CHAPTER XI
WHAT SOME INVENTIONS HAVE PAID
One of the most alluring and sky-blue delights, next to working out a big idea of your own, is to read about the fortunes that other inventors have piled up by the simple use of their grey matter.
The stories of what they did and how they did it are far redder blooded and more gripping than any old sleuth yarn ever put between paper covers; but different from this kind of yellow fiction they are all true, their heroes are all real and each one had a great idea burning in his brain, like St. Elmo’s fire, and each had the business ability to transmute it into solid gold, twenty-four carats fine.
And it is not time wasted in harking back to what other inventors have done if you will but heed the lesson that they teach for their works stand out like guide-posts by day and signal-lights by night which point the way for you to go and do the same thing if you will only quit dreaming, get busy with your experiments and be careful not to run into any open switches.
A Tour of the Inventive World.—Nor need an invention be a large one to make money though of course the great inventions—those that have given the world all the civilization it has had or is likely to have for some centuries to come—have, as a rule, been the greatest producers of wealth for those who worked them out.
So now suppose we make a personally conducted tour around the world of inventions and take a look at a few of the wonders which prove that thoughts are things and that things are money, that is when you know how to convert one into the other. And the route we will take will show us some small inventions as we go and we will see a few of the big inventions on our return to home and laboratory.
Little Inventions.—To begin with let us lead off with the smallest and least important inventions, though they also serve a purpose, and these are to be found in toys, games and other things for pleasure.
First is the return ball, which consisted of a piece of rubber strand fastened to a wooden ball; this simple invention, so ’tis said, paid its inventor $50,000 a year in royalties for a long time, and so he waxed fat and grew rich.
Such toys as the dancing dolls, the wheel of life and the chameleon top brought their respective inventors even larger sums, while the roller skate which Plimpton improved and made popular by his invention of cramping the wheels netted him $1,000,000 in royalties and so you need not feel sorry for him.