杏吧原创

From implantable pacemakers and fusion reactors to laid-back cyclists and X-ray crystallography, ideasjust seem to tumble out of them. Are inventors a different breed? What makes them do what they do? And how come so many of them, in theirZOs and 80s, are still looking at the world with fresh eyes ? New 杏吧原创 talked to three top inventors.

Wilson Greatbatch

Wilson Greatbatch invented the first successful implantable cardiac pacemaker. It revolutionised the lives of people with heart disease and was licensed to Medtronics, which ended up as one of the world鈥檚 biggest medical devices companies. At 85, Greatbatch is still inventing

Do you have a pacemaker?

No, but last year when it looked like I needed one, the nurses in my doctor鈥檚 office laughed their heads off. But in the end I didn鈥檛 need one. My family tend to die of cancer rather than heart problems.

How did you come to invent the first successful implantable pacemaker?

You can thank the GI Bill. Because I was a rear gunner in the second world war, I got a college education free, at Cornell University. One of the only honours I had when I graduated was that I had more kids than anyone in the class. One of my jobs was in the psychology department鈥檚 animal behaviour arm where I monitored the blood pressure, heart rate and brain waves of sheep and goats.

While I was there I met two surgeons who were visiting from Boston to carry out experimental brain surgery on some of our animals, and they told me about this disease called heart block that happens when natural electrical impulses from the heart鈥檚 upper chambers or atria fail to reach the lower chambers or ventricles. You get irregular heartbeats that can cause shortness of breath, and in bad cases loss of consciousness and even death. I knew I could fix it.

What did you do?

Around the same time I met the chief of surgery at Buffalo鈥檚 Veterans Administration Hospital, William Chardack, and he predicted that an implantable pacemaker could save 10,000 lives a year. Various bulky external devices already existed, but silicon transistors were becoming commercially available in the late 1950s. On 7 May 1958 I turned up at Chardack鈥檚 hospital with the world鈥檚 first implantable cardiac pacemaker, which I made using two Texas Instruments transistors. Everyone was amazed when it worked on a dog鈥檚 heart. I don鈥檛 think anything else could give me the same thrill as seeing that small piece of electronics control a living heart.

But you鈥檝e had plenty more ideas鈥�

I have 319 patents, which I believe is more than any living inventor. Edison had more than a thousand, my friend Jerry Lemelson had some 600, and the man who invented the Polaroid camera had more than 500. But all three are dead, so they don鈥檛 count.

What are you most proud of?

The pacemaker really, and some of the power devices. But much of the most interesting stuff lies in the future. Right now on my drawing board we have a nuclear fusion reactor. You put together two very light elements such as hydrogen and helium-3 and the residue is helium-4, not something toxic. The problem is the lack of helium-3 on Earth. Of course, the moon is full of it, so we should talk about colonising the moon.

And in the present?

We are making a new power source for defibrillators with a special hybrid battery that has a 3-second charge time and a 10-year lifespan 鈥� and that is quite new and very much needed.

Do you mind when things don鈥檛 pan out?

I think the world鈥檚 concept of success and failure is sort of mixed up. I don鈥檛 think the Good Lord really cares whether you succeed or fail. He just wants you to try, and try hard.

Were you always inventing as a child?

Oh, yes. When I was a small child I 鈥渋nvented鈥� perpetual motion. My father had some old trucks and I took them apart and took the magnets out of the dynamos. I found that if I held the magnet in front of a round can and dragged it across the room, the can would follow. So all I had to do was put that magnet on a wheel and then hook that to an axle in the can, and it would go all by itself. I was about 10 when I realised it wouldn鈥檛 work.

David Gordon Wilson

David Gordon Wilson, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, designs gas turbines and developed the modern recumbent bicycle. He is 76 years old

What inspired you to invent a recumbent bicycle?

When I came to the US from the UK in 1955, there were few adult cyclists. I was one of them, and I was an object of scorn. A frightening number of cyclists were being killed or seriously injured every year: there were a lot of people getting a raincoat or a bag caught in the front wheel. I thought it would be better if people cycled feet forward. It turns out that the recumbent design has been around for 100 years or more, but I had no idea. I ended up repeating a lot of it. I feel silly now. Then again, inventions rarely spring fully formed. We all make small improvements.

What was the reaction to your bicycle?

It amazed me. I was at MIT and it was 10 pm and I thought, the heck, I鈥檒l ride it home. And people started cheering as I rode it through Harvard Square. So I began riding it regularly because I liked the approval.

Did you invent things as a child?

I was fairly inventive, though I didn鈥檛 get much approval from my father. I remember making a wheelbarrow when I was 9, and he laughed himself sick. That hurt me because we didn鈥檛 have a wheelbarrow and in the end he used it a lot. When I was 11 or 12, I built a Wimshurst electrostatic machine, which makes sparks. I was rather proud of that. I got it to make huge lightning flashes, but it gave me headaches and I had to stop.

My father made me and my brothers become electrical engineers. I got into turbines that way. But I鈥檝e always been nuts about cycling and the two have somehow gone hand in hand.

Can anyone become an inventor?

It鈥檚 very easy. Just look around and see all the things you can improve. The number of patents you get depends on funding as much as anything else. But you must do it because you enjoy it. I have 23 patents and I haven鈥檛 made money on any of them.

How do you come up with new ideas?

When I was leaving home, my father bought me a book about research and innovation, which taught me that ideas will hit you when you least expect. Your brain is like a computer: it tries various sequences until it finds a solution. Sometimes it鈥檚 strong enough to wake you up in the night. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, a colleague said he had a strange new phenomenon that he wanted me to design a turbine for. I woke up in the night thinking about it. I hadn鈥檛 done that for years. What amazed me was that this problem wasn鈥檛 that important to me, it was just intriguing. So keep a notebook by you. I wish I could find one of my old notebooks 鈥� there鈥檚 an idea in it that I want to incorporate into a new turbine.

Do you need a certain kind of mind?

Most people have the capability. I remember a chap in design class at university who I didn鈥檛 regard as particularly brainy. We had to design a hydraulic press, and he suggested designing something in which the piston stayed still while the cylinder moved. I said: 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 do that, it鈥檚 not what we鈥檙e supposed to do.鈥� I often think about that, because at that time I wasn鈥檛 very receptive to doing things differently. Part of it is about confidence 鈥� the confidence I didn鈥檛 have when I reprimanded my buddy. I was too constrained. Once you are not constrained, the ideas flow in.

Isabella Karle

Isabella Karle鈥檚 X-ray crystallography technique, which she developed in the 1960s, transformed the way chemists determined molecular structures. Now 82, she has been head of her division at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC since 1959

How did you come up with your idea?

It was incremental. In the early 1940s, my work involved analysing the structure of simple molecules using electron diffraction, which was very new. I determined the structures of a number of molecules such as carbon dioxide and fluorohydrocarbons. After the second world war, my husband [Nobel prizewinning chemist Jerome Karle] and I moved to the Naval Research Laboratory, where we still work. He became interested in the phase problem in X-ray diffraction 鈥� identifying the phases of the diffracted X-rays, which you need to work out the chemical structure. He and a colleague solved the problem in a mathematical way, but the question remained: how to apply that to experiment? That was where I came in. I set my gases and vapours aside and looked at X-ray patterns instead. When we inserted my experimental data into their equations we got electron density maps that showed the position of each atom in a crystal. I was very successful at uncovering the structures.

Is your husband as inventive as you?

In a different way. He doesn鈥檛 care much for physical or mechanical things, he does it all in his head. He is much more interested in the mathematical approach to physics and chemistry. We may work on similar substances, but from quite a different point of view.

Do you approach problems differently from the way most men would?

Perhaps. When I was growing up, girls were not supposed to play with boys, but I did. Not that I liked them better, they just did more interesting things 鈥� cycling, playing baseball or marbles. When I saw my first Erector set I was absolutely fascinated but my parents were not rich enough to buy it. You could take all these little pieces and screws and put them together to make things that would move and turn.

I always had an inventive mind. I repaired my bicycle when it needed repairing, I helped my father with the electrical and plumbing chores. In the laboratory I was rather handy. When I was studying vapours using electron diffraction we needed vacuums, and I learned how to blow glass and design and assemble vacuum lines. In this sense, it was in the family. My brother, who is five years younger than me, became an aeronautical engineer.

Does inventiveness in chemistry require a certain kind of mind?

It does. When some people come across a problem, they may say it doesn鈥檛 have an answer, or it takes too much time to look for it. The inventive ones say, maybe it doesn鈥檛 have an answer but I鈥檓 going to look anyway. The solutions would pass most people by, but the inventive people recognise that there is something there. Either they have been looking for it, or they are aware of the mechanics of the world and know when they鈥檝e got something new.

Do you think of yourself as an inventor?

I think of myself as a chemist who has had problems that had to be solved. You could call me an inventor, but the inventions happened because they were necessary.

Will you ever retire?

I may have to. But not willingly. I still have an exploring mind, although I tend to forget so much now. It stays with me because I keep at it all the time. At the moment I鈥檓 looking at the structures and folding patterns of unusual peptides, the ones you find in the lower life forms.