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.'"
This man deserves some kind of geek homage. His picture (which I could not readily google up but would love to see) belongs on a Slashdot category icon. To "wardak" should be the expression to replace "jerry rig." If Futurama were still on, there would need to be a character named "Sediq." If we can invoke Kent Brockman here, we can honor this noble man.
I for one welcome our new clever, semi-literate Afghan overlord.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
His first was a radio powered by the low voltage produced by the human body.
:D
I would say this is prior art. Guess their patent is history
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
"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."
Sadly a rapidly diminishing breed nowadays, what with overwhelming patenting and copyright laws and abuse. Hats of to this guy.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Edison was notorious for jealously guarding his patents and squeezing them for every dollar he could. This man is a much better human being.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
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.
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?
I might be hallucinating, but wasn't Edison (who invented AC generators, the phonograph and the motion picture camera/projector system) a patent hawk who did everything he could to extract money for every little invention he had a hand in creating? In fact, IIRC, that's why the motion picture industry set up shop in the (then) isolated desolation of Hollywood, California -- they wouldn't have to pay his exorbitant licensing fees out there.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like comparing this guy to Edison is like comparing Linus to Bill Gates.... in a comparative sort of way.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
From what I was taught, Franklin would invent something, then publish the design in his newspaper.
I'm not sure if Edison did that.
If Franklin did obtain patents, he obviously did so to ensure that nobody else would patent it first and keep the specs secret.
I'm not sure what type of VW he's got, but given that he's in Afghanistan I wouldn't be surprised if it's not an air-cooled Type 1 (Beetle). But it could be a Type 2 (Transporter), too. Could even be a Golf -- it's the best-selling model they've got. We Americans are the only market that shuns it in favor of the Bora (Jetta) -- though I love my lil' white Golf IV!
:)
I found a few more electric VWs with a little bit of looking:
Diesel-Electric (1.3L TDI) New Beetle
Electric 1969 Kharmann Ghia (the Ghia is a Beetle derivative)
Electric Rabbit (US Mk1 Golf)
And that's just for starters. VW AG itself considered a hybrid diesel-electric powertrain option for the Concept 1, which later became the New Beetle, but so far only the diesel portion has survived (the TDI is an option in the Golf, Beetle, Jetta, and now the Passat and the Touareg in the US, and in the rest of the model line elsewhere in the world.)
I'd love to see VW build a Golf-based CR-V competitor with a hybrid diesel-electric powertrain and the race-bred DSG transmission.
But yeah, this guy gets geek points from me.
i am a soviet space shuttle
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
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.
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:m l
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/03/18/1339201.sht
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".
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.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Actually, microwaves contain a big step-up transformer--they need a big chunk of high voltage current to do their thing. If you had DC mains, you'd have to convert to AC first, then rectify back to DC at higher voltage. Others on the thread have noted that building DC to AC converters is more costly than going the other way, too.
Yes, you have many DC appliances--but they operate at different voltages. Heck, your PC has 3.3, 5, and 12 volt rails. Converting between one DC voltage and another is a real pain in the neck, unless you don't mind wasting a ton of juice.
The real killer problem is that if you want to supply DC to homes at a voltage directly useful in small appliances (say 12 V) then you need to have absolutely massive wires to carry all the current. Let's say you want 200 W at 12 V for your computer--that's going to be nearly 17 amps. To run a hair dryer (1000 W) that's going to be more than eighty amps. If you're cooking dinner in the microwave, the air conditioner is running, plus you have the computer and a few lights on, you're pushing three hundred amps. In newly constructed homes, my understanding is that 200 amp service is the norm; older buildings may only have 100 amp or even sixty amp service. At 200 amps you're looking at pretty hefty cables. If each home starts requiring cable that can handle a thousand amps, you're getting into a lot of copper awfully quickly--even if the supply is relatively local.
Internal wiring would also have to be much heavier to avoid overheating. Resistance heating goes up linearly with resistance--but as the square of current. You probably wouldn't want to have to lift a hundred-foot extension cord.
Yes, you could get away with the same thickness of wiring you use now if you supply high-voltage DC inside the home, but then you would need a step-down transformer for all the same appliances that have wall warts now.
~Idarubicin