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Once upon a time, a king announced his whole kingdom through the radio: “whoever among my citizens will be the one to make the most useful discovery, will win a laurel wreath with golden berries, a medal as wide as a plate, a bag of golden coins, and, once dead, a monument in solid gold”. This announcement had the effect that a falling cake from the sky would have to children during recess. No joking! A monument with a pedestal, a statue and a solid golden railing! All of the king’s citizens started studying day and night in order to accomplish this darned discovery, and the kingdom became a giant laboratory, where brains of all sorts were racked. All one could hear were the leafing of books and the squeaking of pens. All those copybooks and blackboards filled with calculations! All those experiments! All those drawings! All those models! All those hopes! All those dreams! The day set for the project presentations, the king’s palace was swarming with scientists, professors, engineers, artisans, industrialists, workers, students, some with a big book underneath their arm, some with a roll of drawings, some with a model. The king entered the room, sat on the throne, and the procession of the inventors begun, each of which exalted its own discovery, and claimed the monumental prize. The king and his counsellors saw the most odd inventions ever: a plane to fly to the moon; a device to straighten a dog’s legs; a telescope to make objects closer, and therefore abolish distances; a sieve to draw water; an automobile that fit in a suitcase; a pannier to make soup; a mechanism to knock down open doors; a device to install any type of notion in one’s brain without having to study books; a net to catch the wind; a drill to make water holes; a foot-ball ball that was guided to the goal thanks to an infallible internal mechanism; a method to teach birds how to fly and one to teach fish how to swim; a device to extract beef from grass without using a an ox; tiles to pave the sea; a bag to sack fog, etc., etc. Yes, some were sensible inventions, but many had no reason or rhyme! Teach the fish how to swim! Ah! Ah! And the other smallhead that wanted an automobile to fit in a suitcase! Ah! Ah! Ah! When all the inventors finished their procession in front of the king, a farmer, that all that time had bashfully stayed in a corner without anyone’s attention, came ahead with an unsteady pace. He carried a sheaf of spikes. Once he arrived in front of the king, he bowed, then he took a plant of wheat from the sheaf and gave it to him: Your Highness, here’s my discovery: a plant of wheat with two spikes, instead of one. The king carefully examined it, and then he said to the farmer:
Bravo! Here is the most useful discovery. You deserve the prize.
And so the farmer received the laurel wreath with golden berries, the bag of golden coins, and the golden monument, where he was represented holding the two-spike plant.