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Blog 473 – 11.22.2016

A Tribute To Our Ingenuity

Today is my birthday and shortly after my eighteenth birthday while in Basic Training for the United States Army I received one of the finest examples of our ingenuity as a species. It was a P38, an small compact but very useful little can opener. It came with the first C Rations I ever received. C Rations were ready to eat meals for soldiers in the field and almost everything including crackers and cookies came in a can to keep them fresh and crunchy. That precious little P38 was a tool no soldier could afford to be without. I still keep one handy just in case.

For the many years that I lived and worked in Houston there was a radio program on the U of H Public Radio Channel called “The Engines Of Our Ingenuity” where a professor at the University would extoll the virtues of some invention and the inventor. I found the program interesting and intriguing.

It once was thought that man’s ability to make tools was what separated him from all the other creatures. We have since discovered that other animals too make use of simple tools like handy sticks, rocks and the like to perform needed tasks.

“Necessity is the mother of invention” or so they say. Many are the tools we have made to make easier our tasks and less troublesome the repairs both around the house and all our mechanical and electrical inventions we have made and must continually fix to keep them working. Like a lot of guys I carry a swiss army knife with several tools combined with a cutting tool to include sissors and twezzers. My Boy Scout knife only had a blade, bottle opener, can opener, and a flat tipped screw driver. And those pocket knife can openers cannot hold a candle to the P38. Whoever came up with that one deserves a smart salute.

Your friends and fellow traveler,
David White