MISSOURI WATCH: JOHANNES WAS A NERD AHEAD OF HIS TIME

Once upon a time, in a land quite far from here, there lived an anonymous youth who exhibited no early signs of genius and was judged by one and all as being something of a nerd. Some, expressing an even less tolerant view, called him a crazy dreamer who would never amount to anything and would no doubt wind up at the county poor farm.

As a young man, Johannes, as he was known by the villagers, seemed to live in another world, concocting small and mostly useless inventions that served no purpose other than amusing Johannes' friends. Unfortunately, because of his unusual personality, the lad had few friends, numbering them on the thumb of his middle hand.

As he approached manhood, Johannes searched far and wide for an opportunity to become an apprentice to one of the village's few craftsmen, seeking first to become a goldsmith, then a silversmith and finally settling for an ironsmith. It wasn't much, but Johannes pursued it with diligence and eventually became proficient enough to manufacture small trinkets, which his boss offered to the local trade as a loss leader in a vain effort to attract more customers.

Eventually the ironsmith to which Johannes had been apprenticed was forced to take bankruptcy, but since there was little market for his tools, he walked away from his shop, never to be heard from again. The young apprentice showed up for work the morning after this shocking event, only to discover the job he had sought had disappeared, with only a few tools, a leaky building and a box full of bills left as reminders.

As might be expected, Johannes was distraught, for he had little use for the tools he had inherited, no hot tar to repair the roof and absolutely no money with which to pay the overdues. Having nothing better to do, the young apprentice decided, after a great deal of thought, that he would seek to rebuild the business while dedicating himself to a profession that would not only benefit mankind but would make him wealthy.

Nothing went right at first, primarily because the young apprentice knew next to nothing about the craft he was pursuing and because he had little or no imagination, rendering him a complete failure in the ironsmith craft. Hopelessly distraught, Johannes turned to his beloved, although slightly addled, grandmother, asking for her advice in choosing a product that everyone would need and for which the world would pay a munificent sum to own.

The wise old grandmother, wanting very much to be of assistance to her favorite grandson, although he was also her only one, thought and thought and thought what product was most needed in the village. After several days and nights of thinking, and after smoking numerous cigars made from a strange hemp that grew every year in Granny's garden, the old lady called the grandson to her side and declared, "You must invent a machine that will enable the common man to communicate with other common men, one that will spread information not only throughout the village but across the state and nation and around the world."

Johannes was thrilled with his grandmother's suggestion and immediately set about to build such a machine. When he had finished, after long years of failure, he at last had produced the invention Granny had imagined. Visiting her as she lay dying, Johannes exclaimed, "I have finished your dream and now, all I need is a name with which to label it. What name shall I use, beloved Grandmother?"

"Call it," the old lady said weakly, "call it a, call it a computer." And then she died. Unfortunately, her grandson didn't catch her last dying word, and returned to his shop still missing a name. "I must press on," he told himself, and then an inspiration came to him like a bolt out of the blue. "I know," he cried, "I will call it a press!"

And thus Johannes became known as the world's best known printing press inventor, devising a system of movable type that centuries later would still be serving mankind, spreading information far and wide and, indeed, around the world.

The irony of the story of Johannes, however, is not in what he realized but what he had failed to hear from the lips of his dying grandmother. Had he only heard what she suggested, Johannes would have become the richest man in all of history and would be known as the Nerd Who Invented the Computer, Microsoft and the Internet.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of the Missouri News and Editorial Service.