Too often, we love the din of cockpits and the steamy heat of boxing arenas more than the silent quest for life’s more essential things. We are entertained by gladiators in the ring but are indifferent to the drudgery of painstaking toil. We are mesmerized by the grandiloquence of fire and brimstone politicians and are unexcited by the sober discoveries of scholarly men and women.
Somewhere in the back burner, we have relegated the scientists and inventors of our race. When they come up with something novel, it does not excite us as much as the crowning of Miss Philippines or the routine knockouts of Manny Pacquiao. We tend to regard the work of our scientists and inventors as of no consequence or at worst a practical joke. We have not given our inventors the support and the respect that they deserve.
Take the case of Daniel Dingel, a Filipino mechanical engineer who in the 1980s developed a car that could run on water. Skeptics called it a fraud. Dingel stood his ground insisting that he had conducted enough tests to validate his brainchild, but officials from the Department of Science and Technology only succeeded in projecting him as an oddball and in pigeonholing his invention.
Last year Genepax, a Japanese company, launched its water car that practically runs on the same process of electrolysis as Dingel’s car. The car which has an estimated factory cost of $5,000 is going to be mass produced soon. Similarly, Daewoo of Korea has entered into partnership with Swiss Ethos for the production of water cars which are expected to hit the international market in the coming months. Isn’t it distressing to see 80 plus year-old Filipino Daniel Dingel forlornly driving his water car while Genepax and Ethos are flaunting their products all because we chose to look the other way?
The Philippines should be in the lead now had the government given the proper support to Dingel especially considering that he came up with his first prototype as early as 1969. We would be driving cheaper, environmental friendly cars by now and would have saved revenues by paying much less not only for imported fuel but for imported cars as well. We could even be exporting to other countries had the government supported his invention.
Filipino inventors and scientists are a cagey lot. They gingerly guard their inventions because they feel they have no protection from patent pirates aside from the anxieties they suffer by being given the usual run-around. There may be more than meets the eye in the obstacles they have to scale to have their inventions accepted and promoted. Could there be contrary interests who are not so happy about us Filipinos producing our own?
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