Sunday, November 17, 2013

A tool to ease birth. Designed by a car mechanic [Article]

The idea came to Jorge Odón, an Argentine car mechanic, as he slept. Somehow, he said, his unconscious made the leap from a YouTube video he had just seen on extracting a lost cork from a wine bottle to the realization that the same parlor trick could save a baby stuck in the birth canal.

As one of the comments on this article says, it is a good reminder that  truly revolutionary breakthroughs rarely, if ever, come from someone immersed in the field and practicing the discipline. It's always an outsider, unfettered by the beliefs and paradigms of the present state that can think clearly and see what is really needed.