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Source: Incongruities 67

the years the procedure had become refined, routinized and instrument-
ed to the point where it was conducted with the rhythm of a perfectly
rehearsed dance—and with total control. But there was one point in this
operation that was out of character and out of rhythm: at one phase the
eye surgeon had to cut a ligament, to tie blood vessels and so risk bleed-
ing, which then endangered the eye. This procedure was done success-
fully in more than 99 percent of all operations; indeed, it was not very
difficult. But it greatly bothered the surgeons. It forced them to change
their rhythm and induced anxiety in them. Eye surgeons, no matter how
often they had done the operation, dreaded this one, quick procedure.
The pharmaceutical company salesman—his name is William
Connor—found out without much research that an enzyme had
been isolated in the 1890s which almost instantaneously dissolves
this particular ligament. Only nobody then, sixty years earlier, had
been able to store this enzyme even under refrigeration for more
than a few short hours. Preservation techniques have, however,
made quite a bit of progress since 1890. And so Connor, within a
few months, was able by trial and error to find a preservative that
gives the enzyme substantial shelf life without destroying its
potency. Within a few years, every eye surgeon in the world was
using Connor’s patented compound. Twenty years later he sold his
company, Alcon Laboratories, to one of the multinationals for a
very large amount.
And another telling example:
O. M. Scott & Co. is the leader among American producers of
lawn-care products: grass seed, fertilizer, pesticides, and so on.
Though it is now a subsidiary of a large corporation (ITT), it attained
leadership while a small independent company in fierce competition
with firms many times its size, ranging from Sears, Roebuck to Dow
Chemicals. Its products are good but so are those of the competition.
Its leadership rests on a simple, mechanical gadget called a Spreader,
a small, lightweight wheelbarrow with holes that can be set to allow
the proper quantities of Scott’s products to pass through in an even
flow. Products for the lawn all claim to be “scientific” and are com-
pounded on the basis of extensive tests. All prescribe in meticulous
detail how much of the stuff should be applied, given soil conditions
and temperatures. All try to convey to the consumer that growing a
lawn is “precise,” “controlled,” if not “scientific.” But before the Scott
Spreader, no supplier of lawn-care products gave the customer a tool
to control the process.