Coincidences By The Cupful

Coincidences By The Cupful

- Jason Goodwin

LONG ago, I found myself travelling in a first class compartment from Waterloo to Alton, Hampshire. I rarely travel first class. It was one of those six seat compartments you’d try to keep to yourself, by looking ill or difficult, but, as it happened, it was occupied only by me and the middle-aged man who sat opposite. We soon got talking and, before Woking, I learned that my companion had come up with an invention that was well on the way to making him rich.

Nowadays, invention mostly happens out of sight, in the tech world—a new app, a longerlasting battery—but back then you really had to invent a tangible new thing. My new friend’s idea came to him in the office kitchen. He wasn’t an inventor professionally—I think he might have been an accountant or a banker—and it came to him out of the blue as he poured boiling water over a teabag.

Like a lot of people who make tea alone and think themselves unobserved, he had got into the habit of using one teaspoon to retrieve the teabag and another to squeeze the last of the liquor from the leaves. The kitchen sink was full of teaspoons waiting to be washed up and that was when he had his eureka moment.