John Muir’s eye accident redirected him from factory invention to naturalism.
Evidence
Before becoming the naturalist that we know him as, he worked as a supervisor and sometimes-inventor in a wagon wheel factory. (I suspect that he was a man concerned with productivity, since one of his inventions was a study desk that was also an alarm clock and timer, which would open up books for an allotted amount of time, close them, and then open the next book.) Muir had already developed a love of botany, but it was being temporarily blinded by an eye accident that made him re-evaluate his priorities. The accident confined him to a darkened room for six weeks, during which he was unsure whether he would ever see again. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 69
Categorization
- CANDY: The self-opening study desk that timers book reading is a genuinely funny, tweetable detail about Muir’s productivity obsession.
- XREF: connects to: A blinding accident redirected Muir from factory work to naturalism
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: A blinding accident redirected Muir from factory work to naturalism