Let's have more reporting on geniuses we don't know about -- we already know more than enough about the other kind

"Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration."  That's according to Thomas Edison, although he might have said 90/10 instead.  Doesn't matter.  Either way, whenever I read something about "a genius" I think of Edison's description.

Edison was a prolific inventor.  With over 1000 patents and a variety of business ventures to his name  he was widely acclaimed in his time.  For good reasons -- think, for example, of the electric light bulb -- journalists reported on him prolifically and sometimes breathlessly as his work brought benefits to the individual and the community.

Edison eventually put his attention, creativity and perspiration to work on building tools needed by the embryonic motion picture industry.  This led to his 1908 formation of the Motion Pictures Patent Company (also called the Edison Trust).  Despite the Sherman Antitrust Act, Edison was attempting to monopolize the production of motion pictures.  

The MPPC's seven year life-span was spent mostly in controversy, conflict and court.  During that time much of the industry decamped to the part of Los Angeles, California known as Hollywood as a way of  putting physical distance between themselves and the grasp of the Trust.  By the time the Trust was broken the players in motion picture production were committed to Hollywood being their base of operations. 

The genius of Edison deserves to be remembered for his positive contributions.  But genius -- especially the type described in Edison's definition -- gets nudged by unexpected events to pop up again and again, providing astonishingly satisfying end results.

Here's a reader's commentary that begins at the intersection of journalism and genius and goes from there to tell two stories that were "news" to me.  -- Garry Herron, ed.

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Dear LWC,

I don’t know about you but I am getting a little weary of hearing about Elon Musk. Yes, yes, I know, he is widely considered a genius and reportedly the richest person in the world. He upended the automobile industry, shoots rockets into space and for $44 billion now controls your ability to tweet.

Good for him, although maybe not so much for the Twitter staff members forced out. Capitalism needs investors, disrupters to shake things up and so forth. But must the media seemingly follow every minor detail of his life? Recently The Washington Post food section “Voracious” was simply gaga (sorry, Lady Gaga, I couldn’t help myself) to announce it had learned that Mr. Musk’s favorite drink is, drum roll, Diet Coke! The Post went on to treat us to a nap inducing history of Diet Coke.

Please, Washington Post, stop. What he does with Tesla, Space X and Twitter is indeed newsworthy but I suspect most of us do not care a whit whether Mr. Musk drinks Diet Coke, Pepsi or Jack Daniels whisky. Oops, I hope I didn’t give him any ideas about buying a whisky company.

I think it’s time to give a shout out to some of our perhaps under appreciated geniuses. My first nominee is Robert Kern, who passed away in November at age 96 in Waukesha, WI. Do you have a portable emergency generator in your garage? You have Mr. Kern to thank for it.

In the mid 1950’s he was working to build motors for the railway industry but lost his job because of increased competition from the quickly expanding airline industry.  He adjourned to his garage and began working on his idea to develop emergency generators. His idea evolved into Generac Corporation which to this day makes 75% of the portable generators you find at Home Depot, Lowe’s, etc. He sold the company for about $1 billion in 2006 and became a philanthropist, donating $100 million to the Mayo Clinic as an example.

Next up is Marcus Urann, a farmer in Massachusetts. If you like to serve beautifully sliced and plated jellied cranberry sauce from a can at your holiday meal, Mr. Urann deserves your thanks. In 1912 he invented it! And, frankly, I think his canned Ocean Spray tastes better than the homemade sauce I make just to show I know my way around the kitchen. It takes 15 billion cranberries a year to make the canned sauce, and here’s a shout out to whoever figured out it takes 15 billion cranberries.

If you’ve gotten this far you might be wondering who I would nominate for my third under appreciated genius.  It would be me, of course, but my spouse might disagree and I certainly don’t want to appear bitter or jealous of Mr. Musk, so I hereby withdraw my nomination.  Elon earned his fame and fortune and he and Twitter can have at it.

To be fair, I first learned the above information about Mr. Kern and Mr. Urann from the reporting of the Smithsonian Magazine and New York Times, so thanks to them. My point is there are lots of under appreciated geniuses in our midst past and present, so perhaps the media could look for more of their stories and histories and report those, and forgo reporting on Mr. Musk’s beverage preference.

Right now I’m going to go into the kitchen and pop open a Diet Coke. Whatever you do this holiday season may it involve lots of time with your loved ones and a meal that includes a delicious can of jellied cranberry sauce!

Sincerely,

Guy Heston

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