Slashdot Mirror
Steve Wozniak Honors Innovative Inventors
DigitalDame2 writes "Steve Wozniak, co-inventor of the Apple personal computer (along with Steve Jobs), hosted the first annual Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge. Wozniak's favorite invention is one that shows where to clip your dog's claws without injuring the dog. The Strawjet, a creation that weaves straw left over from a harvest into building materials, won the grand prize."
I'm down with the dog clipping invention. Man, has anyone hit the dogs skin under the nail? That thing bleeds FOREVER.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
Wozniak should honor Bill Gates. He invented Windows!
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
>The Strawjet, a creation that weaves straw left over from a harvest into building materials, won the grand prize."
The firm of Rumpelstiltskin & Co. has filed a lawsuit against David R. Ward, claiming patent infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets.
Steve Wozniak, co-inventor of the Apple personal computer (along with Steve Jobs)
Err, as far as I know Woz made the computer, and Jobs decided he would market it. I'm having a very hard time imagining Jobs getting down and dirty with a soldering iron, since he's more of a talker and Woz is the guy who invented a computer just for the hell of it.
Co-founder of Apple Computer Inc. would've been more like it.
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
here is the real link without any of the middlemen leeching pageviews off a 100 word summary and 100 adverts per page (and they wonder why people block adverts)
http://www.historychannel.com/invent/?page=winner
Here is the webstie for the strawjet invention actually one the contest. http://www.greeninventor.org/index.shtml I have to say this is one ingenious idea for third world countries to make cheap housing. You grow your food and whatever waste you produce is used to produce houses.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Won't Apple get mad?
Listen p*ssy. I'm sure your the same homo that posted earlier about alf's boner and you just want to remain anonymous fo
Innovative Inventors? That's repetitively redundant.
I guess you never bothered to read any of Steve Wozniak's books, and would prefer to invent history.
Woz makes it clear in his writings that Woz was THE engineer behind the Apple I and II. Woz also made it clear that Jobs loved technology, could get down and dirty with a soldering iron, and had the ability to bring a successful product together.
Woz was in his mid twenties at the time, and Jobs was in his late teens.
To call Jobs a tag-a-long is not only demeaning; it is untrue according to the key people who were there. To label Jobs a mere marketeer or a salesman is a fantasy of those who are jealous of his capability and success.
Actually, I expressed the idea that it was my personal favorite because I am a great dog lover (contribute lots to rescue and care for pets) and an easy to use invention like this means a lot if it saves the dogs pain. it's a very simple idea using paper hat changes color with temperature.
I spent a full 3 hours talking with all 25 semifinalists in depth. It meant a lot to them. There were some very good inventions there and some that may revolutionize industries. A robot that builds a house in a day may offer homebuilding at 1/5 the cost, for example. Only about 2 of the devices really used electronics. Most of the inductees in the Invertors Hall of Fame have invented things outside of what we computer types consider. Still, the members of this Hall and the inventors of this contest share a similar personality and similar stories. It was one of the best times of my life to talk to such inventors before they have money or greed, and to hear their stories.
One finalist was a simple laser and light addition to a nutdriver. The inventor came up with a desire to achieve this solution when she was 9 years old and her father needed for her to hold a flashlight. One man invented a remote control on the reins of a horse to steer and stop it remotely. He's a real strong cowboy type, fun to talk to. He may not be a technical genious, but like many of us worked hard to achieve a device that was his passion to create. I spoke with the neice of the winning inventor and she told how for 9 years, back to when she was 14 years old, he talked about wanting to develop this building material made of wasted straw.
As a judge I had read descriptions of the various inventions. I had also seen the 25 semifinalist exhibits on display in Los Angelas, the first city a tour of those exhibits hit. But you get a more complete picture of an invention being a combination of a device and a person. This is true of such inventions that come out of want and passion and lack of money, instead of out of well funded company projects.
These are not the sort of people to criticize or challenge. They were all so incredibly wonderful. Did anyone at all who is contributing to this Slashdot item even attend the day-long exhibition or awards ceremony in Grand Central Station on Tuesday? The winners werr culled from 3400 invertion submissions. Even the ones that got passed over may have been greater ones. Any of them could have been given the grand award. We will see many of these devices in our own lives.
When this project started I had 2 choices. I could take a [presumably] high paid job to judge on American Inventor, or whatever that reality TV show was named. The producers said I'd have to be like a Simon Cowell type and criticize the inventors. Or I could do this voluntary judging for the National Inventors Hall of Fame (non-profit) and the History Channel. I took the high integrity one.
Also, when it comes to the start of Apple, I did not just get dirty with a soldering iron. I conceived and created every bit of the hardware and software of the early Apple products. I wasn't asked to go into the lab and design it. The design came first and the company was an afterthought and not something that I even pursued myself.
OK a new size TV
I loved the Inventors Hall of Fame (History Channel?) exhibit at the Museum of Science in Boston. Do you think that Quad Zipper will be a hit? Jacket = Parachute 4 Sky Dive.
As crazy as American Inventor made inventive people look, it also showed the classic examples of the traps inventors can fall into, and that an idea takes good execution to become a reality. Doug Hall did that in sometimes startling (some might say rude) fashion, but I think showed the harsh business side of how critical one must be to avoid the pitfalls of merely falling in love with an idea -to the detriment of developing their invention more successfully- and failing that, move on. You'll have more ideas, and some will hit, some won't. Some will be before their time, and others might be copied. You know that better than most people in this community.
I think many of us have a tendency to want our inventions to adapt themselves to our initial vision and be accepted by all, but the reality is that the finished product might be quite different from what we started out with. I just had to grimace when I heard stories of people spending huge sums of cash (one finalist spent $80K on a game proto) and other costly missteps (time, money, mental anguish) and misconceptions that first-time inventors have without an experienced support system, like an inventors organization, to learn from. http://www.inventne.org/
Some inventors lost sight of the fact that the search was for a great American Inventor, but also (and especially) an invention that has Mass Market appeal to sell to "everyone in America." Well, at least a very large diverse group of people. Many of the semi-finalists were very determined to not change their designs, which they had worked on so hard and for many years, eschewing the advice of the design teams who were charged with helping them improve their inventions. But some were open to suggestions, and showed a true inventive/entrepreneurial spirit. And they had great stories of where they came from and what they wanted to do, not just for themselves, but to affect others in a positive way. It's a shame the show started out so American Freak-ish, and turned off a lot of potential serious viewers just so they could get a laugh at the inventors' expense. And some were *really* laughable. The finalists, however, showed the tenacity, ingenuity, adaptability and heart necessary to be a great American Inventor, and that to me was worth seeing.
<
<shamelessAdoration> And lest I forget, thanks for all the great work you do for education and FIRST. Maybe one day you'll be judging *my* (future) NonProfit's contests.
Now where's that MacBook Mini?
Peace. Thanks for playing,
Peter
Oh, wait...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it