Hall of Fame inventor's journey started in R.I.

PROVIDENCE — The path that led Dana Bookbinder to buy a tuxedo because he had so many awards to accept at black-tie galas, such as his induction in May into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, started at the sidewalk in front of his grandparents' house on Homer Street in Providence.

It took him straight into Roger Williams Park.

“You’d just go down and play all day long,” he said last week by phone from Corning, New York, where he is a 63-year-old retiree. There were ponds and fields and “hills you can ride your little bicycle.” There was always someone to keep an eye on him as he investigated everything, feeding his curiosity.

The family moved to Haverhill, Massachusetts, then back to Rhode Island, where they lived on Holiday Avenue in Warwick, a neighborhood of tiny houses, children on bicycles and swamps beyond the backyards.

“Perhaps one of the most important and fortunate things I learned while I was growing up, I would call play,” he said. He caught frogs and salamanders in the wetlands, and took pliers and screwdrivers to the junkyard, returning with old car parts in his bike basket. His grandfather helped him attach the parts to his sci-fi machine in the basement.

They lived for a while in Illinois, and his grandparents would visit for months at a time.

They had lived through World War I and the Depression. But “they’d been really, really happy, positive people…. This was a great part of my education, being around these really positive people” who encouraged him.

“I always just wanted to be an inventor. I love science. I like sci-fi. I like putting things together" in new ways. He accepts the challenge in: “How can I put something together to help solve a problem that people really care about?”

The problem that he and his colleagues at Corning Inc., Ming-Jun Li and Pushkar Tandon, solved was that fiber optic cable could deliver data reliably on a straight line, which was fine crossing the Atlantic, but data was lost in each bend needed to reach homes and offices.

“The glass in the center of the optical fiber has a higher refractive index, or bends light more, than the outer glass,” Bookbinder said. Changing the composition of the inner glass changed the refractive index and accommodated corners. For an animated explanation, see Corning’s YouTube video, https://tinyurl.com/j4jplsy

In practice, it wasn’t that simple. Changing one part of a complex system raises many other issues.

He wouldn't say that necessity is the mother of invention. He'd say connecting people brings inventions into the world. The Corning team worked not only with other scientists but also with marketing, customers, skilled technicians, workers at the manufacturing plant and engineers.

Having an idea is easy, he said. The real value of an idea, and benefit to mankind, comes from implementing it in an economically viable way.

The three Corning inductees are among 22 that will be added to the Hall of Fame in Alexandria, Virginia, this year. Nominations are open all year, and can be made by visiting the website https://www.invent.org/. Nominees must hold a U.S. patent, said Rini Paiva, executive vice president for selection and recognition.

Research on the nominees is compiled for a committee of experts to compare the invention’s value to industry and society. A selection board determines the final list, she said.

“For us, it’s important to recognize the individuals who have come up with advances that have really impacted our day-to-day lives and made them better,” Paiva said.

Besides recognition, honorees get a medallion, a chance to ignite young minds at invention camps, and the opportunity to mingle with other inventors and to marvel at being in the same group as Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, and Steve Jobs.

Bookbinder said recognition gets people talking about science, and might inspire someone to work on their idea. “The work is the reward,” he said. But it’s also nice ”knowing that you’ve really impacted other people’s lives."

He has known Nobel Prize-winning inventors, he said, and has found them surprisingly humble.

“They didn’t start with these grand ideas,” he said, “they just fumbled their way forward.”

dnaylor@providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @donita22