If you hate to be told, “I told you so,” you should be able to identify with the following innovators, inventors, and dreamers.
- After three failed attempts to get his flying machine off the ground, Samuel Pierpont Langley was criticized by the New York Times for wasting government funds on an idle dream.
- Everybody knows that the stars are suns with planets of their own. So did the German archbishop, Nicholas of Cusa, in 1450. Nobody listened.
- Eight years before the telephone was invented, Mahlon Loomis carried on a two-way conversation over a wireless device between two Virginia mountaintops, 18 miles apart. He failed to find financial backers.
- It took Magellan to prove that the world was round, but back in -350 the idea was generally accepted by the Greeks.
- More than 5000 years ago, the Emperor of China wrote that blood is circulated through the body by the heart.
If your job involves the painful process of deciding which off-the-wall idea deserves to be peeled off the wall and put into production, be careful. You don’t want to be ridiculed forever like the foolish Church fathers who proclaimed Galileo’s theories absurd.
If you’re the lone advocate of an idea or invention that nobody seems to appreciate, take heart. There’s a chance you’re in great company.
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