Twentieth Century Inventions A Forecast

Excerpt

PREFACE.

Twenty years ago the author started a career in technological journalism by writing descriptions of what he regarded as the most promising inventions which had been displayed in international exhibitions then recently held. From that time until the present it has been his constant duty and practice to take note of the advance of inventive science as applied to industrial improvement—to watch it as an organic growth, not only from a philosophical, but also from a practical, point of view. The advance towards the actual adoption of any great industrial invention is generally a more or less collective movement; and, in the course of a practice such as that referred to, the habit of watching the signs of progress has been naturally acquired.

Moreover, it has always been necessary to take a comprehensive, rather than a minute or detailed, view of the progress of the great industrial army of nineteenth century civilisation towards certain objectives. It is better, for some purposes of technological journalism, to be attached to the staff than to march with any individual company—for the war correspondent must ever place himself in a position from which a bird's-eye view is possible. The personal aspect of the campaign becomes merged in that which regards the army as an organic unit.

It may, therefore, be claimed that, in some moderate degree, the author is fitted by training and opportunities for undertaking the necessarily difficult task of foretelling the trend of invention and industrial improvement during the twentieth century. He must, of course, expect to be wrong in a certain proportion of his prognostications; but, like the meteorologists, he will be content if in a fair percentage of his forecasts it should be admitted that he has reasoned correctly according to the available data.

The questions to be answered in an inquiry as to the chances of failure or success which lie before any invention or proposed improvement are, first, whether it is really wanted; and, secondly, whether the environment in the midst of which it must make its début is favourable. These requirements generally depend upon matters which, to a large extent, stand apart from the personal qualifications of any individual inventor.

In the course of a search through the vast accumulations of the patent specifications of various countries, the thought is almost irresistibly forced upon the mind of the investigator that "there is nothing new under the sun". No matter how far back he may push his inquiry in attempting to unveil the true source of any important idea, he will always find at some antecedent date the germ, either of the same inventive conception, or of something which is hardly distinguishable from it. The habit of research into the origin of improved industrial method must therefore help to strengthen the impression of the importance of gradual growth, and of general tendencies, as being the prime factors in promoting social advancement through the success of invention.

The same habit will also generally have the effect of rendering the searcher more diffident in any claims which he may entertain as to the originality of his own ideas. Inventive thought has been so enormously stimulated during the past two or three generations, that the public recognition of a want invariably sets thousands of minds thinking about the possible methods of ministering to it.

Startling illustrations of this fact are continually cropping up in the experiences of patent agents and others who are engaged in technological work and its literature. The average inventor is almost always inclined to imagine—when he finds another man working in exactly the same groove as himself—that by some means his ideas have leaked out, and have been pirated. But those who have studied invention, as a social and industrial force, know that nothing is more common than to find two or more inventors making entirely independent progress in the same direction....