Inventing for Boys

by A. Frederick Collins

To make the point clear here are three famous men of genius and who were largely self-taught.

Faraday who made the dynamo and motor possible was a poor, uneducated boy with a burning thirst for knowledge when he was apprenticed to Davy at the Royal Institution in London. Edison had about as little schooling as the law allows, but he taught himself science and he now stands head and shoulders above all the rest of the great inventors. And Marconi, a young fellow of 23, invented the wireless telegraph while the greatest scientists of the world could not do it until he showed them how.

Thought Out Ideas.—There are very few inventions which are complete when the first idea of it comes into the mind, but instead nearly all of them require thinking out, or deductive proof as it is called in philosophy.

This second process of thinking consists of turning the raw idea over and over in your mind so that you can judge whether it is good or not, how it will work out and other things about it, and to do this you must know as many of the facts relating to it as you can and when you have these all clear and catalogued in your mind your idea then takes on the aspect of an invention.

The two usual ways to get the needed facts are (1) to read up on the subject, and (2) to experiment along the line of your idea. Of course if it is your regular work that has called forth your first idea it is quite likely you will have all of the facts you need to go ahead and work the thing out; but if your idea is about a device, or a machine, or a compound you know nothing of your best plan is to read up on the subject and follow up your reading by making a number of experiments.

Reading up Your Subject.—In this day of public libraries it is easy to get books on any subject unless it is one on sunsets and sunsets don’t count in inventing—in fact nothing counts except the big idea, a shop or a laboratory to develop it in and burning the midnight incandescent light.

It doesn’t matter very much what invention you are working on you ought to read a first book on physics and one on chemistry and what’s more you should study them if you expect to ever invent anything of magnitude.

A book on physics tells all you need to know in the beginning about matter, force, motion, the principles of machines, the mechanics of liquids and gases, electricity and magnetism, sound, heat and light.

Suppose you have an idea for an electrical device, if you will read the chapters on electricity and magnetism in your book of physics you will learn what you ought to know first about these subjects and then if you need to go deeper you can get a more advanced book.

A book of the elements of chemistry tells about gases, acids, alkalies and metals and of their chemical changes, and you will find a little knowledge of chemistry of considerable use in working out many ideas. There are many books of physics and chemistry but Avery’s Elements of Physics published by the American Book Company of New York, and Remsen’s Elements of Chemistry published by Henry Holt and Company of New York are good books for a beginner to read.