SKOLKOVO – a source of innovation! (Part 1)
Назад(Inventor’s sketches)
The Skolkovo Innograd project's Web site first went online in late 2010. Back then Skolkovo was no more than an expensive plot of land named, for some reason, after California's or Tokyo's, but which is now Russia's, Silicon Valley. The name stayed on even though there are enough words and expressions in the Russian language to ensure that the name of the Russian incubator of Nobel Prize winners sounds pleasant to both Russian and foreign ear.
For those who don't know yet, the Skolkovo is an area of 360 hectares of land west of Moscow with the Moscow Ring Road on the one side and the Minsk Highway on the other. Close by are a wealthy residential settlement Skolkovo and the identically named business school. So travelers from afar are unlikely to mistake the Innograd (derived from the word Innovation) for something else.
Speaking of the Web site (www.i-gorod.com), at first it was fun to browse through and see what is going on in the future breeding pool of talents and laureates. However, an initial and thorough review of the site's sections yielded no particularly useful, as I saw them, results. At that time I was busy taking care of the business side of things, while my life, which was then not notable for anything particularly exciting, was slowly moving on – just like the lives of most other people: work, family, and the eternal question in the kitchen: who will this huge country called Russia have for its new tsar?
And then came March of 2011 that brought with it a powerful, magnitude 9 earthquake in Japan, to be followed, quite predictably, by a tsunami wave, which hit the east coast of the island. Unfortunately, the massive wave, in some places as high as 40.5 meters, not only caused extensive damage but it also wreaked havoc with the Fukushima-1 nuclear plant's backup generators, leaving the station completely incapacitated and highly vulnerable. Then there was a radiation fallout and contamination of ground, water, etc. – all really terrible things. And now, several months after the Fukushima-1 disaster, once again we can say that civilian nuclear energy is every bit as dangerous as military. It is tragic that the list of the countries that have been particularly hard hit in the last few decades by all sorts of disasters is headed by Japan with its hardworking and very patient people. Here we also shouldn't forget Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, as these countries were the main victims of another huge disaster – Chernobyl.
As a brain-flexing exercise I tend to write articles on subjects related to my professional career, i.e. warehousing, transportation and customs logistics. But on that day, it was morning March 29, 2011, for some reason I wanted to write a very short essay on the situation around the Fukushima plant. Less than 30 minutes later, an article titled "Our Radioactive World" was already in the inboxes of many of my writing colleagues from the highly respected news portal Finam.ru. A while after that, and after taking a second look at my Fukushima article, I found myself wondering if should try to accomplish what I had written about. The really interesting thing here is that it was indeed eventually accomplished!
But let's start from the beginning. When writing the article, I stumbled upon a crazy idea: equip everyone with devices known among military people as dosimeters and radiometers. Not, however, with those 5-7 kg, mastodon-like devices in aluminum casings that most of us had bad memories about from our civil defense lessons at school and army days, but with something more elegant compact and modern. Suddenly, I had this idea of a smartphone with a built-in dosimeter-radiometer. After all, we hardly venture out today without taking a handy with us. In many respects, it has become an integral, ultra modern part of our bodies. Even at night, they are never far away, sitting comfortably on our bedside table while recharging their batteries.
That's it. The decision is taken. If even for fun's sake, I'll make such a thing for a mobile phone. At first, following the standard tradition, I browsed the Internet for a similar device. Back then my search yielded mostly household dosimeters and radiometers, which were either of cyclopean size or resembled a soap-box. This initial search encouraged me somewhat and spurred me on to draw a sketch of a future device, its block schematic diagrams, and to see a patent specialist. I quickly found a list of these people on the Web and enquired about their services and fees. As it turned out their fees were not particularly exorbitant and the time required was not too long: 1-2 weeks. Without much ado, I quickly completed all the paperwork in the patent office and embarked on practical correspondence.
The first inventor's disappointment came only one week after clearing the bill for an urgent patent search. As it happened I was not the only one trying to invent an "e-wheel". The patent office e-mailed me a list of more than two dozen similar devices, ranging from mobile phone-based keys and car alarms to mobile phone devices for measuring volume and size of your home. Probably the only thing that was missing from that list was a mechanical opener of beer bottles built into a mobile phone. The resultant from a patent search list also contained a dosimeter-radiometer that came in the shape of a handset but without any phone functions. And all this treasure chest of inventive genius was presented to me in an impressive variety of the world's existing languages. After examining most of the Russian, English, Korean, Japanese and Chinese patents with a help of the Google online translator and figuring out some of the ideals explained in them, I took the most interesting from my view pieces to a translation agency for a professional translation. And out of this squeeze of investors' intellectual thoughts, and after digesting the contents of the remaining patents translated into the mighty Russian language, I realized that there was really a chance for me to make something that had never been made before.
Vladimir ELIN, May 2011
