Being first is the name of the game
10:05 PM 1/14/04
John Allen Cox News Service

People love winners. Perhaps more importantly, history remembers them. <

Super Bowl winners get fat television commercial deals. Olympic gold-medal winners bathe in endorsements. We love celebrating the anniversaries of firsts - such as last month's 100th anniversary of the first flight by the Wright brothers - with reenactments and fanfare. <

We honor the wife of the president and governor as "first lady." Any time something happens for the first time, the media embraces it like Bill Gates - first on the world's wealthiest people list - clutches money. <

Yes, finishing first in America is the name of the game. <

"There is no parade for second place," said Larry Lyon, a sociology professor at Baylor University. "Whoever competes the best gains the highest reward, and we justify that by labeling them a winner. It may not always be fair, but it allows us to personify an achievement and the sacrifice involved by putting one face on it." <

The importance of being first is what America's capitalistic, individual-based society is all about, he said. <

Many famous "firsts" have come under the pressure of competition. The race to be first is certainly a motivating factor, with history's pedestal as the reward, said Merton Flemings, director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, which encourages students who are aspiring inventors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. <

"Take the Wright brothers, for example," he said. "If they hadn't invented flight when they did, someone else would have pretty soon. There were men from Brazil, France and other Americans who were close, but the Wrights were first, so that's who we remember." <

When looking at other famous firsts throughout history, one person's victory often came after not only countless failures of his or her own, but also the setbacks of others attempting the same endeavor. <

That's the nature of discovery, said Flemings, who holds 30 patents for inventions in metallurgical processes, some used in car manufacturing. <

"The first characteristic creative people and inventors must have is a willingness to fail," he said. "From there, they have to pick up and move on with optimism and perseverance." <

Two of the most contested conquests in the history of human endeavor were the races to the North and South poles. The pole conquests are among hundreds of achievements covered in the recently published "The Book of Firsts," by Ian Harrison, a trivia buff's dream come true. <

According Harrison, the push for the poles involved two very different stories - one of doomed heroics, and the other a pathetic episode of dishonesty and racial bigotry. <

English explorer Robert Falcon Scott arrived at the South Pole on Jan. 17, 1912, only to discover that he had earned second place - he found a Norwegian flag and a note left there 34 days earlier by Roald Amundsen. Disappointment turned to tragedy when Scott and his expedition party perished, consumed by the bitter conditions. He survived long enough to write their epitaph: <

"Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale." <

The race to the North Pole is more famous for the dispute over who got there first than any bravery or courage. Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson claimed to have reached the pole on April 6, 1909. Upon their return, they found that American Frederick Cook was claiming to have reached the pole a year earlier. The National Geographic Society discredited Cook's claim and declared Peary as the pole's discoverer. <

Henson, a black American, was ignored until a 1988 petition to President Reagan led to his official recognition. The controversy continued as two National Geographic Society-sponsored investigations in 1988 and 1989 concluded that Peary and Henson had, in fact, been miles away from the pole. <

Flemings said that while inventors, explorers and adventurers may have different motivations, such as money, altruism, fun or ambition, most share a common characteristic. <

"Almost all enjoy the flow of the chase," he said. "They crave the excitement and the challenge of whatever they are seeking. Many are not at all brilliant, but they have a persistence, focus, and energy that keeps them going." <

Whatever the motivation, fate doesn't always deliver the reward an inventor had in mind. In the 1950s, many scientists were racing to make a polio vaccine, but Jonas Salk got there first. The crippling disease was frightening to the public, so it was inevitable that whoever found a vaccine first would become a national hero. <

Recognized by Time magazine as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century, Salk's career is that of a bittersweet dichotomy - that he outraced competitors in his field and the lack of honors received for doing so. The "Man Who Saved the Children" was denied the Nobel Prize and turned down for membership in the National Academy of Sciences, as he was treated with jealousy and contempt by many fellow scientists. <

Salk's competitors, mainly those who had done extensive polio research before him, resented the fact Salk received huge amounts of research funding from the Infantile Paralysis Foundation. Then, when Salk found a viable vaccine, he inadvertently broke protocol when he failed to credit researchers whose work he used and also his own lab colleagues. Everything Salk did after that was taken as showboating by other scientists. <

Lyon said when it comes to competition and the rewards that go with winning, American society is structured to produce that phenomenon more than anywhere else in the world. <

"We have the opportunity in this country to succeed or fail," he said. "People receive great rewards or harsh punishment for one or the other. It makes us what we are as a country." <

When it comes to history, first is the place to be. Perhaps Steve Fossett, who was the first man to complete a solo balloon flight around the world in 2002 on his sixth attempt, summed it up best in his foreword to "The Book of Firsts." <

"Records, as they say, are made to be broken," he wrote. "But being first is forever - you can only be first once." <