Week 6: Modern inventors’ struggles

We all know about the greatest inventors of the world and can easily attribute inventions to their creators – Gutenberg, Tesla, Newton, Volta, Edison, Bell etc. However, as time passes, modern inventions (or more often – innovations) are widely considered more or less irrelevant, compared to the milestones of human heritage: printing press, electricity, light bulb or internal combustion engine. How do modern inventions fare in this era? Let me go through a few examples.

Big struggles, big success

One of the prime examples of a great invention, developed after persistently retrying attempts was the WD-40 – widely known as a remedy to all the screetching, rusting in our homes.WD-40 was first used by Convair, an American aircraft manufacturer, to protect the thin-steel coating of the balloon tanks from rust. These tanks were crucial in the architecture of the Atlas missle, the first intercontinental ballistic missle, which warhead was more than a hundred times more powerful than the Nagasaki bomb.

WD-40 officially hit the commercial shelves in 1958.
The name WD-40 is actually an acronym of “Water Displacement  40^th attempt”. It was developed by Norm Larsen (and his two teammates), who had a goal of inventing a formula which could prevent corrosion, by way of displacing water.  WD-40 became a huge success worldwide, simply by pure persistence in conducting experiments with water displacement by three people.WD-40 is, interestingly, not patented in the United States, as the successful formula is a top secret, known only by the company insiders.

From hype to disaster

We all know what the Segway is. The uproar around Dean Kamen’s invention, revealed to the world in 2001, was tremendous. Packed with state-of-the-art technology, involving 5 gyroscopic devices and a computer, which spans all these components to keep the Segway upright, the project was destined for huge commercial, lifestyle and social success. Kamen said that “it will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy”, it was also meant to be a golden remedy for the disabled. After his constant struggles to invent something big – the Segway came.

After the smoke cleared, the  Segway ran into trouble with the US law – it was disallowed to move around on sidewalks in most American cities, because it was too fast and bulky. Moreover, the would-be car substitute was also not comfortable on the road as it was too small to be visible and simply too slow. Segway was starting to fall into the void. Many users also fell – to the ground due to low battery level in their Segways which In this situation was unable to maintain gyroscopic balance.

To buy the Segway, you have to lay out 17-29k zlotys. For this amount, you can buy a very good, new, motorcycle or a 5-year-old Honda Civic – premium equipped. The choice is obvious.Segway’s nail in the coffin was the death of  Segway CEO - James Heselden, whose company acquired Segway Co. 1 year prior. He died by falling off the cliff on his Segway in 2010.

Rapidly emerging, slowly disappearing

The story of QR Code is a tale of a promising commercial adaptation of a manufacturing convenience invention.

QR Code (Quick Response Code) was invented by Denso Wave, Japanese vehicle manufacturing company, and was used to trace manufactured vehicles due to quick tagging and scanning of their parts.

It took about 15 years for commercial industry to pick up these ‘user-friendly’ barcodes in various marketing campaigns. Since about 2009, American and European products started introducing these funny markings on their products, billboards, websites, even in TV ads hoping to gain interest with little cost – a good idea, at first glance. Sadly, most of the QR Code scanning experiences end with a redirection to poorly designed websites, e-mail templates or pointless mobile apps, nobody cares about.

There are several problems with commercial QR codes, one of which is that majority of customers have to use their smartphone camera to scan the codes. The first obstacle is that you have to download the QR scanning app in order to be able to actually perform the scan. Of course, some smartphones do have built-in QR scanner apps, but it is approximately about 10% of all annually sold smartphones (which are certainly not iOS or Android devices). Many of us don’t even bother looking for those apps. Another case is a lack of wireless connectivity in many of stores with QR advertisements, and not everybody possesses cellular Internet connection.

QR codes nowadays are fading away, being replaced by several inventions/ideas, with NFC or Bluetooth going with a head full of steam, becoming an obsolete technology within 4-5 years of public awareness.


Questions:
Do you know of any modern ‘perennial’ inventors?
What other interesting recent invention stories have you heard of?
How many times have you scanned a QR code?

Sources:
http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/qr-codes-dead-toppled-easy-apps/240548/
http://marketingland.com/the-death-of-the-qr-code-37902
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/09/27/from-hype-to-disaster-segways-timeline/
http://wd40.com/about-us/history/