to do with powering anything by the voltage produced by the human body.
Ever hear of a jet pump ? The water table here is 140 FEET below ground. I guess that transparent liquid that flows out of my facets does not exist.
IIRC, the Microsoft patent is more involved in using the human body for data transmission. It didn't have anything to do with power transmission or generation.
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Edison was a patent fiend. Mind you, he probably deserved the patents. That didn't mean he was above some unethical behavior, such as trying to convince people that DC was perfectly harmless (it's not) while Tesla's AC was much more dangerous (and my understanding is that AC is indeed dangerous, but more likely to burn you than stop your heart). Read the Edison's FUD section in Wikipedia's War of the Currents for an overview.
Edison was a great man, but I don't know that he had the spirit of our Afghani friend.
Tweet, tweet.
Of course you can. I myself have seen water come out of a thousand foot deep well. What you can't do is suck up water under vacuum over 1 atm. You can most certainly push water up thousands of feet.
Here is a company that sells pumps that do just that. (See under vertical turbine pumps).
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.
Edison invented very little. His real skill was in taking the credit for other's work. Most of "Edison's Inventions" came from his employees, not the man himself.
Again, clearly not like this guy.
Edison represents everything that many real inventors resent about patents and the patent system.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Exactly. He sounds a lot more like Nikola Tesla to me.
To compare this man to Edison does him a disservice. Edison was a capitalist to the core, to the point of pushing bad technology over good if it would make him more money. For example, he was an opponent of AC power, because with AC power you can have large central power centers; with DC power, you have to have many local power distribution centers because transmission is much less efficient over distance. He wanted DC power even though it sucks, because he wanted to have a stake in every one of the numerous distribution centers required to make it work. Lucky for all of us he lost that battle.
This Afghani sounds like a good person, one who actually cares about people more than money. That would set him far above Edison.
It's pressure that affects how much something hurts when it goes over your foot, not the total weight. A "very lightweight" car is almost certainly far over 500 lbs, yet having a 500 lb anvil on your foot would hurt an awful lot. You would have a newly acquired flat foot. Car tires are usually pumped up to 30 psi, so a car with slightly flat tires would be painful, but not damage your foot very much. That applies to heavy cars just as much as to light ones.
As an estimate: assume a tire pressure of 20 psi, and approximate the end of your foot as a right angle triangle with sides 5 inches and 4 inches long. That gives 10 square inches of contact area, or 200 lbs of weight on your feet.
I think I know where the lions share of dotters stand.
By the way (hey, the other guy got +5), the lion's share doesn't mean the majority. The lion's share is 100%... everything. It's from one of Aesop's Fables:
The Lion's Share
The Lion went once a-hunting along with the Fox, the Jackal,
and the Wolf. They hunted and they hunted till at last they
surprised a Stag, and soon took its life. Then came the question
how the spoil should be divided. "Quarter me this Stag," roared
the Lion; so the other animals skinned it and cut it into four
parts. Then the Lion took his stand in front of the carcass and
pronounced judgment: The first quarter is for me in my capacity
as King of Beasts; the second is mine as arbiter; another share
comes to me for my part in the chase; and as for the fourth
quarter, well, as for that, I should like to see which of you
will dare to lay a paw upon it."
"Humph," grumbled the Fox as he walked away with his tail
between his legs; but he spoke in a low growl.
"You may share the labours of the great, but you will not
share the spoil."
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
What do you mean 'those countries'? There's nothing weird about the sunlight in Afghanistan...
I don't know about Afghanistan, but you get more energy per square meter from the sun on the equator than you do in, say, Portland Oregon which is at about 45 degrees North. In Kenya, you would get sqrt(2) or around 1.4 times more energy than you would in Portland. That 40% difference could easily be enough to get a car up to 25 km/h, which is 40% less than 25 mph.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
It's true. Edison was a great business man, not so great an inventor.
What he was most famous for (the lightbulb) was invented long before him. He simply combined the old invention of the lightbulb, with someone elses long lasting filament, and bang, edison 'invented the lightbulb'.
Most of his inventions came out of his menlo park complex, where he had MANY employees who were told to invent any wacky thing they desired. But everything coming out of menlo park was credited to edison.
The mentioned nikola tesla was the exact type of inventor people idolize, its amazing that he doesnt recieve more recognition. He invented the AC generator, different types of transformers, the resonating (tesla) coil, the radio, and many other things.
Quite a few inventions of tesla's are somehow credited to other people in popular educational literature. For example, the radio. Ask most people who invented the radio they will say marconi. Yet tesla had patented everything marconi wanted to patent years before. There was a huge lawsuit going right to the supreme court and they ruled marconis patents invalid, since tesla's were prior art. Yet even wiht this supreme court decision, most encyclopedias will list marconi as radio's inventor.
Eiiither way, the main point beeing is edison wasnt all that great of an inventor, more a very shrewd business man. Unless you are in business, and wish to learn more about how a ruthless business man should behave, edison isnt really someone you should be idolizing.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Actually those are two separate things.
You're right about the 'jury rig' stuff, not disagreeing with that BTW.
Some dictionaries will say that 'jerry rig' means the same as 'jury rig' (that is what dictionary.com would tell you, for example). But you can find explanations of the differences. Basically think: Jury rig = temporary, quick-fix solution, possibly a novel implementation & Jerry rig = not necessarily temporary, junk solution.
See the Wordorigins.org J-word page, as well as this WordCourt page or this Phrase Finder post
Crystal radios don't even need the body's voltage, as far as I know. The body does, however, make a pretty good (and portable) antenna, so I figure that's probably what he did. (Regular 'transistor radio' earpieces are still the high-impedance kind needed for a crystal set, though if he fabricated his own... he really deserves a prize.)
Hmm, man, I guess you are a bit confused... You know those characters, like, '1', '2', '3', up to '9' -- those vere actually made "in the midst of Arab culture", And I guess '0' too (though not sure), but the reast are definitely called "Arabic numerals", as opposed to "Roman numerals" of the I,II, III, IV... variety. And the symbol of 'X' as well as the word al-gebra was of the same descent.
So, I think that you do confuse current fundamentalist Arab politicians/"warriors" with "the Arab culture"...
Paul B.
la anta kerabha ab'thane
It could be translated like "you are a not sensitive idiot". The ' is a glottal stop.
Mohammed Kaif
Er, no. The solar panels will charge batteries.
Extremely high. With a record export of $2.5bn expected this year, some farmers are rich beyond their wildest dreams. I read an article last night about an Afghan man and his brother making well over $5600 per month growing Opium. While they felt guilt over it since Islam prohibits growing or using drugs, they asked Allah for forgiveness since they have no other choice. They both support around 35 people, and I'm sure they aren't complaining. When a crop of wheat on that same land only nets you about $121 per month, and you have 35 babies sucking at your teats, the choice is clear. It's a purely economic choice and the consequences aren't considered (people in my country aren't hooked on this shit, why should I care).
A post above mine has some nice BBC links, but googling 'afghanistan opium' will land around 125,000 hits. Some of those articles may lead you to links between the CIA and bin Laden, drug lords, etc. Pretty fascinating stuff.