Thanks for the comment. I agree about Cai Lun’s significance, but note that he’s listed second because it’s in chronological order.
In a comment above, I made the case for why Bell, Edison, and Jobs, to take three on that site’s list, could be seen as open to conversation with figures like Latimer and Boykin, among other possibilities. Again, as I noted there, I’m not suggesting that replacement is necessarily the goal–but rather that we need to recognize the role that some of these historical and cultural narratives have played in creating our lists and memories, and work on adding to them and seeing where that conversation takes us (as we’re all doing here!).
Thanks,
Ben
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haha, woops, missed that…
As to your other point, I don’t see where race, ethnicity, etc., are relevant. In some cases like Edison, the fact that Edison owned the lab means he gets all the credit, and ALL the people who worked for him don’t. And almost every one of them was white.
I’m sure Cai Lun had people that gave him input on things that was very valuable to him, and we will never hear about them. In fact, many have said he was credited with an invention of someone of a “lower class”. But all you hear about is Cai Lun. Had nothing to do with anything racial or ethnic. Archimedes probably worked with others too. Roebling designed the Brooklyn Bridge. But he obviously had assistance from Engineers and such.
Let’s not forget this article is titled the “Myth of the Individual White Inventor”. But, as was accurately pointed out by another poster, the title should be the “Myth of the Individual Inventor”. There is nothing mythical about the fact that whites have done a lot of inventing, with Asians clearly being in the number 2 spot. It’s a matter of historical record.
And here we go again.
Another thread derailed.
Sometimes a historical story is just an interesting historical story. I can’t believe that some people are so thin-skinned they jump to any trivial point they can think of to discredit the author.
I’m telling you, this is a new trolling protocol under development…
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And unless I’m mistaken Wozniak chose to avoid the spotlight. Not at all the kind of dynamic you’re describing here.
At least that’s my recollection, having lived through it.
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I believe that’s correct, yeah. But I was thinking more about our collective narratives of “the inventor of the computer” or the like–as I’ve seen it, such narratives including Turing, Wozniak (especially for “the personal computer”), a long-ago inventor named Babbage, but never make any mention of Boykin’s vital contributions to the personal computer technology, among others. Each example and case are definitely complex and with their own details (which I appreciate your adding here for sure), but I think the broader trend in what and how we remember is there as well.
Thanks,
Ben
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As was already pointed out, Jobs was not an ‘inventor’ of anything.
A technical visionary, certainly. A very talented industrial designer, absolutely.
But not responsible for actually creating any of the devices the Apple fanboys are so in love with.
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The fact of the matter is, Boykin’s place in the development of the computer is at best a footnote. He was a very smart man, and developed a number of useful inventions, one of which was tangentially related to the computer. Variants of his ideas, along with the ideas of literally tens of thousands of other people, are used in the construction of computers today.
But Alan Turing, Claude Shannon, etc. made fundamental advances that made computers possible. Even Wozniak, while not in their class, came up with ideas that changed what computers are and how we use them. Boykin is not in this class.
Above you claimed that you were just “asking questions,” which is a kind of cowardly way to defend your piece. If you think Boykin belongs in the same class as the luminaries I mention above, that’s great, but you need to explain why. Incidentally, it kindasorta looks like your expertise is in history and maybe literature, not science and computing, so I don’t really know why you would have developed an opinion on this topic at all, let alone express that opinion in a widely-read blog.
Also you mentioned in an above comment that “you would argue” that the ‘individual inventor’ and ‘white inventor’ stereotypes are related. You wrote the piece, though. Don’t say what you would argue - if you want to argue something, argue it.
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Thanks for the comment. One of my central scholarly interests, while I am indeed grounded in lit and history (and in American Studies), is in our national narratives and collective memories–the stories we tell about our history, identity, community. This piece, like most of mine here on TPM to date, was focused on contextualizing a current event in relationship to such collective narratives, in this case the ways we most often (to my mind) remember inventors and inventions. And on the role that both heroic individuals and white men have long played in those collective narratives, for the presence of both of which I was indeed arguing.
Within the history of any one invention, including the computer to be sure, I agree that there are specific details and elements that demand closer attention than one op ed can give. That’s always the case for my TPM topics, to be clear, and that’s one big reason why I greatly value the comments sections here at TPM. And it’s not either/or: we can engage with and challenge and revise overarching national narratives while also trying to flesh out the nuanced specifics of particular cases, and I see these pieces of mine as one step in the long, important process of doing that combination of things.
Thanks,
Ben
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I commend you for engaging with commenters about your piece. I wish more authors did that.
However, I do think the general tenor of this comments thread is more than just a “conversation” or “one step in [a] long important process” or a “dialogue” or whatever. I think there is a strong undercurrent of constructive criticism here. In my own opinion (and reading between the lines of other people’s opinions as well) you need to be more rigorous in your research, state your conclusions more definitively, and make your arguments more explicit.
You seem to fall back on words like “conversation” a little too readily. These words don’t really mean very much, and don’t say very much. A good way to start a real “conversation” is by stating a conclusion, clearly and logically. Then, when others respond to it, they will have something to respond to.
In short, this piece, and pieces you wrote for TPM in the past (like the one about the lion) weren’t terrible, but they also weren’t very good. Rather than defending yourself against every piece of criticism you see in the comments section, you should think about taking this criticism and using it to sharpen your voice when you write your next piece.
Thanks for the follow up, and I appreciate the feedback, as always. I’ve been writing for TPM at least every two weeks for 10 months now, so I’ve written a lot of pieces to date, and I’m not confident that you’ve read them all nor even enough of them to be able to be so definitive about what I have and haven’t done in them. But I’m certainly working to strengthen my writing, here as in every part of my career, and will take your perspective and constructive criticism (and that of others) to heart as I do so.
Ben
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Awesome. I didn’t mean to be harsh, and I definitely haven’t read all of your pieces. It’s possible that the ones I haven’t read (which I suspect is most of them) are universally awesome.
Blog pieces are prime examples of expository writing. I see you went to Harvard, so maybe I can make my point in a less a$$holish, more relatable way: think back to the fall of 1996. It is a brisk, Octoberesque morning in Cambridge, and a young Ben Railton is trudging through the Yard on his way to Expos. He knows that today is the day that his preceptor will return the paper he turned in last week, titled “Ahmed Mohamed and the Myth of the Individual White Inventor,” and he is understandably nervous about his grade.
Are you confident that Young Ben will get an A? Probably not.
This is another in what appears to be a lame new narrative form on TPM whereby writers tenuously link their pet historical grievance to today’s big headline (“Oooh a news hook!!”).
This is a pretty consistent theme in Railton’s columns here in particular, without much regard for historical context. With regard to this piece, the real issue is that the “lone inventor” is the myth. They are almost all white because blacks have been sidelined as leading investigators for most of US history, but that’s the intersection of two different issues. The notable (and noted) exception is Carver, and I’m going to bet there were a lot of uncredited people behind his “inventions” as well (many if not most of whom were also black).
Oh, and Steve Wozniak did not invent the computer. I mean, come on, there’s not even a myth about that.
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The personal computer, I should have said for Wozniak–which is the computer for which Boykin’s innovations have been most significant, and for which there most definitely is such a myth:
http://library.fora.tv/2006/09/26/Steve_Wozniak
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/compersonal.htm
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The majority of comments seem to be emotionally invested in this conventionally accepted myth of invention. I think Professor Railton has buttressed his argument by our collective reaction.
Another fine piece, Professor; thank you.
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HeY GhOsT! CaT geT your ShIFt KeY?
Part the first:
“The myth of the individual white inventor,” with emphasis on ‘individual.’
What happened to Ahmed Mohamed didn’t happen to a team of teenage inventors. I haven’t read any account suggesting he built the clock with friends. Yes, he built upon others’ work, but none of them got in trouble alongside him.
So how do mythical narratives and histories about individual inventors weave themselves with contextual relevance into the Ahmed Mohamed incident? Indeed, Mohamed comes closer to personifying the individual inventor myth rather than debunking it.
Part the second:
“The myth of the individual white inventor,” with emphasis on ‘white inventor.’
In the article the author says, “…[T]hose narratives are quite simply incomplete without a far more prominent place for the contributions of Lewis Latimer (among many others) as well.”
It’s the parenthetical phrase that caught my eye. Yes, Louis Latimer deserves greater mention. But so do other notable collaborators who happened to have been white. You gave Latimer a lot of print and none to white men.
That said, is U.S. history as we know it largely white-based? Absolutely. Virtually all of our great stories and myths revolve around whites. It’s called bigotry.
Wrap up:
Discussions about inventors (lone or otherwise) and race/religion is but a speck in the vast universe of conversations about race/religion that we’re not having. In fact, framing the Ahmed Mohamed incident into an “inventor” narrative may be shortchanging the larger conversations about both race/religion and the adoption of overreaching zero-tolerance rules at schools in the post-Columbine era.
Here’s a suggestion on how to do so: Point out that Edison was foremost a salesman, barely an inventor. His biggest legitimate claim to fame was setting up a research lab, while many of the inventions he’s known for were actually created largely by others. Tesla, by contrast, was your classic crazy genius, who sat around in his workshop inventing pretty much the entire underpinning of the modern electric grid while other people (mostly Westinghouse) commercialized them. The two differences between them? Edison was an excellent salesman, and he was born American. Tesla immigrated to America as an adult (and doesn’t Nikola sound kind of un-American anyways?). Best to just teach about the “proper” white American.
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The author, by joining in, invited the discussion.
How does disagreement constitute trolling?
History.
@MrComments has one, available for all to see.
No, disagreement does not constitute trolling.
Three words–George Washington Carver.
