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.'"

Comments

Potential Prior Art Here?

[Niet3sche]

Hmmm ... it seems to me that use of the human body as a power grid is immediately extensible to the use of it as any other type of grid upon which electron flow is contingent *cough* MS PAN Patent *cough*.

I happen to share his views that some things should be done For The Good of Mankind and should be Free, but with this aside (or maybe because of this), were I in his shoes, I'd strive for a few things:

1) Contact EFF for legal funding of Me v. Microsoft.

2) If/When MS's patent is overturned, then turn the patent over to Public Domain.

3) Don't profit! Just know that I righted a wrong and successfully defended Prior Art to boot!

inventions

[Coneasfast]

many of his inventions seem to be cheaper versions of what we know to exist.

So I thought of a heater, which would turn off automatically when the water was boiled and when the water gets cold, it would turn on again. And then I made it

basically an alternative to a thermostat, but effective and cheaper.

His system involved surrounding a house with concealed wires that were attached to a battery, an audio cassette player and a camera. When the intruder stepped on the wire, it triggered the cassette player, which played a tape shouting, "There's a thief!". It also activated the camera, which would take a picture of the burglar.

again, simplified version of the modern alarm system.

i find his original ideas more interesting, the crying-baby-activated rocking cradle (does this already exist?), solar-powered well-lift, etc.

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, it's "jury rig," not "jerry rig." The phrase comes from the nautical term "jury mast," which is a temporary mast erected in place of a damaged one.

-Mike

Re:Edison? Patents? What?

[athet]

Try Tesla. Edison was stuck on the DC plan, which doesn't transmit over distance very well. And yes, Edison was a patent madman, any way you look at it. Not a bad comparo however, since Edison was really more of an 'embrace and extend' guy (he took credit for the entire output of his shop) and our middle eastern inventor seems more about practical good service to humanity. (but wait until someone starts waving money at him for an invention!)

Crazy

[2057]

But at 17, he produced his first invention: a radio that operated without batteries. It was made out of a matchbox, wires, and headphones, and was powered by the low voltage electricity produced by a person's body.

Thats insane! He's more Mcguyver then the Wizard of Menlo Park!

Project Wardak?

[Fred_Bloggs]

I don't suppose there are any /.'ers out there in or near Afghanistan. Are there?

If there were, it would be really cool to contact Ghulam and see if he would be interested in publishing his inventions on the web. There are a lot of third world countries out there who could use them.

So anyone out there up for Project Wardak?

Cheers

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[miope]

Yes, definitively, we need more people like him.

I think that this guy has not only excelent skills, he has excellent "simple" ideas. This kind of "simple" ideas which nobody thaughts about. That's the essence of an inventor

I liked this part:

When he heard that unsanitary conditions promote the spread of bacteria and disease, he decided to invent an automatic hand washing system to promote cleanliness. When someone steps on a contact located beneath a basin, it activates a stream of water from the tap and opens a drawer containing soap and a towel. When the person steps off the contact, the water stops and the drawer closes.

Could anybody tell me *why* we don't have "don't touch anything" bathrooms?. I know, there are optical sensors for the tap and a few more things, but I've never seen a public bathroom (i.e. restaurant, job, etc.) designed to be used without touching things. It's not so dificult, so... why not?

Or I'm being excesively maniac? ;-)

Re:Thomas Edison? Sounds more like Ben Franklin

[Danny Rathjens]

"When offered a patent for the fireplace's design, Benjamin Franklin turned it down. He did not want to make a profit. He wanted all people to benefit from his invention."

Quote from http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blfra nklin_inventions.htm

Ah, and someone quoted Franklin on the issue in a slashdot article before:
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/03/18/1339201.shtm l

Can we please set up

[311Stylee]

a paypal account for this guy or something? He should be well-funded. He certainly seems to have proven the old fable that "nessesity is the mother of invention".

Re:he should get patents, and here's why.

[gl4ss]

it's not ripping him off if he wants the ideas to be implemented.. if he just displays the ideas in use and doesn't patent them then they're effectively 'free' ideas forever.

besides than that, it would probably cost him more than what it would be worth(the guy is living on 200$ per month, which might get a living in afghanistan but sure as heck doesn't make a lot of budget for applying for patents).

so, tell me, what difference would there be in him patenting the stuff he does and then licensing them for free(which is what he would want to do) and not patenting at all? and how the hell is the money lining up in someone elses pockets, you think they wouldn't forward the licensing costs to the buyers of the manufactured stuff if they had to pay for the licenses? the solar powered water pump business just doesn't work that way, if he had a patent and could demand say 30$ per pump then the price of the pump would be 30$ higher, this is something that the guy doesn't want.

so in short, he wants others to 'rip him off', he just calls it helping his fellow men.

Afghanistan's Tesla?

[Flamesplash]

Seems like a cool guy, but I'm still waiting for the second coming of Tesla. The man had a CAD program in his head, truly a genius, and yet the last I looked for a biography I could find only one. Very sad.

Tinkering

[jtheory]

Like many a Slashdotter, his parents were once very worried and he eschews patents

We were very worried? But we didn't even know about him before the article...

Actually, I know I've seen other articles about Afghani ingenuity in "tinkering"... they've been making due for a long time with very little, so an inventive mind (especially with machines) is very useful. If something breaks, and there's no way you're going to be able to get a new one, you try to fix it. Seems like this guy really had a talent for it.

My grandfather loved tinkering as well, partly related to memories of tough times during the Great Depression (he owned an electric supplies company and had money later... but the guy still never threw ANYTHING out).

Some neat inventions: a device that would automatically close the windows when it rained, an automatic garage door opener (using a plate in the driveway), and a little train that carried concrete and such things (and children, later) around the property on sections of wooden track. His last project was a model train set he was building from scratch, with working signals and so on.

Anyone can independently confirm the story?

[PaulBu]

Well, some phrases did sound a bit fishy to me, and I thought that my fellow /.er would ask for a bit more of a proof or at least confirmation of the fact, rather than getting into the usual "patents-vs.-public good" discussion.

I grew up in Soviet Russia (yeah, for real this time!) and we did have our share of "backyard inventors" kicking socks off the capitialist pigs in semi-techical news strories (yes, it was just state-run propaganda, of course, though some ideas were not too bad). And, BTW, does the name of Lysenko mean anything to this crowd? ;-/

If the story is true, it is really remarkable, though I am not really sure how the fact of him being "semi-literate" really fits into the story (we have all been semi-literate at some stages of our life, and a guy like him would have learned the "tough skill" by now ;-) ), except that to maybe make other not-too-literate people feel good about themselves. (yes, that was the part that made me a bit suspicious)

Paul B.

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[DunbarTheInept]

Nautical lingo often contains vocabulary from a mix of many languages, because for a long time it was the one vocation where people of mixed languages got thrown together in one job, and the one vocation where someone might actually travel to more than a few different countries in a lifetime, and be exposed to a variety of languages.

So using the french "du jour" with the english "rig" is perfectly plausable. Nautical lingo is almost its own seperate language anyway (When have you ever heard "rig" used in english to mean "collection of nets and ropes that hold a structure in place", in some context OTHER than sailing?)

I don't know if the poster is right or not about the origin of the word, but the fact that it contains a mix of french and english, by itself, is not the problem you make it out to be.