You know very little. This is your daily message from Chad number 599 and this message is dedicated to the birthday girl Tina Moore. Happy birthday Tina!
You’ve probably never heard of Charles Kettering. I had never heard of him until going through his biography. He was an inventor holding 186 patents, founder of Delco and head of research from 1920-1947 at General Motors. His nickname was Ket. He knew the Wright brothers and was a pilot himself. Some say he logged more flight hours than anyone else.
There’s a well-circulated quote by Thomas Edison that goes, “We don’t know a millionth of 1% about anything.” Now think about how crazy a statement that comes from one of history’s most legendary thinkers. I am overwhelmed by human knowledge. It appears to me there is so much information out there. The reason I bring that up is Ket has that same belief that people really know very little. So he says, “I object to people running down the future. I’m going to live all the rest of my life there, and I would like it to be a nice place: polished, bright, glistening, and glorious. What I believe is that by proper effort, we can make the future almost anything we want to make it. In reality” — here’s the part that echoes Thomas Edison. “In reality, we’ve only begun to knock a few chips from the great quarry of knowledge that has been given to us to dig out and use.”
I want to contrast the difference between two people. One thinks he has things figured out and one believes no one has anything figured out. This is right before World War II, “Among the prominent Englishmen whom Ket met at this time was Sir Josiah Stamp, later known as Lord Stamp and was the Chief Economist of the Bank of England. Sir Josiah was negative to the introduction of ethyl gasoline into England. His arguments were based in part upon the idea that it is not possible to have a stable economic world if it is going to be upset continually by introduction of new inventions. “In 1938, Ket had a further experience with Lord Stamp, which he afterward related as follows. ‘I just returned to England from Germany. And knowing that over there, they were getting ready to go to war, I asked Lord Stamp whether or not England felt prepared to meet it. Lord Stamp replied that it was not necessary that England be prepared for war because Germany could not fight a long war. In support of his view, he pulled out a piece of paper and set up the relative percentages of Germany’s gold reserves and various other indexes, which are commonly used in rating a nation’s commercial ability or industrial activity.
He said that with Germany’s index so low, she would go broke before she could even start an important war. This opinion of his proved to be a great fallacy, of course. And it was unfortunate that Lord Stamp and his wife were killed by a German bomb, which fell out their home outside London.'” Ket continues, “I should like to have been able to discuss this subject with him further, but I’m not sure whether economists and inventors will go to the same place when they die.” That’s the end of the quote from the biography of Charles “Ket” Kettering titled Professional Amateur.
When I heard that story it impressed upon me the fact that no one has everything figured out. Someone has said there are no adults. I like to think that there are really wise people who have their hands on the levers of the world. I don’t want to scare you, but there aren’t. No one has everything figured out. This should simply humble you and excite you. There’s so much to discover, explore, and know. Don’t resist change, new information, and new ways of doing things. You should encourage the inventors and continue to stretch yourself. In the end, you will have only knocked a few chips from the quarry.
