What sticks with me is the notion that whereas a posteriori we may think of notable inventors of yesteryear as being bolts from the blue, they themselves invari

What sticks with me is the notion that whereas a posteriori we may think of notable inventors of yesteryear as being bolts from the blue, they themselves invariably laboured under the paranoiac fear that somebody would trump them: Bell, Marconi, Eckert, Astastof (sp?): they all feared somebody would scoop them and scrambled over themselves to get patents for their creations. That alone should dispel the myth.