Explore "The Mobius Trail" by George O. Smith on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The first model of any invention is never the refined version. More than likely it is a rather sorry mess, containing converted parts and hand-whittled members; strewn profusely with regard only to their function, and without a single thought for the esthetic quality of placement or shining panel and meter.
Grown from a single idea, passed through the adolescent growing pains of many failures and few true advances, the finished product is an inefficient, ill-appearing semi-mediocre forerunner of the final thing. The first working model may also make its first success at some odd hour in the morning after a job of work that culminates forty or fifty solid hours -- after a few years of preliminary planning and building.