Inventiveness

“ Past suffering is not always an evil, it is often an exciting reminiscence. It is good to take life adventurously, like Odysseus of old. What would one feel about Odysseus if, instead of contriving a way out of the Cyclops' cave, he had set himself to consider of what forgotten sin his danger was the consequence? Suffering and disaster come to us to develop our inventiveness and our courage, not to daunt and dismay us; and we ought therefore to approach experience with a sense of humour, if possible, and with a lively curiosity. ”

“ All these great achievements have come to us from the hand of the inventor. He it is who has enabled us to inhabit the air above us, to tunnel the earth beneath, explore the mysteries of the sea, and in a thousand ways, unknown to our forefathers, multiply human comforts and minimize human misery. Indeed, it is difficult to recall a single feature of our national progress along material lines that has not been vitalized by the touch of the inventor's genius. ”

“ I have told the story of the Match, the Stove, the Lamp, the Forge, the Steam-Engine, the Plow, the Reaper, the Mill, the Loom, the House, the Carriage, the Boat, the Clock, the Book, and the Message. From the history of these inventions we learn how man became the master of the world of nature around him, how he brought fire and air and earth and water under his control and compelled them to do his will and his work. When we trace the growth of these inventions we at the same time trace the course of human progress. ”

“ In the opening up and development of any new art based upon a fundamental discovery or invention, there ensues naturally an era of supplemental or collateral inventive activity—the legitimate outcome of the basic original ideas. Part of this development may be due to the inventive skill and knowledge of the original inventor and his associates, who, by reason of prior investigation, would be in better position to follow up the art in its earliest details than others, who might be regarded as mere outsiders. ”

“ The work of invention, I am certain, is so mainly produced, from concurrent testimony I have received from a great number of inventors, or what the old English called "makers"—what the Greeks called poets, because the word poet means a maker. Every inventor must have a certain amount of imagination, which may be exercised in mechanical contrivance or in the creations of art; these are inventions—they are made, they are produced, we don't know how; the conception comes into the mind we cannot tell whence ”

“ All these great inventions—these implements of marvellous skill and power—prove that the inventor, or the worker, himself is not a machine. I know of nothing which gives me so forcible an impression of the worth and superiority of mind, of its alliance with the Creative Intelligence, as the exhibition of an ingenious piece of mechanism. ”

“ On taking this view of the progress of Steam Navigation, it will be found that the amount of novelty to which each inventor has a claim is very small, and that his principal merit consists in the application of other inventions to accomplish his special object. The same remark will indeed apply to most other inventions; for the utmost that inventive genius can accomplish, is to put together in new forms, and with different applications, preceding contrivances and discoveries, which were also the results of antecedent knowledge, labour, and skill. ”

“ It was clear to me even at that time that inventions are the handwork of mortal man and that, though at first they appeal to us, as they ought to, as wonderful creations of human ingenuity, their ultimate fate is to become more or less commonplace. ”

“ 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." ”

“ In a discovery there must be an element of the accidental, and an important one, too; while an invention is purely deductive. In my own case but few, and those the least important, of my inventions owed anything to accident. Most of them have been hammered out after long and patient labor, and are the result of countless experiments all directed toward attaining some well-defined object. All mechanical improvements may safely be said to be inventions227 and not discoveries. The sewing-machine was an invention. So were the steam-engine and the typewriter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In these and similar cases, though the idea was born and the model of the invention was actually made, it still waited the advent of the scientific mechanical inventor who should bring it to perfection, and embody it in a practical working form.
Some of the most valuable inventions have descended to us without the names of their authors having been preserved. We are the inheritors of an immense legacy of the results of labour and ingenuity, but we know not the names of our benefactors. ”

“ Aside from the question of financial returns from inventing, the inventor has the satisfaction of knowing that he is a producer of the most fundamental kind. All material progress has involved the production of inventions. Inventors are universally conceded to be among the greatest benefactors of the human race.
The art of invention is therefore one of great commercial and economical importance, and it becomes a matter of much interest to know how inventions are produced. ”

“ Civilization begets new needs and wants; opportunities for new invention are multiplying at a tremendous rate. In other words, where an inventor, two centuries ago, would have had one hundred chances to "make good," today the chances are multiplied many thousand-fold. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is, undoubtedly, true that every inventor must have some imagination or creative faculty, but, as I shall seek to show, this faculty may be greatly assisted by method. While reasoning does not constitute the whole of an inventive act, it can, so to speak, clear the way and render the inventive act easier of accomplishment.
Invention has been defined as "In the nature of a guess; the mind leaps across a logical chasm. ”

“ The use of an invention by the inventor himself, or of any other person under his direction, by way of experiment, and in order to bring the invention to perfection, has never been regarded as such a use. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Through man’s inventive genius the utility of this valuable product has been increased a hundred-fold, and its wider use has been the means of broadening and extending other manufactories. It has aided invention, and is the medium through which new discoveries, theories, and conclusions have been proclaimed. ”

“ But you do have just as great inventors, and they are here in this audience, as ever invented a machine. But the probability is that the greatest inventor to benefit the world with his discovery is some person, perhaps some lady, who thinks she could not invent anything. Did you ever study the history of invention and see how strange it was that the man who made the greatest discovery did it without any previous idea that he was an inventor? Who are the great inventors? ”

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

“ So multiplied are the resources of modern industry that desired forms are created at will, almost without regard to the material employed. It is not so in primitive art, to which for a brief space we will now turn so that our survey of form, though all too cursory, may be refreshed by a contrast of old with new. Let us begin with a glance at some of the aids with which man first provided himself, taking the gifts of nature just as they were offered. ”

“ Here it is the same: the financial inventor is often possessed with a kind of intoxication—he no longer labors for lucre, but for art; he becomes, in his own way, an author of romance. His imagination, set at the beginning toward gain, now seeks only its complete expansion, the assertion and eruption of its creative power, the pleasure of inventing for invention's sake, [133] daring the extraordinary, the unheard-of—it is the victory of pure construction. The natural equilibrium between the three necessary elements of creation—mobility, combination of images, calculation—is destroyed. ”

“ The study of inventions in any one or all eras can [Pg 6] not proceed intelligently unless account is taken not only of their mode of construction, and of their evolution one from another, but of the evolution of distinct arts, their relation, their interdependence in growth, and their mutual progress. ”

“ We had indeed already produced inventors in the mechanical arts, men of wonderful alertness of mind, who gave a character to the national genius, and did much to help us to the industrial supremacy that we to-day possess. ”

“ To-day when an inventor seeks to imitate a natural product he does so with a power of analysis, a wealth of new materials, such as his forerunners could not have imagined. It is in laboratories stocked more diversely than ever before, with their resources better understood than at any earlier time, that the triumphs of modern ingenuity proceed. ”

“ The mere original invention forms generally but a small part of the whole business or merit of bringing into useful operation any new thing. Judgment, a knowledge of the world, and of business and other qualities not particularly belonging to inventors, are just as requisite as mere ingenuity, although they are not the subject of protection. ”

“ It is doubtless true that the great inventors are born and not made, but many of them seem, nevertheless, to have drifted into the work that gave them fame, or to have hit by chance on their compelling idea. ”

“ But all these special inventions, the utility of which we should not think of denying, are only of real practical value if the makers have followed out certain general principles in their manufacture. ”

“ There is much room for improvement; modern inventions have sprung up; mechanical contrivances have advanced; new and interesting objects of natural productions have been brought within his reach, from the furthest limits of the habitable globe, to enrich the resources of his inventive powers, unknown to the antiquated monastic scribes, to whom we owe so much. Our advantages over them are obvious. Why, then, should we not excel them? Let it not be considered that this art is a mere mechanical amusement; a mere ingenious contrivance; a daub of colours and gold—showy, flimsy, and unmeaning. ”

“ The inventor sets before himself an end with conscious purpose, and then seeks means to reach that end, but at best his methods may be wasteful and imperfect. Nature, with unhasting tread, acting simply through the qualities inherent in her materials, through their singular powers of combination, of mutual adaptability, shows the discoverer results which to understand even in small measure tax his keenest wit, or displays to him structures at times beyond his skill to dissect, much less to imitate. ”

“ The decision of the inventor must depend upon the nature of the invention, its profitableness, his own financial resources, his health, his energies, temperament, and the likelihood of his invention being imitated, and his mechanical and financial ability to protect it. ”

“ Rastus (aside) .—That’s us, Abner, cultured an’ intelligent!
Inventor.—My invention is the result of years of study, experimentation and research and is destined to fill a long felt want.
Tom (aside) .—That’s what they say about every new rat-trap, egg-beater, dictionary, or patent hairpin.
Inventor.—One of the secrets of the psychological unrest which characterizes the human race is that each person desires, in short, to be someone else. The poor man wishes he were rich, the rich man would like to be a boy again, the young would like to be old, and the old young. ”

“ 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. ”

“ More frequently, however, inventions are not entirely new, but modifications of contrivances previously known, though to a few, and not yet brought into practical use. Glancing back over the history of mechanism, we occasionally see an invention seemingly full born, when suddenly it drops out of sight, and we hear no more of it for centuries. It is taken up de novo by some inventor, stimulated by the needs of his time, and falling again upon the track, he recovers the old footmarks, follows them up, and completes the work. ”

“ 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. ”