[Stoves] Designs

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Friends
 
>Lots of learning does not intelligence make.
 
I am solidly in the groping category I guess but I like to think that I am
unhibited by the catechisms that blinker the Stove Brahmins.  On the other
hand India has produced some really fine (and terrible) stoves so perhaps we
are all equally interested and nothing more!  At a meeting today I was
praising the fact that we have ill-defined goals for a large programme
because we have leeway to innovate as we go along.  Many planning people
can't deal with fuzzy tactics and on-the-ground- adaption in service of high
aims.  Reasonable goals and integrity are better than a known path. 
 
How's this: a big portion of the Fortune 500 CEO's (about 40%?) have no
tertiary education.
 
I define the problem not so much as a need for the training of minds, but as
the need to have well trained minds applied to the problems of the poor.
Until publication of great thoughts (from India) like "The Fortune at the
Bottom of the Pyramid" there was little popular recognition by big companies
that poor people have money to spend.  Coke and BIC are notable exceptions
and developed gigantic markets. 
 
Many people have well trained minds, many are educated, some are schooled.
If you 'belong to the school of..." you are more likely to have difficult
deviating from the trodden path.  With stoves this manifests as categorical
insistence on shibboleths like, "You can't reload an top-lit updraft
gasifier from above," and so on. When I show you one you will change your
mind. 
 
Many amazing inventions are the result of casually checking that something
which can't be done might be possible.  I compliment Paul Anderson in this
regard for continuously pushing against nominal barriers and for being an
inveterate experimenter.  James Watt and Nikola Tesla and Mr Yagi (inventor
of the 'normal' TV antenna in the '20's) and many many others are curious,
contrarian, observant risk takers who were not bound by knowing how things
work (or don't). 
 
Good, innovative scence is rarely the result of deduction.  Inspiration is
the key.  That is why cigarette packs were invented: so people could design
jet engines and container ships on the back of them!
 
I am disappointed by the zero response I have received from the likes of
Engineers without Borders (in Canada) and Waterloo University and the U of
Toronto and others to the idea that stove design and fabrication is a big
subject with a big future for engineering students - projects, in other
words.  They don't even write back.  That MIT is getting attention is just
fabulous because at least there is somewhere to point at and say, "Small
energy projects are worthy of the attention of top students and ranked
scientists." 
 
The rant ends here.
Crispin