Have you ever heard of Horace Walpole?
Have you ever heard of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?
Well don't worry if your not all that familiar with either one of them, just remember that Horace Walpole introduced the word serendipity to the English language and Goethe is said to have written the following:
"In dem Augenblick, in dem man sich endgültig einer Aufgabe verschreibt,bewegt sich die Vorsehung auch. Alle möglichen Dinge, die sonst nie geschehen wären, geschehen, um einem zu helfen. Ein ganzer Strom von Ereignissen wird in Gang gesetzt durch die Entscheidung, und er sorgt, zu den eigenen Gunsten, für zahlreiche unvorhergesehene Zufälle, Begegnungen und Hilfen, die sich kein Mensch vorher je so erträumt haben könnte.Was immer Du tun kannst oder wovon Du träumst, fang es an. In der Kühnheit liegt Genie, Macht und Magie".
For those not familiar with German:
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:
that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.“
Now, there may be some history buffs in the room, that know this quote is not undisputed. To the best of my knowledge is was written by John Anster who made a free and poetical interpretation of Goethe’s Faust. And after him people made his interpretation more like it could have been Goethe, and even translated it back into German.
But whatever it was it was, it is what it is now!.
I will take you back to Horace Walpole. His word ‘serendipity’ came from a fairytale where three brothers from the Kingdom of Serendip helped each other finding a missing camel. One brother notices the camel is blind, lame and missing a tooth, the other knows it is carrying a women, and the third knows the woman is pregnant.
It may come as no surprise to you that this fairytale gave rise to some of our most famed fictional detectives, amongst them the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Sherlock Holmes. We sure could use someone like him these days.
But all this constitutes merely to fantasy. And that’s why I am standing here to. With my fantasy. Explosives detection paving slabs.
Last year in April I was invited to give a presentation about my use of graphene on my printed concrete paving slabs. I had invented a way to protect the rather fragile digital printed colors from UV degradation by using graphene. Of Course I had already read about the possible use of graphene as a very sensitive sensor, and a this congress there were some people from the University of Manchester with whom I spoke of this possibility. But when I asked about making this explosive detection paving slabs to estimated the costs for a first study at € 50.000 Euro’s or Pounds, I don’t remember. The difference would constitute to a wild night out in town, but when you don’t have it, it is abstract anyway. And I understand. There is a whole industry emerging. They invested heavily in buildings, equipment and people.
But when I was back home and saw all the bad things happening in the world it made me mad. There are people sacrificing their lives to keep others save. Armies pour billions in weaponry to kill others and put their soldiers in harms way, and at the same time we live in a society that is unable to risk money on saving our lives. But at the same time there is no scientist that is not convinced graphene can detect explosives. A sensor would pick up molecules from explosives up to a 6 meter range.
I tried to mail everyone I could think of. Even nobel prize winner Andre Geim. He answered me he didn’t know how to do it either. Any sane man would have given up, I suppose.
But the more I spoke to people I became convinced on how it could be done. Not in the sense that I knew there was a pregnant women on the back of the camel, but I knew it was lame, blind and missing a tooth.
Later in 2016 I met another brother of this fairytale. When I told him of my old camel he knew there was a woman riding on the back. He started conferring and calculating on my idea and when he called me a week later that it theoretically could be done I was over the moon. It felt like a clean bill of mental health after all.
But… We are not yet at the “they lived happily ever after’ part of the fairytale yet. There are still some brothers still missing. Brothers with gold coins. Brothers with equipment and tools. A castle. Some more camels maybe? I am not here to tell you a fairytale. I am asking you to participate in one. And if we make it real nobody will ever believe it once was a fantasy.
We live in a time where we often read the papers and may wish for a person like Sherlock Holmes to keep us safe from bad people. It is not as simple as some politicians might want us to believe. You can not tell the bad guy from his color, race, clothing or his believes. To sniff out the bad guy, you need something completely unbiased as a concrete paving slab.
I will end with a quote from Goethe. It is from his novel ‘The sorrows of young Werther’. It speaks to me why we are morally obligated to act;
Und ich habe, mein Lieber, wieder bei diesem kleinen Geschäft gefunden, dass Missverständnisse und Trägheit vielleicht mehr Irrungen in der Welt machen als List und Bosheit. Wenigstens sind die beiden letzteren gewiss seltener.
