Car jack speeder

[mklotz]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery

I think "simultaneous invention" is often driven by the availability of a tool that can be adapted to the problem.

The ubiquitous battery-powered, hand-held motor is a good example. As soon as you have a Dremel or a hand drill (or, it seems here, an angle grinder), you can think of various jobs to which it can be adapted and then it's just a matter of making the connector to connect the motor to the problem. I know that my car jack speeder was driven by the thought that the easily controlled low speed, high torque of an electric screwdriver would be perfect for operating a scissor jack. (It helped immensely that I'm old, stiff, lazy and have no patience for inferior designs.)

The real genius comes when the distance between the newly discovered tool and the problem is very great. Henry Ford saw a moving (dis)assembly line in a slaughterhouse and realized that he could use that to speed car assembly. Tesla's observation that two out of phase coils produced an electric force vector was an even greater invention. In Tesla's case, the newly available "tool" wasn't anything physical, but rather a theoretical observation.

Perhaps the greatest leap was that of Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner who noted that bashing an atom with one neutron produced two neutrons (and a tiny bit of energy). What the world did with that "new tool" is both astounding and terrifying.