Your Creative Power by Alex Osborn

Author:Alex Osborn
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
Published: 2013-04-15T14:00:00+00:00

3.

“What if the weight were less?” is likewise a good question. Early in his career, Henry Ford asked that about freight-cars. Unfortunately, it was not until 30 years later that even a slight start was made along this line. A crying need of the nation is lighter, faster freight-cars, and lower freight-costs. Tariffs have become so high that ingenuity is now aroused to lighten the weight of packaging.

Part of Kettering’s genius has been to ask, “Why does this have to be so heavy?” It was an accepted belief that Diesels had to weigh too much ever to be used on automobiles. Kettering ignored the text-books and asked, “Why not make them lighter?” With the help of his researchers at Dayton, he found the main answer was a new injector so infinitely precise that it would blow into the engine just the right amount of vaporized fuel, at high pressure and at just the right intervals. Diesel engines, in relation to their power, can now weigh 10 times less than before Kettering asked his unorthodox question.

There’s big business in fire-hose and competition is keen. B. F. Goodrich had its share but wanted more. A creative engineer asked, “Why can’t we make our hose lighter?” It takes more time to drag heavier hose up a ladder, and a minute thus lost may mean a lost life. B. F. Goodrich created a new rubber compound that is lighter yet stronger, and also lasts longer. The new fire hose is 18 per cent lighter than ever before and can be put into action in far less time. With this, a new Koroseal gasket was developed—one which can be tightened by hand and coupled in half the time.

Such time-saving is important, and suggests another question along the less-so trail, “Could this be done faster?” That’s what led Birdseye to his triumph. The freezing of food was not new. Birdseye’s discovery was a way to freeze so much faster that the freezing would penetrate the inside of the tiniest cell. He then brainstormed the question of how to adapt this technique to the drying of food, and after years of effort found a way to reduce the time of dehydration by over 16 hours.

America’s efficiency in producing low-priced goods at high hourly labor-cost has partly come from questions like, “How could this be speeded up?” . . . “What waste motions could be cut out?” Without creative thinking and time-studies along this line, prices would be higher and purchasers would be fewer. Similar attacks on the time-element have likewise improved retailing. The success of cafeterias has been due to saving time as well as money. The growth of Super Markets is based on time-saving as well as other elements.

Even in home-problems, the time-question may be worth exploring. The child who does badly at school may be spending too much time on listening to radio or on some other time-consumer. It’s a wise parent who, in her attack on such a problem, includes a query as to how to shorten such periods.

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