Apples still grow on trees.....

A great man is no longer with us today, as we all know from the news of the hour and the 'talking heads' endlessly babbling away. But God is not dead, and men are not gods, in spite of our tendency sometimes to believe otherwise. I never knew Steve Jobs of course, but it's my understanding that he was much like a great chef; he collected the right ingredients, mixed them in the right proportions, let them simmer and bubble and boil long enough, and voila - something very tempting that looked & 'tasted' just right, and filled a void we didn't know we'd had. He had a magnificent ego, a limited wardrobe, and was careless about his own health, and he died prematurely.


It has been said that Apple today has more money than anybody in that industry, thanks to its innovative products, its skilled management, and its integration of product and delivery system into a seamless package that is nothing if not convenient. But the automotive industry didn't collapse with the passing of Henry Ford, and neither will the computer industry with the passing of Steve Jobs. Microsoft didn't go into bankruptcy when Bill Gates went off to spend his billions. Many of the great leaders of business and industry did wonderful work in putting together successful teams of cutting-edge thinkers who revolutionized their fields of endeavor. But none of that was the work of just one man.


Henry Ford gets credit for being one of the founders of the auto industry, for coming up with the idea of an assembly line to build cars, and that got an industry going. But he didn't invent the wheel, and many others had great ideas too. For example, in France in the 1930s a car maker named Delage was producing some of the most beautiful and innovative automobiles on the planet, and Louis Delage's own personal 1937 Delage D8-120 Pourtout Aero Coupe (pictured below) was decades ahead of its time in both style and technology. It had for example a steering-column-mounted electric gear-shifting control rivaling our automatic transmission controls of decades later, and its looks made men's hearts beat faster.

Louis Delage is gone, but his creations live on; Steve Jobs is gone, but his creations will survive and evolve and develop just as Louis Delage's dreams were carried on by others after him. Science and technology are alive and well.