[ExI] book and inventions

[William Flynn Wallace]

Yes, I enjoyed that book all the way through, and thanks for the Kellogg
bit.

I read a book called Adventures of a Curious Man, about Clarence Birdseye,
a terrific inventor.  Great reading.  He invented many things but is best
known for frozen food processing and his name lives on on those products.
Highly recommended.

bill w

On Tue, Feb 5, 2019 at 1:01 PM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

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> *From:* extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> *On Behalf
> Of *William Flynn Wallace
> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 5, 2019 10:13 AM
> *To:* ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> *Subject:* [ExI] book and inventions
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> "They All Laughed"  Ira Flatow
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> History of a few major inventions….
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> Coincidence?  Lack of marketing skills and presence of high level
> creativity?  How can anyone think that no one would want to talk to another
> person over
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> a line?  This is just stunning to me.
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> bill w
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> Cool this book sounds orders of magnitude more interesting than books on…
> cod.
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> It has long been known that inventors seldom successfully market their own
> inventions.  I have a good one for you that Flatow might have mentioned.
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> John Harvey Kellogg was a doctor in the old days, a vegetarian, who
> recognized that the typical American breakfast table had little redeeming
> quality.  So he invented corn flakes (along with a pile of other health
> foods) and started a cereal company.  Kellogg was an all-around genius, but
> he was stubborn in his way.  He was convinced that sugar was terrible, so
> he didn’t sweeten his corn flakes.  So… they weren’t palatable.
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> One of his patients, CW Post, realized that if he would just add
> sweetener, this stuff would sell like nobody’s business.  He was right.
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> Meanwhile John Kellogg’s brother William realized that it would ruin
> Kellogg’s if they didn’t act, so he proposed adding sweetener, which his
> brother refused.  So William Kellogg started a third company called
> Kelloggs.  In those days they had brand name law, but couldn’t stop a guy
> from starting a new company with his own name.  So there were two Kelloggs
> companies and Post Cereals.  Inventor John Kellogg soon lost out to his
> brother’s more palatable concoction.  Now we have Post vs Kelloggs to this
> day.  The original inventor of corn flakes has his own name on neither of
> the companies.
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> spike
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