INVENTION 



3027 



INVENTION 



disclosed by accident, as in the case of the 

 Welsbach gas mantle and Goodyear's process 

 for vulcanizing rubber. In such cases, never- 

 theless, it is almost always true that perfection 

 has come only through years of hard work and 

 study. 



Seldom does one man conceive an invention 

 and bring it to a finished state. There are 

 frequently as many inventors as there are im- 

 portant parts of an article; the fountain pen is 

 the inspiration of nearly a hundred men, whose 

 work, part by part, has been discarded in favor 

 of later improvements. Thomas A. Edison, 

 who is the greatest inventor in the world's his- 

 tory, says that inventive genius is "two per cent 

 inspiration and ninety-eight per cent perspira- 

 tion." 



Protection to Inventors. Whatever device 

 a man may originate is his personal property; 

 no other man has any right to use it except 

 with the inventor's permission. Laws of all 

 countries recognize this, and each nation guar- 

 antees to its citizens or subjects who produce 

 inventions the exclusive right to all benefits 

 that may be derived from them. Such a guar- 

 antee is in writing, is issued by the govern- 

 ment, and is called a patent (which see). An 

 inventor may, under his patent, manufacture 

 and sell his device; he may sell all his rights 

 to others and thereafter reap no benefits; he 



may contract to permit others to make and 

 sell his invention, on an agreement that he 

 shall be paid a certain sum on each sale. 



A man who buys a plow purchases a patented 

 article. When he pays for it he gets not only 

 the plow but the right to use it in any way 

 he pleases; he may even sell it again, but he 

 violates the law if he uses that plow as a pat- 

 tern and makes another like it. 



Progress of Invention. In the Bible there 

 appears the phrase, "There is no new thing 

 under the sun." The United States Patent 

 Office officials in 1846 had nearly the same idea, 

 for in that year half their small force was 

 dismissed because it was believed almost every- 

 thing had been patented that could possibly 

 be invented. In that year 566 patents were 

 issued to citizens of the United States. In 1914 

 the number granted was 51,650, and during the 

 same year nearly 28,000 other applications were 

 rejected. To the end of 1915 a total of over 

 1,167,000 patents had been issued. Since 1911 

 Canada has issued to its inventors an average 

 of about 1,200 patents a year. The Dominion 

 began thus to encourage genius in 1872. , 



Modern Achievement. Following is a list 

 of some of the great inventions of recent times, 

 arranged in alphabetical order. An asterisk 

 after the name of an inventor indicates that 

 there is a biography of him in these volumes. 



