Invention

“ Invention is by no means confined to our mechanics. Our merchants invent, our soldiers and our sailors invent, our school-masters invent, our professional men invent, aye, our women and children invent. ”

“ It is the invention that, in different degrees, distinguishes all great geniuses: the utmost stretch of human study, learning, and industry, which masters everything besides, can never attain to this. ”

“ And then, after the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Science and Invention appeared to join hands, and, with small beginnings, gradually assuming mammoth proportions, to revolutionise the very universe. ”

“ Why should the more difficult, but more ingenious and liberal arts, scorn to be taught wisdom from their example? Is it easier to understand the intricate structure of the animal frame, the work of God, than to learn the construction of any machine, as a watch or clock, the work of human invention? ”

“ A careful study of the histories of great inventors and inventions impresses the student most forcibly with the glaring fact that while the field of invention offers, and has paid, fabulously large rewards to the fortunate genius who invents or discovers some really new device or idea, it also is a field full of discouragements, dangers and heart-breaking delays, disappointments and unfulfilled hopes, to say nothing of time and energy utterly wasted by misguided zeal and misdirected effort. ”

“ The moment one hears Tarde's proposition uttered, however, one feels how supremely true it is. Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked. ”

“ Secretary Seward pays this tribute to invention: "The exercise of the inventive faculty is the nearest akin to the Creator of any faculty possessed by the human mind; for while it does not create in the sense that the Creator did, yet it is the nearest approach to it of anything known to man." ”

“ Mark the spirit of invention everywhere, thy rapid patents, Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising, See, from their chimneys how the tall flame-fires stream. ”

“ Hence comes invention, which I conceive to be those efforts of the mind and understanding which are calculated to produce new effects from the varied applications of the same cause, and the endless changes producible by different combinations and proportions. ”

“ As I view the subject, that invention is as much a gift of Providence as if the details had been supernaturally revealed. But, whatever may be our speculative views, it is of the utmost importance to the welfare of our community that we should realize the fact that purely theoretical scientific study, pursued for truth's sake, is the essential prerequisite for such inventions. Knowledge is the condition of invention. ”

“ Invention, then, of the highest kind must be composed of four qualities—imagination, to conceive a new and complicated machine; knowledge, to gather materials; judgment, to select and combine them; and perseverance without wearying till the truth be obtained. Those things which commonly go by the name of new inventions are very often mere modifications of what has been done before. “Improvements” is the technical term applied to them. ”

“ While the legislator is horrified at the thought of innovation, the inventor, the discoverer, and the artisan are electrified by the discovery of a new principle in physics, and delighted at its application in a new invention, and its practical operation in a new and useful machine. ”

“ What does the inventor, who knows that his invention will help his fellows, care about the newest dance, or the latest style in ties, gloves or shoes; what does the woman whose heart and brain are completely engaged in relieving suffering care if she is not familiar with the latest novel, or the latest fashions in flounced pantalettes? ”

“ We associate the great invention with some man of affairs man who overcame the last material obstacle, and who, although worthy of all praise, probably added very little to the total wealth of knowledge of which the invention was an immediate consequence; and, not seeing the antecedents, we are apt to underrate the part which the student or scientific investigator may have contributed to the result. ”

“ The following pages concisely show the marvelous growth of the Field of Invention from Primitive Man's Three Fundamental Wants, namely, Food, Clothing and Shelter, to the present-day countless necessities of Twentieth Century life. The same marvelous broadening of the field is found in all directions. The few illustrations given on the following pages will illustrate the point, and direct the thoughts of the student unerringly to the almost illimitable sphere of invention. ”

“ No invention can possibly be made, consisting of a combination of different elements of power, without a thorough knowledge of the properties of each of them, and the mode in which they operate on each other. ”

“ Let this be applied to some new mechanical structure produced by the intellect and hand of man. It is a result or product of human interposition. When we describe this human product as an invention, do we refrain from translating words into thoughts because we can not describe the process of invention? or, in other words, because we can not assign the mode in which the mind of the inventor reached his conception, are we to conclude that he did not attain to the conception which is plainly embodied in the machine that stands before our eyes? ”

“ And our mind will approach invention with more ease, if it often and carefully goes over both its own relation and that of the opposite party, of what has been done; and if, eliciting what suspicions each part gives rise to, it considers why, and with what intention, and with what hopes and plans, each thing was done. ”

“ Invention was the child of an educated people, and our great improvement in the sciences, arts and mechanics, was attributable to our respect for and aid given to the man who earns his bread by the sweat of his brow. ”

“ This act of invention, or the making of some concrete new thing, is an act of creation. The inventor, then, may be supposed to have learned all that empirical and all that scientific mechanics could teach him; to have had any quantity of passing groups of ideas pass through his consciousness; to be possessed of any number of plexuses capable of entering into countless combinations with others. These plexuses, or networks of transitory ideas, consisting of former impressions in the nerve-center, must, it is said, be recalled under the like conditions which produced them. ”

“ The First Raw Idea.—There are several ways by which you may get an idea for an invention but in any case the first raw idea, or inductive discovery, as it is called in philosophy, must and does come from something outside the mind, something that you have seen, heard, smelled, tasted or felt, and when your mind is in the right condition to receive an idea of this kind you will know it when it comes and grasp it very quickly, that is if you are a real inventor. ”

“ But before we turn our attention to the persons who made, and, after many failures and discouragements, successfully made this attempt, it will be advisable we should say something as to the principle on which their invention is founded. ”

“ Yet they are inventions of incalculable importance to human life, which without them could not maintain itself, much less build upon them, as it were, the vast and complex structure of modern invention, of science, and of art. ”

“ The point is not that John or Paul, because they want to make an invention and because they work on it, shall make an invention; but where thousands want an invention and work on it, the invention must appear, as surely as an unsupported rock must fall to the ground. ”

“ For heroic devotion to science in the face of danger and the scorn of their fellowmen, there is no class who have made a better record than inventors. Most inventions, too, are far more than scientific calculation, and it is the human story of the various factors in this great age of invention that is here set forth for boy readers. ”

“ The copiousness and quickness of the invention being principal requisites for the cultivation of the arts and sciences with success, I will say something concerning invention here, my subject being now sufficiently opened for that purpose. ”

“ And so that, indeed, appears to us to be the proper materials of rhetoric, which we have said appeared to be such to Aristotle.
7 And these are the divisions of it, as numerous writers have laid them down: Invention; Arrangement; Elocution; Memory; Delivery. Invention, is the conceiving of topics either true or probable, which may make one's cause appear probable; Arrangement, is the distribution of the topics which have been thus conceived with regular order; Elocution, is the adaptation of suitable words and sentences to the topics so conceived ”

“ If it is so difficult to get the facts as to the origin of an in [xi] vention in our own time, how much more difficult it is to clear away the mystery and doubt which surround the beginnings of an invention in an age long past! ”

“ Under the impulse of its own unrestrained and uncorrected activity, the mind goes through processes of invention, the products of which are sometimes wild and incoherent, sometimes exceedingly coherent, sensible, and apt. ”

“ And here and now, as always and everywhere, invention is the mother of necessity. ”

“ The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention. A new method entered into life. In order to understand our epoch, we can neglect all the details of change, such as railways, telegraphs, radios, spinning machines, synthetic dyes. ”

“ Every discovery or new invention in whatever branch of industry it may be, is the property of the inventor, and its enjoyment is guaranteed to him in the form and for the time specified in the following articles. Art. 2. Every means of giving to a production already in existence a greater degree of perfection shall be considered as a new discovery. ”

“ but that's no matter:
I say she never did invent this letter:
This is a man's invention, and his hand. ”

“ Inventions partially determine the nature of new inventions and new discoveries. A new invention makes possible other inventions, and so on. Each invention is the possible parent of a thousand offspring inventions. ”

“ We have seen that the latter half of the nineteenth century was a time of invention. It was a time when the great discoveries of many centuries bore fruit in great inventions. It was thought by some scientists that all the great discoveries had been made, and that all that remained was careful work in applying the great principles that had been discovered. ”

“ If, it may be added, we are allowed, in the present day, to refer to the perfection of our arts as evidence of the advanced state of our physical philosophy;—if our steam-engines, our gas-illumination, our buildings, our navigation, our manufactures, are cited as triumphs of science;—shall not prior inventions, made under far heavier disadvantages,—shall not greater works, produced in an earlier state of knowledge, also be admitted as witnesses that the middle ages had their share, and that not a small or doubtful one, of science? ”

“ We will leave the scientist and his young friend here, for already we have spent more time in following their journeys and talks than we set out to do. We have not touched upon every invention of the last ten years or so, nor every important development, by a long ways, but we have gone far enough to get a pretty fair idea as to the trend of modern thought in inventive research. ”

“ We may, therefore, hope for further, better, and more frequent results from man's reason, industry, method, and application, than from chance and mere animal instinct, and the like, which have hitherto been the sources of invention. ”

“ Where a new invention is supported by well-known principles, and promises to be useful, it ought to be tried. ”

“ But these results of later days did not reach their perfected operations and forms until many other arts had been discovered and developed, by which to treat and improve the wood, and the wire, and all the other materials of which those [Pg 7] early instruments were composed, and by which the underlying principles of their operations became known.
Admitting that man possesses the faculty of invention, what are the motives that induce its exercise? Why so prolific in inventions now? ”

“ So that deservedly I deem this Invention to crown my Labours, to reward my Expences, and make my Thoughts acquiesce in way of further Inventions: This making up the whole Century, and preventing any further trouble to the Reader for the present, meaning to leave to Posterity a Book, wherein under each of these Heads the means to put in execution and visible trial all and every of these Inventions, with the shape and form of all things belonging to them, shall be Printed by Brass-plates. ”

“ The inspired conception of his best thought, the materialized embodiment of his work in useful agencies, and the subjugation of the laws of nature to his service, all endure and live forever in his inventions. ”

“ Of these, the most important have been—the love of science—unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject—industry in observing and collecting facts—and a fair share of invention as well as of common sense. With such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that I should have influenced to a considerable extent the belief of scientific men on some important points. ”

“ That the invention should then be perfected, and its various applications found out, and that it should thereafter spread more or less broadly over the face of the earth, is a thing easily understood. ”