Invention: the care and feeding of ideas

Abstract

In world keenly aware of scientific advances and, in actuality, desperately in need of their continuous development, this posthumously discovered manuscript is of special interest. The vision of Norbert Wiener--child prodigy, mathematician and inventor--still rings true three decades after its original transcription onto paper. For even after such span of time, the need for ever-newly-developed inventions to maintain the quality of life in world of diminishing natural resources has become even more acute. Professor Wiener discusses the elements that must be present in the environment of the inventor for him to function and be productive. There is the need for the proper intellectual climate with body of available ideas and concepts that can be built upon. Even someone as great as Sir Isaac Newton is correct in saying, If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. The inventor needs proper materials and techniques with which to give expression to his ideas. Even the genius of Leonardo da Vinci, as seen in his notebooks and drawings, was restricted by the as yet undeveloped metallurgical technologies of his day. Furthermore, communication between the intellectual and the artisan is required for there to be an adequate combining of ideas and technology. And for all this to produce the actual invention, favorable economic environment must rest. For most of history, invention has been the lonesome effort of the individual dedicated to an idea and fortunate enough to successfully assemble the disparate elements required to bring it to fruition. In Professor Wiener's view, in the latter half of the nineteenth century the mutual interests of the pure scientist, the craftsman, and the industrialist were able to come together and exploit the accumulated knowledge of their predecessors, thereby offering the world great technological advances. Recognition of the value of such efforts brought prestige to the scientists and renown to such institutions as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Royal College of Science (Great Britain), the Ecole Polytechnique (France), and the Technical Institute (Germany). These advances, and both the need and desire to exploit them, led to the twentieth century's development of the industrial scientific laboratory. Prof. Wiener credits this development to Thomas Edison were in a moderately large trained crew of technicians was directed by central mind towards the making of invention as an everyday business. This approach to invention eventually led to the giant factory research labs such as General Electric, Westinghouse, and Bell Telephone. …

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