Useful inventions need financial backing

The story on Ann Makosinski, a young Filipino-Canadian who invented a flashlight with no batteries so a friend in Mindanao would be able to read after sunset, really made me smile: A most clever invention using Peltier tiles, generating electricity from a hotter to a cooler area, and with few or no moving parts, is staggering in its utter simplicity! (“Fil-Canadian invents body-heated flashlight,” Front Page, 3/24/14)

There have been other clever inventions that have proven useful, simple and cheap—like the bottle cap, bicycle reflectors, windproof blackout candles and inflatable car beds.

I myself was surprised to learn that the fluorescent lamp was invented by a Filipino, as was, of course, the karaoke machine. I’m sure there are many Filipinos whose clever ideas or inventions, which could truly make this nation wealthy, are languishing in futility due to lack of recognition and financial backing.

In Australia, the publicly funded Australian Broadcasting Corp. has a very popular program called “New Inventors” (available segments on YouTube) in which new inventors showcase their products. At the end of the program, the audience decides the winner. No cash prizes or trips to Disney World, just a chance to show whether their ideas could fly.

It was an Australian who invented the transponder, but he had to sell it to the Americans due to lack of financial backing at home. Likewise with the orbital car engine invented by Ralph Sarich: No one was interested in it until he went to

Detroit, where he didn’t have to wait long before it was recognized as original, and it fetched a good price.

The true wealth of a nation is its people and their own mental and spiritual resources. There must be plenty of young people who have ideas that can benefit all of humankind if they only get a chance to demonstrate them, and then get the financial backing for the marketing and distribution of their inventions. Don’t let poverty hold them back.

—WALTER PAUL KOMARNICKI,

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