The eccentric engineer [Network History]

LOTS OF THE best ideas in engineering come about through luck. That\´s not to say that engineers simply wander around bumping into things hoping that something will happen, but it is true that unintended consequence as often as intended ones can lead to a breakthrough. It is the job of the discoverer or inventor to be open to the possibility. As Louis Pasteur put it: "Chance only favours the mind which is prepared." A hundred years ago this June, a man with just such a mind was born in the town of New Carlisle, Ohio, and his story shows just how far an unintended consequence can go.