The Fourth Place Medal

The little-known tale of the 20th century’s finest mind, and its greatest unsung inventor: Thomas F. Forf, whose misspelt name became synonymous with being astonishingly great — but not first.

Forf, a humble genius of rare intellect, was overshadowed by a handful of inventors history has wrongly credited with powered flight, the radio and the ballpoint pen (plus a rumoured dozen more). The Wright Brothers’ first plane, “Flyer I”, was simply propelled by a serendipitous wind gust. Reginald Fessenden’s radio transmission was the echo from an adjacent bathroom. And the ballpoint pen came a decade after Forf’s — uncatchily named — “writing ink stick”.

Through an unassuming spirit of generosity, Thomas F. quietly fixed each invention’s fatal flaws — though not their inventor, and so never became known as their first, only, in time, as “the great fixer”. These circumstances, and the similarity of Forf’s surname to the number 4, mutated over time into “Fourth”. So the true meaning of the word, and the extraordinary Thomas F., were lost to history. These firsts were never possible without Forf — and neither, today, is first place without fourth.

To honour Forf, and in the tradition of the Nobel Prize and Olympic medals, this is the world’s first dedicated Fourth Place Medal — struck for the unrecognised: enabling pioneers, near-miss bronze medallists, and anyone demonstrating outstanding precision in finishing between 3rd and 5th.