This is an old and familiar expression for many of us. Many people think it came from the Bible. Actually, the Bible says to give honor where honor is due. There is a difference between credit and honor. Honor has a positive connotation and means recognition of value, respect, and veneration. It is given to one deemed worthy of praise. Credit means recognizing a person’s responsibility for an action or idea; that action or idea could be good or bad. Credit names the person responsible for it.
I am going to be talking about credit that is recognition for doing something good. The credit that should have led to honor, but did not. I started thinking about this when doing some research for a book I am writing. In reading “Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), I encountered an interesting bit of information. In a lecture on aesthetics given in 1938 at Cambridge University, he stated, “If I were a good draughtsman, I could convey an innumerable number of expressions by four strokes.” Then he drew these faces expressing a half-smile, raised eyebrows, and a full smile:
Do you recognize what these are? They are the first emoticons, which are pictorial representations of a facial expression. The modern emoticons were made after keyboards became popular, using punctuation marks, numbers, and letters to picture a person’s mood. They first showed up in 1972 and were developed further by Scott Fahlman in 1982. Of course, Fahlman did not patent his idea and neither had Wittgenstein.
The emoticon evolved into the emoji, which young people cannot do without today. The Loufrani family started The Smiley Company in 1996 and in 1997 registered hundreds of different emoticons with the United States Copyright office. The Smiley Company holds the licensing rights to smiley face symbols in over 100 countries and grosses over $100 million annually. Wittgenstein became famous as a philosopher but he certainly did not become rich and famous as the inventor of the emoticon. 
Reading about him led me to research a little more into other things for which the original inventor did not receive the credit or honor. Does the name Nicola Tesla (1856–1943) come to mind? Tesla was a brilliant man who had many new ideas that have benefited mankind. Unfortunately for him, he never had the money to develop his ideas and had to rely on friends and employers for financing, some of whom patented his ideas and became rich.
Tesla worked for Thomas Edison when Edison was trying to correct the problems with his direct current electric light bulbs. Tesla came up with alternating current that allowed for lowering and increasing the voltage. Edison rejected Tesla’s idea because he did not want to lose the royalties on the DC light bulb. Tesla quit working for Edison but Edison finally saw the light and developed the General Electric Company manufacturing products using alternating current.
Marconi is credited with being the inventor of the radio. However, he used technology from 17 of Tesla’s patents. They became involved in a legal battle and the U.S. Supreme Court revoked Marconi’s radio patent and recognized Tesla’s. Unfortunately for him, both men were dead by the time the ruling was made and history has not been corrected. Tesla also developed the first remote control device; pioneered X-ray technology including discovering the harm X-ray can have on the human body; he was a pioneer of hydroelectric power and renewable energy, and many other things we are using today. Most of the things he did, he did nor receive the credit or honor for. He was quoted as saying that he was happy to help mankind.
That reminds me of another saying that I have heard many times. There are many variations of it that go something like this: “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.” The first known quote of this idea goes back to a Jesuit priest in 1863. Since then the quote has been attributed to Benjamin Jowett, Charles Edward Montague, Harry Truman, and Ronald Reagan. And it has been quoted many times without giving credit to anyone. Whoever said it first, it is just as true today as it was then.
There are other inventors who did not realize what they had, or that lost the race to the patent office. Alexander Graham Bell applied for his patent on a speech transition apparatus two hours before Elisha Gray arrived at the patent office. Grey’s design worked better than Bell’s but first-come-first-serve at the patent office. Bell Telephone became rich and famous. Gray Telephone became kaput.
Do you wear Levi Jeans? The only reason you don’t wear Jacob Jeans is because Jacob Davis did not have the money to file a patent application for his jean design that put metal rivets at the stress points to increase the durability. He asked Levi Strauss, a successful store owner, to pay for the patent application. You know whose name he put on the application and who got the credit (and the $).
The General Electric laboratory was working on a synthetic rubber product and did not like it. They sold the production rights to Peter Hodgson, an unemployed worker, for $147. He named the product “Silly Putty”, and marketed it as a children’s toy. When he died in 1976 his estate was worth $140 million. GE scientists developed it but they were left in the dark as to its value and did not get the credit or the $.
There have been many people in this life that have not received the proper honor that was due them or received the proper credit for their accomplishments. There have also been many people that did not receive the proper blame they were due. In the current “blame culture” in which we live, many people are getting blamed when no blame was due.
That reminds me of when I had a car accident in Mexico. A Mexican driver ran into my vehicle and he was clearly at fault. There were many witnesses. However, he did not have insurance and he did have a sob story. He was going directly to jail since he had no insurance. I told the police that I did not want to file charges against the man and that my insurance company would pay for the damages to my vehicle. They let the man go free. When the police had written up the accident report, I was named as the at-fault driver. I asked the police about this and was told that if I would not find the other driver at fault, I assumed the fault. Somebody had to be blamed. That is what I see going on in Western society today. Somebody has to be blamed even if they are not at fault.
The Bible says that there is a judge who will give credit where credit is due, and blame only where blame is due. “For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10 NIV). Now you can believe that or not. If somebody had told Thales that the earth did not float on an ocean but was suspended in space, Thales would not have believed him. But that would not change the truth of it. You can believe the Bible verse or not. If it is true, it is true for everyone. If it is not true, it is not true for anyone. Decisions, decisions! But you must decide.