Genius May Be 90% Perspiration, and 10% Lemon Juice
A funny thing happened this week on Ray Turner’s lifelong journey toward professional anonymity.
He got famous.
Turner is a processes engineer at Hughes Aircraft Co. in Fullerton. Let’s just say they don’t make TV movies out of jobs like that. He’s been there since 1969, and it’s his job to make sure that Hughes products meet military specifications.
Highly competent, yes, but nobody confused Turner with one of the best and brightest Ph.D.s or high-tech whiz kids. What would you expect from a guy who dropped out of high school, got a diploma through correspondence school and never went to college? In a company that prides itself on being on the exotic cutting edge of technology, Turner was not exactly on the A Team.
But he does have an imagination and common sense.
And so, on a Friday night in November of 1989, Turner headed for his La Habra home, then began a simple experiment in the kitchen. Within two hours, after his wife encouraged him to take his ideas to the garage because he was stinking up the house with the smell of burned lemon rinds, Turner came up with something that may land him in the history books when they write about efforts to clean up the environment in the 20th Century.
After a failed attempt with vinegar, Turner used lemon juice that he found in the refrigerator and a penny from his pocket to ultimately demonstrate that there’s a clean, environmentally safe alternative to a process at Hughes that used chlorofluorocarbons, which are harmful to the Earth’s ozone layer.
Why no one else had thought before of something as simple as lemon juice is a question not even Turner or Hughes’ top executives can fully explain.
The details of Turner’s experiment are explained in other stories in today’s newspaper, but there’s a larger, more uplifting lesson to be taken from his discovery.
It’s a lesson that has little to do with science. It’s got more to do with reassurance for those of us who wouldn’t know a chlorofluorocarbon from an elephant.
“You don’t have to be an Einstein,” Turner said. “The solutions are there. You just have to look for them.”
Turner’s find hearkens to a golden age of discovery, rooted in the country’s most storied period of invention. A century ago, Thomas Edison prided himself not on being a theoretical scientist but on being a trial-and-error practitioner. Alexander Graham Bell, before inventing the telephone, feared that he didn’t have the necessary knowledge of electricity to complete his work.
“I don’t look on myself as a scientist,” Turner said Thursday. “I’m far from it. But with a certain amount of experience gained through the years, I knew what was needed. I didn’t have to depend on a scientist to know what was needed. I knew.”
Turner prides himself on being a “dedicated engineer. If you could see my office, I’ve got experiments A, B, and C. I’ve got beakers of this and beakers of that. I’m always trying to find ways and means of improving something. The status quo, I don’t like. I never did.”
When Bell finally made the telephone work, his first words to assistant Thomas Watson reportedly were: “Mr. Watson, please come here. I need you.” Watson later joked that had Bell realized the impact of his discovery, he might have said something more profound.
Were you profound? I asked Turner. “I don’t say brilliant things,” he said, chuckling. “I think what I said was, ‘Honey, look at this.’ ”
The rest, as they say, is history.
Married to his wife, Marie, for 43 years and the father of five grown children, Turner, 62, has gone from being the guy around the house who’s good at fixing things to something of a celebrity.
“My kids are calling me Famous Amos,” he said, laughing. “They’re enjoying it. They like to see their dad get some news. I like to see it myself.”
This is Ray Turner’s day in the sun, and as he said Thursday when asked whether he liked all the attention: “At my age, I’m grateful for anything.”
Yes, this is Ray Turner’s day. But he’s going to have to share it.
This one’s also for all those other scientists and engineers who put on a lab coat and then labor in obscurity for an entire career.
This one’s for every high school dropout who went back and made something of himself.
And this one’s also for all the rest of us who take comfort in knowing that in a world where robots and talking cars are fast upon us, the answers to our most complex problems can still be found by a guy poking through the refrigerator.
Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.
