Inventor

“ And the inventor, alas! as will shortly be seen, has plenty of woes to endure, besides the ingratitude of the many; idle folk that can do nothing themselves tell them, "Such a one is a born inventor; he could not do otherwise. He no more deserves credit for his invention than a prince for being born to rule! He is simply exercising his natural faculties, and his work is its own reward," and the people believe them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Anyone who wants to be a successful inventor, needs to know a great many things – in the most diverse fields. For if a new invention is a combination of earlier inventions, then the inventor’s mind is the ground on which, for the first time, various seemingly unrelated things combine. Example: The steam engine combines the kettle for cooking Rumford’s Soup, the pump, and the spinning wheel – if the first inventor had not been familiar with these objects, if he had not combined them in his mind, would we have had steam engines? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The greater the number of inventions that come into being, the more things a new inventor must know how to do; the first, earliest, and simplest inventions were made by completely uneducated people – but today’s inventions, particularly scientific ones, are products of the most highly educated minds. ”

“ Toys, speculations, dreams, observations, startling experiments, these often constitute the framework on which is hung the title of Inventor; but the nineteenth century has demanded a better support for that proud title. He alone who first transforms his ideas into actual work and useful service in some field of man’s labor, or clearly teaches others to do so, is now recognised as the true inventor. Tested by this rule there was scarcely an inventor in the [Pg 74] field of steam in all the long stretches of time preceding the seventeenth century. ”

“ One Sunday a gentleman who is a great inventor called at my house. Only a few words had passed between us, when he arose, saying that he must go as it was time for church. Wondering that a man of his mental wealth could enjoy the intellectual poverty of the pulpit, I asked for an explanation, and he gave me the following: "You know that I am an inventor. Well, the moment my mind becomes absorbed in some difficult problem, I am afraid that something may happen to distract my attention. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ "The great Inventor is one who has walked forth upon the industrial world, not from universities, but from hovels; not as clad in silks and decked with honours, but as clad in fustian and grimed with soot and oil."—ISAAC TAYLOR, Ultimate Civilization. ”

“ When poor Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanized rubber, was one day asked what he wanted to make of his boys, he is said to have replied: "Make them anything but inventors; mankind has nothing but cuffs and kicks for those who try to do it a service." ”

“ Many a great invention to increase human comfort and happiness would be given to the world, if inventors were given that encouragement and protection which their genius, industry and usefulness deserve.
CHAPTER 30
The Successful Inventor
One has indeed to be more than ordinarily gifted, and most carefully trained in many directions, spiritual, mental and physical, to be a successful inventor. To improve by one's own ability and efforts the results of any phase of human activities ”

“ 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. ”

“ I repeat once again, therefore, that today's inventor must be a highly and comprehensively educated person. Inspiration, and the genius who was even reputed to abide in idleness, are illusions that only provincial aunties and grannies can embrace. ”

“ In England an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When all is ready the specification is deposited, and the inventor, perhaps, discovers that the title he has first taken will not cover his invention on account of its being different from his first contemplation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would be easy to extend the martyrology of inventors, and to cite the names of other equally distinguished men who have, without any corresponding advantage to themselves, contributed to the industrial progress of the age,—for it has too often happened that genius has planted the tree, of which patient dulness has gathered the fruit; but we will confine ourselves for the present to a brief account of an inventor of comparatively recent date, by way of illustration of the difficulties and privations which it is so frequently the lot of mechanical genius to surmount. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many an inventor's head has been turned by just such praise. It is all well-meant, best-intentioned, and highly gratifying, but as an indication of what will be likely to happen to your invention it is worse than valueless. ”

“ 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 whilst the inventor is a great and useful agent of civilization, there is one behind him who is greater than he, viz., the man who provides him with the new knowledge upon which all his inventions must be based. ”

“ Here this ingenious inventor, explains to us some of his comparatively simple inventions, giving us a machine with which to can bread, another to do away with the human typist—and even translator entirely—etc.—all useful machines. Still he is dissatisfied—so he always goes ahead, ever seeking new improvements. Usually he succeeds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But in this, the iron-grey moustache period of his life, he informed me with badly concealed pride that he had gained world fame as the Inventor—no, Inventor is not the word—Producer, I believe would be the right term—of a wonderful kind of beetroot seed. ”

“ The popular idea of an inventor is of a man who makes an immense addition to the real wealth of the world—who invents the steam engine, or the spinning jenny, or the Jacquard [256] loom, or the hot blast—almost revolutionising the material powers of mankind. ”

“ The inventor, however, is not a creator like the poet, but chiefly a finder-out. His power consists in a great measure in quick perception and accurate observation, and in seeing and foreseeing the effects of certain mechanical combinations. He must possess the gift of insight, as well as of manual dexterity, combined with the indispensable qualities of patience and perseverance,—for though baffled, as he often is, he must be ready to rise up again unconquered even in the moment of defeat. ”

“ You won't mind showing us your Calculations, Working Drawings, Stress Diagrams, etc., will you?”
Said the Letter with dignity, “I come from an Inventor so brilliantly clever as to be far above the unimportant matters you mention. He is no common working man, sir! He leaves such things to Mechanics. ”

“ What nature has done, art may imitate,—in the separation of oxygen from air, in flight, in producing light, in converting heat into work . . . Lessons from lower animals . . . A hammer-using wasp.
Beyond their unending study of forms and properties, their constant weighing and measuring, the inventor and his twin-brother, the discoverer, have a gainful province which now for a little space will engage our attention. This province is nothing else than Nature, which begins by offering primitive man stones for hammers, arrowheads, knives; sticks to serve as clubs, paddles, harrows or tent-poles. ”

“ He makes you feel that if you only had a little more time, you, too, might be an inventor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That ultimate knowledge of materials and of processes which by long experience becomes intuitive in the mind of a great inventor of course cannot be acquired from books or from any set course of instruction. ”

“ HOW TO BECOME AN INVENTOR.
Every boy should know how inventions originate. This book explains them all, giving examples in electricity, hydraulics, magnetism, optics, pneumatics, mechanics, etc., etc. ”

“ The inventors have helped more than any other class to make the world what it is; the workers and the thinkers, the poor and the grand; labor and learning, industry and intelligence; Watt and Descartes, Fulton and Montaigne, Stephenson and Kepler, Crompton and Comte, Franklin and Voltaire, Morse and Buckle, Draper and Spencer, and hundreds more that I could mention. The inventors, the workers, the thinkers, the mechanics, the surgeons, the philosophers—these are the Atlases upon whose shoulders rests the great fabric of modern civilization. ”