National Inventor’s Month

WHY DO PEOPLE INVENT THINGS IN THE FIRST PLACE?
I think that there is a simple three-part answer: to improve the way we live, to make our lives easier and to help us do more work with less effort.
Things start small, like with Sir Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion. Understanding concepts like “An object at rest tends to stay at rest…” can change everything! These things seem basic enough, but this was a step towards other inventions, like the car!

WHY ARE PEOPLE SO INGENIOUS?
It is actually not that people are so ingenious so much as it is that the First Inventor is so brilliant! I believe that God created us to WANT to learn and to hunger for answers to things we don’t understand. That’s why Galileo, Thomas Edison and Leonardo da Vinci and many others came up with the ideas that changed the way we live. It wasn’t because they sat on their couches watching TV (it they had it) and let people be creative FOR them. Nothing gets done in that way! It is because they did what God built them to do and they desired to learn!

I know they didn’t learn to get glory for themselves. No. In fact, most people thought they were crazy! Galileo was threatened with imprisonment for saying that the earth is not the center of the universe. Albert Einstein was thought to be “stupid” and unable to attend school. Christopher Columbus was mocked for stating that the earth was round. Musical geniuses were often not appreciated until after their deaths and lived in poverty. The list goes on and on!
So, let’s take time to briefly recognize just three famous inventors that helped to drastically change our world!

ARCHIMEDES
Archimedes lived from 287-212 B.C. He is well-known for a law called The Archimedes Principle: when an object , like a bucket, is filled to the brim with a liquid, and you place an object in it, like a rock, it will displace the amount of water equal to its weight!

One of the most amazing discoveries Archimedes made was a large leverage system, we now call the Archimedean screw. He used this to pump water from a flooded ship. We still use his discoveries today!

THOMAS EDISON
Although Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity with his great kite flying experiment, I would like to take it a step further to Thomas Edison, who thanks to Ben’s curiosity was able to invent the electric light bulb, which we use frequently and rely upon. We use Edison’s invention so often, that when the power goes out everyone is thrown into panics because we are not used to making do without it!

JOHN ECKERT
The first working computer was built by two men named John Eckert and John Mauchly. It was called ENIAC which stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator. It was built around 1937. The first one didn’t function, but they were happy when the second one was a success.

With the computer’s 19,000 glass tubes that used as much electricity as 200 electric heaters, it was clear that the ENIAC was not a practical thing for individuals to have in their homes. Luckily, the inventing did not stop there. With the help of a transistor and an integrated circuit, people were able to make computers a reasonable size for personal use! Now we have mobile computers like laptops and cell phones. We never would have gotten here without the great minds of Eckert and Mauchly!

Who knows? Maybe with a little bit of curiosity and a little exploring, YOU could become one or our next great minds and be what God designed us to do. Perhaps in 100 years, if you work hard, some young lady will be writing about the amazing things YOU thought up!

Psalm 139:14
“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.“