Non-motoring > He was 'Ahead of his time' Miscellaneous
Thread Author: TheManWithNoName Replies: 22
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 14:17 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - TheManWithNoName
What exactly does this phrase mean?
I was watching 'I never knew that about Britain' on ITV last night which contained a feature on a chap who came up with the idea of using iron girders to construct a high rise building - the precurser to the skyscraper age.
The chap they interviewed kept referring to the inventor as being 'ahead of his time'.
Well surely if he invents something in his lifetime then he is 'of the times' not ahead.
And at what point would the use of iron or steel used in the construction of buildings have been contemporary and 'of the time'? Does something stop being 'ahead of its time' when more than one other person independently invents or creates the same thing?
It just seems a pointless phrase to me.


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New Tue 25 Mar 14 14:30 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Meldrew
His idea showed that he understood what was going to happen in the future and proved he was ahead of his time.
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 14:35 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - No FM2R
If his invention gets used straight away because there is an immediate need, then he is "of his time".

If there is a delay in time while everybody works out what its useful for and then everybody adopts it, he was "ahead of his time".

A distinction only available in retrospect.
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 14:44 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Crankcase
You have a way with words. Your post is so much more succinct than mine.
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 14:41 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Crankcase
I've always taken the phrase in the context of invention to mean somebody who comes up with an idea that is impossible to realise at that time, although it gets rediscovered later.

So to my mind Clive Sinclair coming up with the digital watch wasn't ahead of his time - he looked at available technology, but was the first person to put it together and make it happen.

Hero of Alexandria, however, produced the first working "steam engine" 2000 years ago, but of course it wasn't possible to make it do anything very useful and it was lost again as a concept for centuries. So he was "ahead of his time".
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 16:04 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Robin O'Reliant
There was a bloke on the radio this morning who did something with lasers that was poo poo'd at the time but is now used in lots of things. He was ahead of his time.

I can safely claim to be behind my time.
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 16:16 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Focusless
Leonardo Da Vinci's 'helicopter'
www.da-vinci-inventions.com/aerial-screw.aspx
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 16:22 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Crankcase
The Visoki Decani spaceships?

Example:

www.bibliotecapleyades.net/imagenes_ovniarte/ovniarte09_01.jpg

Loads more images at the touch of a Google.
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 17:15 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - No FM2R
I'm ahead of my time, just not quite so far ahead as everybody else.
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 16:25 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Haywain
The phrase isn't restricted to engineers - it can be applied to, say, unfashionable-at-the-time political thinkers e.g. Enoch Powell?
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 17:41 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Zero
>> The phrase isn't restricted to engineers - it can be applied to, say, unfashionable-at-the-time political
>> thinkers e.g. Enoch Powell?

riiiiiiiight.....
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 17:47 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Lygonos
LOLZ
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 17:53 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Armel Coussine
>> riiiiiiiight.....

Heh heh... is Enoch Powell fashionable nowadays as a 'political thinker'?

He was never going to be fashionable and probably didn't want to be. Quite learned and bookish in some areas, but lacking in political commonsense despite his intellect. Any real politician's antennae would have twitched at the prospect of the storm unleashed by his attempt to win the votes of racist and xenophobic elements in the population: his quite mild remarks, culminating in 'I see the Tiber foaming with much blood', raised an immediate clamour from the Alf Garnetts and their adversaries, not at all what he would have wanted.

And from that moment on he was typecast as a barmy extremist, political career as such over.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Tue 25 Mar 14 at 17:56
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 18:24 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Robin O'Reliant
>>
>> And from that moment on he was typecast as a barmy extremist, political career as
>> such over.
>>

But nevertheless, topped the polls as Britain's favourite politician on more than one occasion. Also credited with being a big factor in the Tories 1974 election defeat when he advised people to vote Labour as they wanted out of Europe at the time.
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 18:26 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Robin O'Reliant
>> >>
>> >> And from that moment on he was typecast as a barmy extremist, political career
>> as
>> >> such over.
>> >>
But nevertheless, topped the polls as Britain's favourite politician on more than one occasion. Also credited with being a big factor in the Tories 1974 election defeat when he advised people to vote Labour as they wanted out of Europe at the time.

At least in my part of the world, London's east end he became a working class hero. That was how it was back then.
Last edited by: Robin O'Reliant on Tue 25 Mar 14 at 18:27
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 18:38 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Armel Coussine
>> in my part of the world, London's east end he became a working class hero. That was how it was back then.

That's my whole point RobinO: a hero to the Alf Garnetts, a somewhat undeserved bête noire to people like me, but that didn't matter.

What did matter was being given a wide berth ever after by even his friends in the House of Commons. What would he do next? Tell people to vote Labour?
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 19:10 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Zero

>> At least in my part of the world, London's east end he became a working
>> class hero. That was how it was back then.

George Davis, the innocent one, was a working class hero in the east end.


I am an east ender, most of my family were still there in Enochs time, and he wasn't a hero to any of them, almost entirely because he was a Tory.
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 20:48 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Armel Coussine

>> I am an east ender, most of my family were still there in Enochs time, and he wasn't a hero to any of them, almost entirely because he was a Tory.

You old lefty ...

I was sounding off self-righteously about Powell back in the day. An absolutely sweet upper-class girl who was present chided me saying: 'Oh, I don't see what's so bad about poor old Enoch Pole' (that's how she pronounced the name), 'he always seems a harmless old buffer to me.'

For some people, being a Tory is as innocently natural as voting Labour (or something else) is for others.
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 21:27 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Robin O'Reliant
The London dockers called a one day strike and marched in support of Powell after his "Rivers of Blood speech. I was in my final year at a Catholic school at the time and one of the teachers, a Scottish Franciscan Friar by the name of Father Benignas Donelly got himself on the TV news preaching through a loud hailer at them not to march. For his troubles he was jeered and collected the odd tomato stain on his habit.

Whatever your feelings on immigration, there was widespread opposition to it in the country at the time. Being an Irish immigrant myself I well remember the "No blacks or Irish" on adverts for rented flats, though being white we were more readily accepted than the West Indians or Asians.
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New Tue 25 Mar 14 22:17 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Zero
>> The London dockers called a one day strike and marched in support of Powell after
>> his "Rivers of Blood speech.

The London dockers were thieving scum who would call a strike if the local pub ran out of beer.

1/2 my family were dockers.
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New Wed 26 Mar 14 08:19 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Cliff Pope
"Ahead of his time" means he was a failure in his lifetime. He saw the future, had the brilliant idea, but was held back by lack of suitable materials or technology, or more commonly, by popular or peer prejudice.
So he ended his days in embittered poverty, and 50 years later someone else, "of his time", made a fortune developing it in more receptive times.
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New Wed 26 Mar 14 09:25 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Slidingpillar
In a sense, that's the story of the car. Audi got in trouble with the Advertising Standards Council by claiming to have invented front wheel drive in the mid 30's. Except some of the first cars were - in the 19th century.

Flush Glazing - before WW2.
Overhead cam engine - before WW1
Hydraulic brakes on a mass production car - Morris 8, 1930s

In fact, a heck of a lot of things claimed as firsts had been done many years before, and generally failed due to materials technology not being good enough. If you are visiting the Shuttleworth collection, they've a lot of early aircraft engines and parts that will quite surprise.
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New Wed 26 Mar 14 09:38 
 He was 'Ahead of his time' - Crankcase
In a way that was a fundamental part of the wonderful original Connections series (James Burke). He was forever bouncing on screen and saying "and so a thirteenth century Russian obscure monk invented a candle holder that languished for six hundred years because there was no plastic, but now look, it ended up as Concorde".

I wish you could buy it on DVD. Edit - just discovered you can now. At about £50 imported from the States I think. That's a tempt.
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