PEOPLE are generally born curious. Our fascination with a lot of things come early. At a young age, we ask a range of simple questions like “What’s that?” or “What are you doing?” to the lip-stuttering “How was I born?” or “How did you make me?” which parents find difficulty answering.
And finally through learning, we become inventive. We pile up our knowledge to come up with new things which usually comes from environment. But little did we know that our path to success sometimes just lies around the corner. Just as what Col. Geronimo A. Dango, the one who gave the world the “magiclip” took.
The simple yet very useful trick started when, in the early 70s, in a small firm in Los Angeles where Dango works as a maintenance engineer, he observed Mexican delivery boys playing with an engineer’s T-square and junked ball bearings. The ball bearings when pressed against the T-square can hold up pieces of paper even without tapes, clips, or thumb tacks. This was a neat trick that took Dango’s interest and without his knowing brought an overwhelming change in his life. Born with a curious and inventive mind, Dango bought the idea and realised that by using the similar technique, he could come up with a simple device that could bring great help to office workers in holding up paper works. And that was when the “magiclip” came into being.
After years of perfecting his simple invention, Dango had the device patented in America which unfortunately did not do well. Thus, in 1977, when the former President Ferdinand Marcos issued P.O. 819, the Balik-Scientist Program which allows Filipino scientists to come home and be given the privilege to contribute to the economy’s development.
Though the market in the Philippines for his magiclip did not do magic with sheer courage and determination, he relentlessly pushed his product and took the risk of putting up his own company, the Herdan Enterprises, which later on became Herdan Corporation, which produces a multiple other products using the “MagiClip” concept. These included copy holders, telephone organizers, flip charts, desk organizers, and holders for negatoscope x-rays.
Through his unprecedented determination and courage, Dango received the Huwarang Pilipino 2001 Award in Science and Technology. He once said that everything will be possible if we learn to expect and not to doubt. Dango is just one absolute example of a person with unparalleled courage who stood trials and rose amidst hardships. His experience is indeed an inspiration to those who wish to tread the arduous path to success. But to be able to tread it fortuitously, courage and determination are your tickets to success.
Tags: Geronimo Dango, Pinoy Inventors, Science, Technology
