Rizal was an inventor as well

MANILA, Philippines - National hero Jose Rizal, whose 118th death anniversary was commemorated Tuesday, was also an inventor, although he had filed no patents on any of his inventions, according to a present-day Filipino inventor.

Bormeo Modanza, Filipino Inventors Society national president and a director of the FIS Producers Cooperative (FISPC), said Rizal’s alter-ego as an inventor has never been talked about or celebrated.

“Little, if at all has been said about his inventive knack of ingenuity that had been all along visible in the short span of his life,” Modanza said.

In his paper “The Inventor in Dr. Jose P. Rizal,” the Knight of Rizal said that the inventor in Rizal had blossomed during his years of exile in Dapitan in the Zamboanga peninsula.

“Most visible was his technology in irrigation,” he said, “where rice and fish, cacao, fibers, sugar, oil, corn, coffee various other products were more than sufficient.”

Rizal’s Dapitan community set the tone and pace for a technology-driven progressive Philippines through a multi-farming system supplied with his irrigation design to make it productive, competitive and sustainable, Modanza said.

“Rizal was the first to invent the first brick making machine in the country.  It was said to be producing 6,000 bricks a day, a project anticipating perhaps what was to be the first National Housing Authority’s objective.  With such a production output the machine must have been a sophisticated one,” Modanza added.

Modanza said Rizal also invented a cigarette lighter locally known as “sulpukan.”

Rizal gave or sent it as gift to some of his valued friends here and abroad, including Dr. (Ferdinand) Blumentritt.  

Rizal carved moulds for biscuits and other tools for bakery requirement.  He also made chess set pieces out of animal bones while in prison.

Modanza said Rizal engineered the construction of a water system that supplied fresh water to the community, including an irrigation program.  

“It was a sheer engineering skill born out of bare hands and imagination using his locally formulated cement out of lime from sea shells and treated bamboo tubes well within any basic structural integrity for a load bearing requirement or capacity,” Modanza said.

Modanza said the celebration of the inventor in Rizal could lead to a national culture of invention and innovation.