Saturday, August 1, 2009

For the love of inventiveness

This is a great read by Maira Kalman: Can do about Benjamin Franklin and inventions.

Inventions are not only in mechanics and science, but also food, design, and art of course. Some of my favorite inventions are the cheese slicer, the garden hose, basket weaving, barbecue sauce, digital photography, printed books, words like Andromeda and ivory bill, pepper grinders, and I often wonder who tasted the first smoked fish. Probably someone a long, long time ago, before we really had language, but they invented things already back then. Some fresh fish left over the dying fire by mistake became smoked fish for breakfast. If you discover something inadvertently, is it still a stroke of genius? :)

6 comments:

Olle said...

Wonderful! But the link you have made here does not seem to work. Try
http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/can-do/?em

LS said...

That is strange, the link works for me. Hmm, strange indeed, but then, who really understand what goes on on the internets :)

Olle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Olle said...

I agree! Today it works fine. It might have been something temporary?

LS said...

Maybe it was too many people that wanted to read this great thing at once, so the page imploded temporarily? :)

Chad Lebo said...

The next time I'm within 8000 miles of a Barnes and Noble, I will certainly pick up a copy of this. God, I miss book stores.