The popcorn machine was really innovative. Yep, better than Disneyland. But there is another requirement before people can just problem solve with such ingenuity... their brains need to be wired that way. Not anyone can do it and a lot of it comes from a person's upbringing from the time a person was an infant. It cannot just be learnt from textbooks. From what I have observed, those brought up in a house with servants, become next to useless engineers. But I have known some engineers brought up on farms to become outstanding engineers.