| Invention |
September 4, 2017
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| There are many things that I can't understand in the world. And sometimes it's close to us. He is an inventor and my classmate from high school. He used to work for an electric appliance company and quit and started his new office recently. While working at the company, his job was to improve some electric appliances for better use as well as to be more competitive. For example, one can improve a printer for a PC by making it smaller, moving faster, more silent, printing more precisely at lower costs, etc., etc. He was tired of improving things. His last job was to decrease the noise of a washing machine by 5 decibels. It took several months. Using the early retirement system, he quit. He knew that improvement is necessary for a better life, but he wanted to invent something more creative. I stopped by his new office on my way to one of my customers. When I opened the door of the office, he was assembling something. It looked like a desk lamp. He looked at me, smiled and said, "My first invention is completed." I sat down and he started to explain. "This isn't a simple desk lamp. Can you see these?" I could see a set of buttons and a  monitor on the base plate of the lamp stand. He continued, "Using these buttons, you can set two numbers. The first number is one to 99 and the second number is one to 9,999. If you set both numbers to 'one'c" On the monitor, there appeared '1/1'. "c nothing will happen." He shifted the small lever from 'off' to 'on'. The light was lit. "Like this," he said. I didn't know what he was doing. Next, he set '1/2'. Then shifted the lever. Nothing happened. The light wasn't lit. Then he returned the lever to 'off' and then shifted it to 'on'. This time it was lit. He repeated and the result was 'lit', 'no-lit', 'no-lit', 'lit', 'lit', 'no-lit'. He looked at my face which was still unclear, and set '2/3' and started to repeat 'on' and 'off'. The result was 'lit', 'no-lit', 'lit', 'no-lit', 'lit', 'lit', 'lit', 'lit', 'no-lit'. I finally figured out that '2/3' meant two times lit when three times turned on. Maybe it occurs at random. I asked, "So what?" He replied, "That's it." I didn't understand. "What do you mean that's it?" He said, "It means this light has that function, and this is my first invention." I became uneasy and said, "Ok. You invented a light which is sometimes lit and sometimes isn't. And who will buy, and for what purpose is this unique product?" I wanted to use 'odd' instead of 'unique'. He nonchalantly said, "I don't know," "So, you invented a product that you don't know who will use it?" He said nothing. I sighed and said like saying to a child, "Products should reflect consumers' needs. Products should target some range of consumers. I learned so at my company's lecture." He looked to be offended and said, "In this society, too many products exist. From the plain method that you mentioned, nothing new is produced. I'm producing something that nobody has thought about. Could anybody imagine about the Internet before it existed?" What he said seemed to have a point, but this product is another story, I thought. He should learn the toughness of business through his failure, I thought. About a month and a half later, when I stopped by his office again. I had a little bit of a gloomy feeling. I actually didn't want to see him fail. His product, Chance Light (He named his first invention so.) probably never sold, so I should say something nice to cheer him up. I breathed deeply and opened the door of the office. As soon as he looked at me, he smiled. I felt relieved, but a little bit of pity. He reported about his sales. He sold two, and has received another 8 orders. His two customers gave him an email expressing their impression about the light: Customer A: Man; Mid 50s. When he saw this product on a web shop on the Internet, he instinctively felt it would work. He set his light '6/7'. It means that the light was NOT lit once every seven times. The first day that the light was delivered, at night, he shifted the lever to 'on'. It was lit. He sighed and went to the refrigerator and took a can of beer and drank and breathed deeply. He enjoyed drinking more alcohol. The second day and the third day were the same. The incident occurred on the fourth day. He shifted the lever 'on' and the light wasn't lit. He was looking at the light for a long time. On this day, he didn't drink for the first time in half an year. One month passed. He didn't drink 4 times in this month. The next month, he set the light '5/7'. At night, the light wasn't lit. He felt irritated a little. Then he thought that if the next day it wasn't lit, he was supposed not to drink two days in a row for the first time in c he couldn't remember. He felt fear for the first time. He started to regret buying this machine. The next night came. The light wasn't lit again. But different from his expectation, there was no fear. Instead, he felt somehow relieved, and enjoyable. He didn't hate this feeling. Customer B: Woman; Mid 30s. She hesitated to buy this. After a week she purchased it. She put in for 1 time in 3 years. She calculated 365 multiplied by 3 and set '1/1,095'. And she shifted the lever 'on'. The light wasn't lit, of course. She sighed deeply. She took a book and started to study accounting. She works at a bank as a counter clerk. Her main job is to deal with bankbooks. She wanted to do a more intelligent job but the bank wouldn't allow her the chance. She thought to quit many times, but the salary was too good to quit. She gave herself 3 years to quit her job, when the light was lit, she would quit. In the meantime, she would study according to prepare for her next job. This gave her momentum. Reading their emails, I apologized to my friend about my remarks. What he had said was right. We shouldn't limit our customers' needs by thinking normally. "Common sense is the enemy of invention." I said. He nodded and told about the next invention he was thinking about now. It was an umbrella which has holes. I was speechless. I asked him who would use this umbrella. He said he had no idea. We repeated the conversation like the last time. |
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*lit: ι
*reflect :½f·ι
*instinctively :ΌΟIΙ
*enjoyable :ωυΘAy΅’