Back in the 1970’s, there were not many famous scientists or engineers, and now, there are almost none. If you disagree, try and name one, right now. Go ahead, try it. Who did you come up with? Carl Sagan? No he’s dead. Try again. Stehpen Jay Gould, the Harvard guy who talks about dinosaurs? No, he’s dead too. Hawking? Sure, Stephen Hawking is alive, but he’s far more well known for overcoming his disabilities to do great scientific stuff, than for his scientific stuff itself (Can anybody really understand “A Brief History of Time?). Perhaps, on odd occasion a autograph seeker stalks MIT’s Old Main in hopes of obtaining Marvin Minsky’s or Noam Chomsky’s signature, but really, very few scientists need bodyguards to keep away the star struck rabble.
On the “Q-Scale” of modern fame where Albert Einstein stars with a 54 and George Takai rates a 1, no living scientist or engineer even shows makes a blip on the Sulu’s radar screen. It’s pitiful, but the truth is that no technology related individual, with the exception of Bill Gates, pulls a higher Q score higher than Count Chocula.
The point is there are many, many excellent engineers although the majority of whom are not well known outside of their own companies. In fact, the term "famous engineer" is an oxymoron on par with "nondairy creamer", "dry martini", or "jumbo shrimp". Unlike like say, journalists or lawyers, few people can name more than one or two famous engineers, real or fictional. A recent poll, (I asked my friends one night, while drinking) determined the most famous engineers in history were Thomas Edison (a good choice) followed by Scotty on Star Trek, and then a big gap to Q, the gadget guy in James Bond movies. Beyond that, it’s a lost cause.
Although many of the things that engineers, tinkerers, and radical, technological self expressives make are quite well known, the people behind the things rarely capture the limelight. Why are tinkerers, engineers and technological self expressives so hidden from fame?
Perhaps it is due to their slightly offbeat sensibilities compared to the population as a whole. Although it is not politically correct to assign traits to groups of people as a whole, I have found that more or less, engineering/tinkering life is based on a few basic principles, none of which are designed to attract attention, or at least favorable attention. Here they are:
1. Engineers as a group dig the original Star Trek (note the George Takai/ Mr. Sulu reference in a preceding paragraph.) It's a small wonder, since the only place on television with heroic engineers is the starship Enterprise. And even better, they occasionally get to have sex with aliens. This is much more glamorous than the real life of an engineer, which consists of living like salaried prairie dogs, in fabric covered cubicles, deep in suburban office plantations, dreaming of alien sex.
2. As noted above, GQ and Details Magazine spend little time courting the engineer reader. Trendy clothing is not a priority for an engineer. In fact, if the bridges of their eyeglasses stay taped together okay, and nothing embarrassing such as private parts or nipples are unwittingly exposed, then their sartorial objectives have been satisfied. Anything else is overkill.
3. When something funny happens, instead of manly, hearty laughs, people who tinker with machines tend to smirk. Actually, it’s worse than that, far worse - they giggle. This is very unfortunate for the whole group’s public relations effort and the less said about this, the better.
4. Extreme tinkerers, to a person, share a love for special purpose buildings and vehicles. Ask one what they’d like more than anything else in the world and nine out of ten will say “a 20’ x 30’ heated workshop out in the back with oversized doors and 200 amp, 480 volt electrical service.” Besides the workshop, all extreme tinkers covet a trailer large enough to transport their hobby all over the country. The trailer must come with a professional paint job on the side that reads “TEAM EXTREME” or something similar in red and black script.
5. Tech-geeks are a pretty frugal group. Now, do not misunderstand, no one is saying that radical technical self expressives are cheapskates. They're behavior is not attributable to a miserly disposition or to simple penny pinching avarice. It is really much more about looking at every spending situation as opportunity to substitute knowledge for cash, a tradeoff that most engineers would make in a heartbeat. Moreover, when the conditions are right (like when building something really, really cool), all thoughts of economy are vacated. A different engineering trait kicks in and the sky’s the limit. Which brings us to the last trait.
6. In their own weird way, they have very large egos. Two things are important to the people who tinker on large, involved projects: The first is how smart they feel they are, especially when comparing themselves to other people. The second thing is how many cool things they can make. Your pocket protected, handbook carrying, soldering-gun-at-the ready tinkerer cannot walk away from the challenge of making something really new and unique until it is met head on and conquered. If it's a really, really tough problem, it’s like watching the police dogs on "Cops" go after a shirtless car thief - they are just relentless. They clamp on to tough problems like grim death -- to them, it’s a titanic struggle between their will and the laws of physics. It's been said that radical tinkerers will go without food and hygiene for days when they’re working on a project. (At least that’s the excuse they use.)
And when they succeed in building something really, really cool, they will experience an ego rush that is better than sex - well, alien sex in a weightless environment notwithstanding.
I've filmed a new video showing how to build an electrostatic generator and a leyden jar. Watch it at:
