The door latch

How could I possibly learn anything from a dumb little latch?

I was an engineer at a multi-trillion-dollar company. The way I saw it, my job was to find the next world-changing idea and build something great, nothing less than that, and that idea had to come from my head.

Then one day I had to design a sliding latch. It seemed like a simple thing to design; one flat ramp sliding up another flat ramp to self-close two parts. But no matter what I tried, my design wouldn’t slide smoothly, and I couldn’t figure out why. So I threw my prototype across the room.

It landed next to my door. And when I bent down to pick it up, my door latch was sitting right there at eye level, kind of almost winking at me.

It said, “Come on, buddy. Look a bit closer. Great things have been designed all around you.”

So I looked closer. The bolt in a door latch isn’t a flat ramp; it’s a curve. A curve touches at one small point, so there’s very little rubbing, and its angle changes smoothly along the shape. Everything I couldn’t get from my flat ramps was already done in that one shape, and it’s been in doors for over a hundred years.

I built my latch the same way, and it worked.

That little latch was opening doors for me; I never really spent time appreciating it.