I listened to Paul Collins talk today on “How to be Obscure”. It’s an entertaining talk on people who were almost famous, or should have been famous, but are now unremebered. Stories told included N-Rays, studies of the effects of opium and how an inventor managed to automate a process and then make a fortune from it by not patenting it and keeping the process a secret.Collins edits the Collins’ library and is the author of Banvard’s Folly: Thirteen People Who Didn’t Change the World.