When the German Luftwaffe was happily pounding the Brits in London by day and night, Churchill came up with the idea of inventing a “death ray” of radio beams because they were flat out of anti-aircraft guns. Of course a “death ray” idea was preposterous but what the British engineers did build was the radar. Now, what’s the moral of this story? When you’re down on your luck and need something that you haven’t got, you go and build it. (Even if it always do what you wanted it to do.)
And that brings us to today’s talking point: Necessity is the mother of invention; true or false? Well I wouldn’t go so far as to call it the mother. After all the laser was invented when no one was really looking for a fancy gadget which focused light and made it do all sorts of things. But it was invented and uses were found out later on. It would be more correct to call necessity the nurse or midwife of invention. It’s often there, but it isn’t required all the time.
When push comes to shove, you can’t do without necessity. It stimulates the creative juices and makes you look for alternatives that you wouldn’t think about in normal situations. Often you end up inventing things that aren’t useful for anything other than the purpose you originally invented it for. Then again there are times when the invention is put to a completely alien use, and it’s forgotten what it was invented for originally. For example it’s seldom remembered that chocolate was first invented as a sacrificial offering and no as a sweet. Of course, that particular invention has nothing to do with necessity, and brings us to necessity’s funny twin sister, chance. Chance probably has as many inventions to its credit as does necessity. When they come together, the result can be quite amazing. Alexander Fleming was looking for a way to make last longer, and what he came up with was penicillin. In this case chance superceded invention and the result was unexpected and quite useful. That brings me to the end of my story. Necessity gives invention a steady push, chance gives invention a good kick in the backside and sometimes invention decides to be a good boy and happens all by itself.