Invention Organized.
In these days of organization, the career of the inventor takes on a new breadth. If his ideas are sound, poverty need be no bar to his success. To-day a man of proved ability who entertains an idea for a new machine, engine, or process may choose among the great firms or companies interested in the field he would enter. His plans are then canvassed by competent critics; if his suggestions harbor a fallacy it is pointed out; if his aims, though feasible, would be unprofitable, they are left severely alone. Perhaps in essence his schemes are good, but need modification; this is duly supplied. Instead of working all alone in twilight or darkness, the inventor now takes up experiment with the aid of carefully chosen assistants, with amassed information as to what others have done in the same path, both at home and abroad.
When an inventor is an Edison, as remarkable in executive ability as in creative power, it is he who organizes, as a general, the forces which test his ideas and perfect such of them as prove sound. Let Edison imagine a new storage battery; forthwith he enlists a corps of chemists and metallurgists, engineers and mechanics, and keeps them busy attacking the difficulties of his quest mechanical, chemical, electrical. What if his mathematics go no further than arithmetic, are not masters of the calculus to be engaged on moderate terms in every university town? His personal command of the pencil falls far short of the facility of professional draftsmen who, at reasonable salaries, will turn out plans and elevations quickly and accurately. His staff, bound to him by affection and pride as with hooks of steel, are the fingers of his hands to win triumphs which neither he alone, nor his men by themselves, could ever accomplish.
It has been solely by organized ability, unfaltering faith in ultimate success, and massed capital, that the steam turbine has become the rival of the steam engine of Watt. A vast sum, expended during nine years, was required to perfect its delicate and exacting mechanism. One day a young engineer saw it whirling away at high speed; with the efficiency of the gas engine in mind, he asked, “Why not drive a turbine by gas instead of by steam?” He took his idea to a leading manufacturing concern; it was approved, and now that young inventor is attacking the difficulties, neither few nor small, which stand in the way of building an effective gas turbine.