A genius at work conjures up a professor with notebook standing over a Bunsen burner, a musician/composer furiously scribbling notes across a parchment, or an artist covered in paint agonizing over a brushstroke. I sometimes forget about the engineers; that is until I visited London’s Kew Bridge Steam Museum.
Kew Bridge was constructed in the 19th century to supply London with water. As I wandered through the museum looking at the world’s largest collection of steam pumping engines, the first thought that came to my mind was – genius. The second was – this took an enormous amount of effort and hard work.
According to Thomas A. Edison, we can all be geniuses.
“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
Lady Budd 
“By the sweat of your brow.” The stories are countless of those who worked long hours experiencing no success for a long time battling discouragement and failure and then “pop” it all came together for them. They are great role models.
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I agree! Have you ever noticed that when they say that he or she “made it overnight” they usually point to people in their 50’s or 60’s. Nothing is made “overnight.”
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We used to live just around the corner from the Kew steam museum – an amazing place and a wonderful testament to human excellence and endeavour. We often enjoy taking trips on steam trains and I always like to think of the (mostly) men who would have been responsible day in and day out for nurturing those magnificent beasts to journey around the country to arrive in the right places at the right time. What a sense of pride they must have felt at the end of their trip knowing they had deployed their technical expertise sufficiently well to make the engine work properly and without hitch, with no small measure of honest toil and labour thrown in along the way. A far cry from our days spent hunched over our computers….
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How insightful!! There is something about integrating physical and mental work that produces a sense of accomplishment. There is concrete confirmation of a job well done. We live in a world that depends on technology (what would I do without my computer). Yet, at the end of the day, when I hear the shut down signal, I am uncertain of the extent of my productivity beyond a series of graphs. Kew Station pays tribute to another age and reminded me that I need to be in the right place at the right time. Thank you so much for your comments…
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This is terrific!
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You made my day! Thank you for stopping by for a visit!!!
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