Who Invented Flow Injection?
5.1.13.
A flash of inspiration is like lightening in the night: it offers a glimpse of a landscape yet to be explored. If one is lucky, and looking in the right direction, novel features will briefly appear, but it may take days, even years, before everything becomes fully visible. Inventing means convincing ourselves first that the goal is worth pursuing, then urging others to support it, and at last, convincing the skeptics to accept. Discovery is not a straightforward process, as often presented in the literature. Ideas appear, are discarded, and reappear, either in one’s own laboratory or elsewhere. Technology and infrastructure must be ripe to bring concepts to fruition. Thus, cries of Eureka and patent priority dates arealmost irrelevant, as they are mere punctuation marks in a long book of inventing.
It is not a single person at a given moment who makes an invention. It takes a lifetime, and the help of many, to create something of value.
Elo and I started the process and pushed the cart along, sometimes in the wrong direction. We have been blessed to be able to convince many, and to gain friends in the process. We were lucky to conceive a method that is versatile and useful, and is continuously enhanced by other technologies as they became available. Similar to chromatography, flow injection will continue to grow and serve. When we are long gone, the technique will continue to expand by being renewed and applied by those who became convinced and, thankfully, joined us.
Inventing is not a science. It is an art
and great deal of luck.
