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The blue LED was supposed to be impossible—until a young engineer proposed a moonshot idea.

  • admiralteal@kbin.social
    511·
    10 months ago

    Makes me presume power harassment.

    On the flip side, he was using up millions and millions of company dollars on his singleminded pursuit with no obvious results to show for it. Had things gone even a little differently, things would’ve gone very differently indeed. Hard to imagine most companies tolerating an employee flat ignoring instruction to change to another task when their old task was proving fruitless.

    Hindsight is clear enough here, but in context it was pretty nuts what the guy was doing.

    Makes you wonder how many great inventors of revolutionary tech were shoved off their path by dumb luck.

    • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      91·
      10 months ago

      Probably far fewer than never had the opportunity to realize they could be great in the first place.

      If greatness is one in a billion we have 8 (boy would the richest like us to believe that!). If it’s one in 100 million (I’m bad at math. I think it’s like) 80. Or if it’s one in a million, that’s 350 in the US alone. I’m inclined to lean toward the later, after all, if there aren’t a lot of greats waiting to be called up, how the fuck did we beat the odds by such a large margin??

      • deur@feddit.nlEnglish
        11·
        10 months ago

        The greats are beat into submission by capitalism and the horrors they went through to achieve greatness (usually a garbage childhood of some variety)