A recent posting on Ecosophia which was part of a series on the topic of American occultism, covered the subject of a grand old American tradition: the fine art of tinkering. In this case the kind of tinkering done by people often kindly referred to as ‘cranks’.
While Mr. Greer’s posting was occult oriented, he pointed out that while the majority of people regarded by those about them as ‘cranks’ often were out in left field in terms of what they were working on, not all were failures. One of the most notable inventions of the 20th century came out of a home bicycle shop run by a pair of tinkering brothers named Wilbur and Orville Wright who created the first successful powered flying machine large enough for a man to pilot. While another tinkerer Samuel Langley created a successful small unmanned steam powered aerodrome, the design did not scale up well and manned test flights of his design failed miserably.
Tinkering has long held a special place in American history, associated with do-it-yourselfers, inventors and the occasional mad scientist. While some dictionaries define tinkering as an attempt to improve something in a casual or desultory way, that is not the reputation it has had in American culture. For us, tinkering is a way to improve or invent. It can be a way to allow the tinkerer to become familiar with his or her material in such a way that innovation becomes more likely. And it still continues to hold a place dear in our hearts. What’s the first thing you do when something in your possession is no longer working right? If you’re like me, you go straight to YouTube looking for how-to videos.
Reading the comment section of Mr. Greer’s posting shows that tinkering is still alive and well. Commenters put up dozens of links to documents, some off-the-wall and but others profoundly useful. People don’t just love to tinker, they seem to have a deep seated yearning to tinker, something probably connected to our having opposable thumbs, as old as our urge to hunt, garden and gather. It’s not enough just to download a new ‘app’ on your I-phone anymore. People actually want to do things with their hands and express their creativity. There’s a feeling of self-mastery which comes when you do it yourself, something you don’t get when a machine does it all for you.
Long before everything went high-tech, there was no end to the gizmos cooked up to accomplish any task you could think of. The LowTech Magazine website is filled with articles describing various low tech ways of doing tasks which anyone with a little mechanical skill could achieve.
Who was the innovator who came up with this little beauty? A hot-water radiator with a built-in warming oven for keeping food hot until you are ready to bring it to the table? Talk about killing two birds with one stone!
While toilets are not really a new invention, the gradual adoption of the water closet and the indoor plumbing which went with it in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did much to end the cholera, dysentery and other water-borne diseases which shorted the lives of many people of those times. Not exactly high-tech but then it didn’t need to be. You just needed a good knowledge of valves, woodworking and how water flowed.
Tinkering is not enough, of course. In order for your tinkering to have results, you have to be a keen observer of your surroundings and spot an opportunity.
Noting that stone and brick walls would hold and release heat even after the sun went down, led to the creation of fruit walls. This innovation allowed for the cultivation of fruit trees far north of their usual range, taking advantage of the micro-climates the fruit walls created. The curving design of the above walls increased their stability and made small niches that fruit trees could be tucked into and trained to grow up on.
Tinkering is a non-stop process which requires great perseverance and a high tolerance for failure. Not everything you tinker on will pan out as hoped. Thomas Edison, a famous inventor from the late nineteen hundreds into the twentieth century, once remarked that he never failed, he just found 10,000 things that didn’t work. In the case of the incandescent bulb he was working on, he went through thousands of fiber types before he found a carbonized cotton filament that succeeded in giving the steady light he was searching for. In our instant gratification culture multiple failures may be hard to swallow but it’s essential if you want to reach that moment of success.
All too often these days, tinkering takes the form of pre-packaged kits with directions to be slavishly followed and creativity taking a back seat. We need to get away from this. With climate change, resource depletion and a host of other issues threatening us, genuine human creativity will need to come back front and center. It’s gotten us through quite a few bumpy spots and can do so again but the sooner we start, the better.
