And to give up a good idea and then find that some one else has thought of the same thing later, worked it up and made money out of it gives a fellow a most uncomfortable feeling about what might have been.
Now my purpose is not to tell you what to invent as much as it is to tell you how to invent and, if when you get an idea that you believe worth while you will follow it up step by step as I have outlined in this book you will at least save yourself time, worry and money and you stand a chance of winning fame, glory, and a bank account.
How to Get an Idea.—There is only one way to invent a new thing or to make an improvement on something that has already been invented and that is to get an idea.
Fig. 1. A POPULAR IDEA OF AN INVENTIVE GENIUS
And what, you may wonder, is an idea? It is easy to say that it is a notion that comes into your head, or a thought that springs into your mind. But I doubt if even a psychologist could explain just what an idea is or how one originates in the mind any more than a biologist could tell how the germ of life is retained in a seed and how it grows when it is planted.
One good thing about an idea, though, is that we don’t have to know what the mysterious thing is or how it springs into being in the mind. In this way an idea is very much like electricity—we don’t know exactly what it is but we do know a good deal about how it works and this is enough for our present purpose.
The First Raw Idea.—There are several ways by which you may get an idea for an invention but in any case the first raw idea, or inductive discovery, as it is called in philosophy, must and does come from something outside the mind, something that you have seen, heard, smelled, tasted or felt, and when your mind is in the right condition to receive an idea of this kind you will know it when it comes and grasp it very quickly, that is if you are a real inventor.
