As pioneers of aviation took to air (not skies), in their human powered mechanical contraptions, what must have been said and thought?Complicated pulleys and chain systems enclosing a lunatic, perhaps!
Or overly optimistic cyclists with designs above their head, even.
Yet they left us with beginnings of international and inter-planetary travel, its’ destinations, physical and figurative.
What of scientists and chemists, self-sent to grave through misadventure and experiment?
And their journals, which were and are hard copy legacies unbound by limiting confines of grave? Something was learned, in big picture!
A spark of madness, as it seemed, was ignition source for technological explosions.
Original computer models had lighting sequences, which was something, but couldn’t have evolved without enthusiasm, imagination, finance and time, into what it is today. At that point in history, it couldn’t have happened elsewhere on planet, in same way and speed. The formula for advancement would have been incomplete. Indeed, it couldn’t have happened at that rate, without mass optimism and lots of people pulling in same direction.
You see, something hypothetical or seemingly ridiculous can be some thing brilliant. The first aviators understood that a bird held no magical power, whatever about altitude. If these men couldn’t fly, well then they would have learned new engineering techniques, along way.
What dreams will come for generations of today’s’ prosperous societies where children can access resources to overcome relatively minor learning disabilities, opposed to aggressive and ignorant resources that successfully placed previous generations in back of schoolroom? The visual vantage point that it offered hardly compensated for hearing loss or impairment perceived as indifference.
What of premature or “early” babies now breathing air where it always was, but previously too young to attain it? Or thousands of people whose real lives were initiated “IN VITRO” (in glass)? New people that wouldn’t have been, is result.
Likewise with those having hearts incapable of pumping cycles expected for life, some thirty years ago. Not new people with more life, is result.
The “borrowed time” cliché is now redundant, somewhat ridiculous and a primitive view.
Modern medical procedures have made time it seems, with clock of yesterday being wound with hand of today.
Blindness and its’ confederates have been “blind-sided” by cutting and therapeutic tooling and processes, initially designed to produce coherent light. The laser is lighting way with eyesight improved beyond its’ so called natural state of efficiency, with respect to age. Glasses and contact lenses are dispensed to recycle bin, and rarely missed, where finance exists.