ROMANCE OF THE NEW

Streaming to Washington on the Acela, what you notice mostly is not the landscape but the dreamscape.  Something about the grand romance of the rails takes you over as details and specifics fly by the window.

I was on my way to give a presentation about how crucial the just-right mix of information and exploration was to the student of design.  The right training, the perfect design curriculum, the proper balance between practicality and vision.

But sitting there and hearing the whir of the train, I was reminded that at the heart of a successful life in
design is something more ineffable…the urge to create, the romantic need to solve problems by making new things.  This mysterious part of the equation is more gift than achievement.  The love affair with
the new that designers must have is something intangible, a talent we can only hope to inspire.

Which brought to mind Granville T. Woods.

Here was a black man forced to leave school at the age of ten, who grew up in the restricted America of the 19th century, with barely a prayer for success.  Yet in spite of all the obstacles placed before him, Woods still managed to spend a life in prolific creation, eventually awarded 6o patents for electrical and mechanical inventions.
That is what I call an urge to make something new.

Born in Columbus, Ohio on April 23, 1856, Woods learned his skills the old fashioned way…on the job.  Forced by the times and circumstances to earn a living, he left school to serve an apprenticeship in a machine shop where he learned the trades of machinist and blacksmith.  Throughout the 1870s Woods had a series of jobs including fireman on the Danville and Southern railroad, engineer in a shop,
and Chief Engineer of the ironsides, a British steamer.  From each of these he added to his understanding of mechanics but he also knew that education was essential for developing the abilities so when he could afford it, he took classes in night school and sought out tutors for private lessons.

Somehow in the midst of all this work and travel, and against all the social forces working against him, Woods was able to invent a series of devices for the growing industry of the electric railways.  By 1880, he had established the Woods Electrical Company in Cincinnati, Ohio with the help of his
brother Lyates.  From this base he sold many of his inventions to some of the country's largest corporations…AT&T, General Electric, the Westinghouse Air Brake Company.  Ironically, many of these same companies had hiring restrictions that would have barred Woods from employment in their work force.
 

In 1888 he developed and patented a system for overhead electric conducting lines for railroads, which aided in the development of the railroad system found in contemporary metropolitan cities like Chicago, St. Louis, and New York.  By 1889 he filed his first patent for an improved steam-boiler furnace and in 1892 a complete Electric Railway System of his design was operating at Coney Island in New York.  This was a railway with no exposed wires, secondary batteries, or slotted causeways, and it marked the wave of the future.

Communication devices from moving trains, train tracking systems, advances in air brakes, the list goes on and on until his death in New York City in 1910.  But this is not simply another catalog of the many inventions of a clever man.  That part is true enough.  The real lesson we can take from the life of Granville T. woods is that creativity finds a way.  It is not about the curriculum but about the desire.  If you are lucky enough to get in touch with that urge at the core of your psyche – the one that loves to tinker, to try, to redo – then you may have a chance to overcome obstacles, teach yourself how to learn, design a thing, and even change the world.

As my train pulled into Union Station, I was revising my presentation to include the romance of design…but how to include that in design education was another matter entirely.