Inventing for Boys

by A. Frederick Collins

Again as I stated in the preceding chapter if you apply for a patent before you have made a working model of it you will find when you finally get your model finished it will be so at variance with what you have written in your specification and claims that you will hardly be able to recognize it as being the same invention; and besides there will be the trouble and the expense of changing your drawings and specification and claims.

On the other hand when you have finished your model to the point where it will do the work you want it to do you are in a position then to make a new and accurate set of drawings, to write a clear description of how the machine works and to draw up your claims with the certainty of knowing just what you have and what you want to ask for—in a word you are ready to do business with the patent office.

Ways to Make a Model.—The way in which you get your model made depends on several things and over these you will have little or no control.

There are two ways for you to get a model made of your invention and these are (1) to make it yourself and (2) to have a model maker make it for you.

These two general ways may be further divided into several sub-ways and among these are (a) for you to have your own workshop, or laboratory and hire machinists, or electricians, or chemists, and have them do the work under your direction; (b) for you to give a model maker the job and have him, or his men, do it under your supervision and (c) for you to have separate parts of it made by various model makers and then assemble them in your own shop.

If you are a little skilled in the use of tools there isn’t anything I know of that will give you greater pleasure than to make each part of your model with your own hands in your own shop and watch it grow day by day until it becomes in truth the very apple of your eye. At least that is the way I feel about it. Moreover it gives you a sense of security you cannot have when the work is in some one’s else hands.

In making a machine from your own ideas and plans no one can do the work so well as yourself provided you can do the work at all and besides it is cheaper and far more satisfactory.

Should you have a fat pocket-book and at the same time a taste for inventing and the sciences—these elements seldom go hand in mind—but if they should get close together in your case I say, the right way to make a model is to hire skilled men to do the work while you do the thinking and the assembling in your private lab. By this process your model will go forward rapidly and the work will be done in the best fashion.