The Advertisement,1884
Wanted! Ingenious fellows to accompany a dangerous expedition to the frozen pole at the top of the World.
16th March 1884
Wanted! Ingenious fellows to accompany a dangerous expedition to the frozen pole at the top of the World. Join Lord Uriah Chetworth as he embarks upon another bold expedition into those corners of the Earth yet unexplored on behalf of the Most Mighty and Most Excellent Queen Victoria and her glorious British Empire! The journey will be arduous, but the rewards will be great. No ordinary man can embark upon such an adventure. Only the most bold can face these unknowns to tell the tale upon their return. These explorations of the unknown are each a team event, and every good fellow knows well that a chain can be only as strong as its weakest link. Hence the greatest case must be made in the selection of our bold team.
In addition to bravery, endurance, fortitude and enthusiasm for bold endeavour, long experience on many travels has taught our captain that recourse to ingenuity and a quickness of thought is demanded upon these travels. Quick wittedness has rescued Chetworth from many a scrape in past adventures! To this end, Lord Chetworth needs an engineer, scientist or an experienced tradesman of a mechanical persuasion to tackle the many problems such a dangerous journey inevitably must face.
Suitable candidates will be selected upon demonstration of the requisite cognitive traits. Consequently, the need for those of an ingenious bent will be interviewed for their suitability based upon the successful solution to a simple problem oft encountered upon long journeys to the darker corners of the world. This problem is formed, as follows.
The simple candle is a vital tool to these expeditions. A good supply is required, that can soon be expended should a journey take longer than supplies expect. Furthermore, to leave any candle to burn for any length runs the risk of an unattended flame to provoke unintended ignition within the close spaces of a fully laden ship, caravan or tent, to risk the lives and supplies to uncontrollable flames.
To this end, Lord Chetworth requests an ingenious means to define the time for which a single, unmodified candle of standard construction may burn. Should the expected time be exceeded, the candle will become firmly extinguished.
Respond at your soonest to this newspaper with ingenious ideas to resolve this problem, and expect an invitation to dine with Lord Chetworth in person!
Posted in behalf of your host and captain,
Lord Uriah Chetworth
The original advertisement widely posted in national newspapers by Lord Uriah Chetworth in 1884
27th March 1884
From: Archibald Jenkins, Bristol
To: The Editor. Bristol Gazette. Bristol
Sir,
I write in reply to the advertisement in the Gazette, 16th March. I offer myself for consideration to accompany Lord Uriah Chetworth. Being few in years and having not long completed my schooling and apprenticeship I have little experience in such a journey. However, I note that the singular metric in the selection of crew lies in the ingenuity of the applicant. These are skills of which I am in possession, having served in long apprenticeship in the company of my parents, engineer and business proprietor respectively.
The problem stated demands that a candle unmodified be extinguished at a specified time from ignition. All manner of clockwork mechanism might measure the passage of time, to then activate a mechanical means to extinguish the lighted flame. I am minded that a long voyage might carefully measure the cost of every item carried, in both financial expenditure and encumbrance. The crew aboard a seagoing craft may employ a great many candles. Furthermore, I would expect the hardships endured on such a journey would test both man and machine, with the salt air exhausting a fine clockwork motion before exhausting a similarly fine crew.
I regard a clockwork mechanism an expensive and vulnerable luxury to perform the task demanded. I consider a process of trimming[1], in which I remove every ounce of excess material from a mechanism to both serve the demand and to reduce the burden of this mechanism. Once trimming is complete, and the problem is pared to the bone, I investigate those resources[2] that remain to determine which might best serve the function. When only the candle remains, these bare bones present to us the ideal machine[3] that might solve our problem. The candle must offer the structural members of any mechanism that serves the purpose demanded and also, in an act of self service[4], extinguish its own flame. To this diminished end, I propose the following function, which I illustrate on papers that accompany this correspondence. A collar of adjustable diameter to suit a candle of most dimensions holds a conical extinguisher. This is held from the flame by means of a pawl which rests against the candle. Once the candle has burned below this retention, a strong spring will drive the cone onto its target to extinguish the flame. No clockwork device is used to time this act. However, if I understand the intended purpose of this device, no particular precision is demanded. Observation of the behaviour of a typical candle and a short measure should suffice to set the device to extinguish the flame in the time demanded.
I hope that this solution to the problem set finds its target, that I might accompany Lord Chetworth upon his future travels.
Your servant
Archibald Jenkins
Plate 2: Jenkins original illustration that brought him into the employ of Chetworth.
10th April 1884
From: Uriah Chetworth, Chetworth House, Cornwall.
To: Archibald Jenkins, Bristol
Mr Jenkins,
My dear boy, I am led to believe that you possess a mere 18 years, and yet the solution to the problem advertised understands with precision the function demanded. Your Father and Mother must be very proud to have raised such an ingenious fellow!
Your presumption on those other solutions I was in all probability to receive from your competitors was also entirely correct. A great many scholars offered complex timepieces to render a flame extinguished at a time from ignition with such a precision that would be to me entirely redundant. You do not merely solve the problem, but do so with a parsimony that serves our particular needs with a precision with which those clockwork alternatives measure time itself.
You do, however, suffer from some disadvantage in your application which, granted, were not demanded in my preliminary advertisement. I am aware that you have never engaged in a journey of the length and difficulty that I propose. Furthermore, your competitors exhibit considerable education in academic matters which despite your apprenticeship I understand you do not yet possess.
Hence, I have before me an abundance of technical proficiency that clamour to join me on my adventures, from which I can draw the expertise that I require ten times over. Despite this, I am drawn away from the complexity of their mechanisms to a specific feature of your diminished design. Through the use of your ‘trimming’, the central mechanism of your device is offered by the very life of the candle that we wish to extinguish. Therefore, should this central mechanism fail to function as desired, through a failure to melt the wax of this candle to the appropriate height, this by definition means that the very function we wish to achieve, to kill the life of the flame, is too extinguished. Your mechanism, although simple to the point of primitive, will therefore fail in a safe configuration! Without the flame, the mechanism will not function, but without the flame the outcome is achieved, although perhaps somewhat earlier than intended. Contrast this outcome to the failure of those complex machinations found within the operation of a clockwork mechanism. Should some feature of such a device prevent the continued count of seconds past, the flame will remain lit, wasting a precious candle, or worse still threatening an unattended flame with the ignition of an unintended fuel. Whether this safe failure is by your design or by happenstance, I detect some formal framework in your process of thinking that leads you to these efficient and ingenious outcomes regardless.
This manner of thought intrigues me, about which I wish to know more. To this end, I would be honoured if you were to dine with me on the 24th April at Pagani's restaurant in London. You cannot miss this glorious frontage near Queen's Hall on Langham Place. Regardless, your expenses on the journey from Bristol will be well covered, and I will send transport to collect you directly to the restaurant door. Furthermore, I will of course reimburse you for your time expended during this excursion and any other expenses incurred. I do hope that you can accept my invitation, and do very much look forward to our meeting. My regards to your Mother and your Father.
Your host
Lord Uriah Chetworth
Historical context
This advertisement is a fiction and the solution offered by Archibald Jenkins was actually the invention of Joseph Collis Baylee of Church Road, Portishead in Somerset. Baylee was granted patent GB189619572A for his invention, granted in 1896 under the title An Automatic Candle Extinguisher. The mechanism described is much the same as that described by Jenkins in response to Chetworth’s advertisement.
The patent record offers a brief description of the problem accompanied by a detailed description of the solution granted. A patent record does not typically offer details on the reasoning that led inventors like Baylee to draw their conclusions and offer their designs. However, the extremely simple mechanism described by Baylee to achieve the desired function may indeed suggest an approach similar to the trimming offered by Altshuller’s TRIZ methodology.
Rather than add components to the system to realise the functions desired, we take the opposite approach. We remove as much extraneous material as we can, whilst potentially transferring desired functions from materials removed to be served by those materials that remain.
The Ideal Machine is that machine that offers only benefits without provoking associated harms. The process of trimming can remove sources of potential harm, such as solution volume, mass, power requirements and cost. To begin with a fully trimmed system, and to subsequently rely upon only those resources that remain in the system can result in elegant solutions.
Footnotes:
[1] Trimming removes excess or redundant mechanism whilst retaining the desired functions.
[2] Solutions that do not smuggle new resources into the problem space can offer elegant solutions.
[3] The Ideal Machine is that solution that offers all the benefits desired, whilst provoking not harms at all.
[4] Separation Principle 25. An object offers benefit or removes harm by itself. Employ waste energy or material.