I have Covid. I dodged it for a while, but it hit me pretty hard. After being in bed for five days, I'm apparently feeling well enough to write about... balloons.
It's totally possible that I'm underestimating the demand for balloon-centric articles. My brain tells me people love to read about balloons, but this same brain had a fever just yesterday.
Why Anyone Can Invent Things
Before the Duffer brothers, we had the Montgolfier brothers. They lived in the 1700s in France, and were two of 16 children of Pierre Montgolfier! SIXTEEN KIDS! Today, that would make the news. (I assume there were different mothers involved for 16 reasons. The the encyclopedia didn't mention the mother, only the father.)
If you have 16 children, probably at least one of them is going to do something special. And sure enough, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne were the two Montgolfier brothers that made the family name famous.
The brothers discovered that heated air caused large lightweight bags to float into the air. Their first big test flight sent "a sheep, rooster, and a duck aloft as passengers." That was in September 1783, and a couple months later, humans did it.
This is how we have hot air balloons today, and I can't believe I've never been in one before. Have you?
What We've Lost Over Time
Aside from the horrible diseases, lack of technology, lack of medicine, and... Okay, nevermind with that point. The 1700s sucked. But not all things back then were worse. We have most certainly lost something in our transition from hot air balloon experimentation to people making millions of dollars dancing on tik tok.
Humans have advanced so much I think it's easy to feel as if there's nothing left to discover or invent. Every new generation is the most spoon-fed generation yet. We have unfathomable conveniences, information, and technology because our ancestors did some amazing things.
When you're born into an incredible world that has almost everything, you might feel like you have nothing to offer. Most of us have no chance to come close to a humanity-changing invention. But there are two important points to consider.
1) Inventions and discoveries are not a zero sum game, they are exponential
Ben Franklin's discovery of electricity and the Montgolfier bros hot air balloon brilliance don't detract from other inventions. They enhance them! Think about all of the inventions made possible with electricity. Most of the modern world rests upon it!
Or on a smaller level, consider the improvements made to hot air balloons since the 1783 version. Prior inventions and discoveries are powerful building blocks for even better things. Don't let any invention dissuade you from creating something yourself or iterating upon it.
2) Inventions are independently valuable
There is zero chance that the hot air balloon cracks the 100 most important inventions of all time list. And yet, it happened and it's great!
The most famous inventions are ones that changed the course of humanity. Cars, planes, the internet. And that's why people get intimidated about "inventing something." But invention happens on multiple levels. For example, you can invent a new personal morning routine. Or you can invent a new approach to sticking with morning routines, tailored specifically to you. A few more examples:
- If you invent a more effective way to discipline your kids, that can change your whole family's life.
- Invent a new family tradition. Make up a name for it and make it special. It can last for GENERATIONS in your family. That's a cool thought, isn't it?
- If you invent a way to completely ward off sharks in the ocean for paranoid swimmers, you can give someone a feeling of freedom that they were too scared to experience before.
- If you can invent a better or faster way to cook eggs, well, I'll be impressed because there's a ton of competition for that one!
Don't leave inventing to "inventors." Anyone can invent things, and at any time or age. And it doesn't have to change the world to matter. If it changes one person's world, even just your own, it's a great invention.
Cheers,
Stephen Guise
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