Space Pen

One of my favorite story, a good lesson, even though its fictional:




SPACE PEN
When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they discovered that ball-point pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 million developing a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300C.

When confronted with the same problem, the Russians used a pencil.

There is nothing more inefficient than to create

the most efficient solution to a task

that need not be done in the first place