In praise of inventors – and visionaries too

The award for the most hideous TV moment of 2012 goes to NBC — and their coverage of the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. ‘Apparently there’s going to be a tribute to someone called Tim Berners-Lee.’ ‘If you haven’t heard of him, we haven’t either,’ giggles co-anchor Meredith Vieira. Then, with no evident irony, ‘We could look him up on the web.’

The recognition given to inventors is a strange thing. It isn’t helped by the fact that, with rare exceptions, they are not the most telegenic of people, putting their efforts into inventing things rather than explaining them. (George Stephenson, inventor of the steam locomotive, had an additional problem: so impenetrable was his Geordie accent that on trips to London he was accompanied by an interpreter.)

And inventors almost always have difficult personalities. Everyone I have met who worked with Steve Jobs always describes the man in prophetic terms — but their last sentence is always the same: ‘Personally, he was an asshole.’