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THE 50 BEST INVENTIONS OF THE YEAR
In the age of Steve |o!s, 4's all aboyt pelfecting
the finaTproduct. Nobody remembers the guy
who hadthe idea in the first Place
BY LEV GROSSMAN
ELL ME WHAT YOU THINK OF happened? How did inventors lose their
when you read the word inven- divine aura? When did scientific innovator.
(If ProfessorJack Gallant of tion stop being sex12I place the blame,
Berkeley, Calif.,were here and reluctantly, onthe late, great Steve |obs.
youwere inhis fMRI machine, That's to take nothing awayfromlobs,
he could read your mind and tell you him- a true genius who revolutionized at least
self. Butmore of him anon) I'lltellyou four industries. But an inventor he was
what I think of: a little guy with white not. What ]obs did was perfect other peo-
hair andawhite lab coatfrom an oldDisple's inventions. He optimized them. He
neycartoon. He's tinkeringwith an old- hadthewill andthe skill andthe caliper
fashioned computer-you can tell it's a eye to nail down the numbers to the far-
cdmputer because it has a lightbulb stich right decimal places. He buffed andpol-
ing out of it. He looks like Christopher ished other people's ideas until they
Lloyd in Back to the Future.
gleamedwith the holylight of irresistible
I think of either that or a sad sack in a ietail commodities. |obs wasnit an idea
plaid blazer who in the r96os came up man; he was a remix artist.
with a cleverideathat some giant corpo- SteveWozniak he was aninventor.
ration took all the credit for-the guy in Charles Thacker, Butler Lampson and
that movie about the guy who invented Douglas Engelbart were inventors-they
intermittent windshield wipers. I think werethe guys atXerox PARC fromwhom
Greg Kinnear played him.
fobs borrowed much of the look and feel of
It wasn't always like this. Inventors the original Macinto sn''s revolutionary
used to be cool. They used to be towering, graphical user interface. But hardly any-
romantic figures, rogue geniuses like Leobody knows their names. What poor basnardo
da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin and tardinvented the first digital music player?
Nikola Tesla, who called down lightning Who invented the tablet computer? The
and stole the holy fire of the gods.If there smart phone? I donlt know. You don't know
had been movies back then, these men either.They were never on the cover of
would have been played by Taylor Lautner. Trun. But we all know who came up with
But all that has changed. Now they're not the iPod andthe iPad andthe iPhone. He's
even played by George Clooney. What been onthe cover eighttimes.
IIME November 28, zorr