Invention: The Master-key to Progress

by Bradley A. Fiske

The picture made on Philip's mind must have impressed him profoundly, for he spent the rest of his life in giving it "a local habitation and a name." To accomplish it cost him years of continual effort of many kinds, but he did accomplish it. He did, as a result, produce a machine, as truly a machine as Stephenson ever produced, but made up of many more parts; each part independent of any other, and yet dependent on every other, and all working together, for a common purpose.

Let us remind ourselves again that a machine composed of inanimate parts only is only one kind of machine; for a machine may be composed of animate parts, or inanimate parts, or of parts of which some are animate and some inanimate. Clearly, it makes no difference, so far as the act of invention goes, whether a man uses animate or inanimate parts; the essential of invention is the creation of a new thing. If a man merely puts two pieces of wood and a piece of string into a pile, or if he merely collects a number of men together, no invention is made and nothing is created. But if he so combines the two pieces of wood and the string as to make a bow and arrow; or if he combines a modified Theban phalanx with masses of cavalry and catapults in a novel and effective way as Philip did, invention is exercised and something is created.

Before Philip's time a phalanx was used to bear the brunt of the battle, and to overwhelm the enemy by mere strength and force; as the Thebans did at Leuctra and Mantinea. But Philip conceived the idea of merely holding the enemy with his phalanx assisted by the catapults, and hurling his cavalry against their flanks. Philip's army, as Philip used it, was a machine and a very powerful one:—each part independent of every other, yet dependent on every other—all the parts working together for a common purpose. Philip conceived the idea of making this machine, and afterwards made it; just as Ericsson more than two thousand years later conceived the idea of making a "Monitor" and afterwards made it.

By means of his machine Philip defeated the Greeks at Cheronea in the year 338 B. C., just as Ericsson by means of his machine defeated the Merrimac at Newport News in the year 1862 A. D., exactly twenty-two centuries later. The two machines differed, it is true. Yet they did not differ so much as one might unthinkingly suppose; for each machine was made up of parts, of which some were animate and some were not; and in each machine every part, animate or inanimate, cooperated with all the others; and all cooperated together, to carry out the inventor's purpose, the destruction of the enemy.

The influence of Philip's invention began before Philip died, and it continues to this day. For after Philip's death, his son Alexander put it to work at once on the task of subduing thoroughly all of Greece, and then subduing Asia.

The influence of the machine in subduing even Greece alone must not be regarded lightly; not so much because Greece was subdued, as because the various little states were by that means brought together; and because it illustrates the fact that without a machine, no great number of people can work together. It was because of the absence of any machine that the Grecian states acted separately and antagonistically, instead of in cooperation.

After subduing Greece, Alexander took his machine across the Hellespont, in the year 334 B. C., to try it on the Persian troops in Asia Minor. The machine worked so successfully at a battle on the Granicus that Alexander took it south, and with its aid was able to conquer all of Asia Minor in about a year.

It may be objected that it is not correct to attribute all of Alexander's success to the excellence of his machine; and this objection would have great force and receive the approval of most people, for the reason that, in most histories, the main credit is given to the energy of Alexander and the courage of his troops;—though the excellence of the training and organization bequeathed by Philip is admitted.

To this hypothetical objection the answer may be made that the ultimate result was due to both the machine and the excellence with which it was operated; that is, to the product of what the machine could do if it were used with perfect skill and the percentage of skill with which it was actually used. This statement is, of course, true of all machines and instruments, as the author has often pointed out, in articles and addresses.

In the case of Alexander and his army, the percentage of skill, of course, was high; but Alexander and each one of his soldiers was only a part of the machine; and even their skill was part of the machine in the sense that it was a characteristic included in the original design of Philip. In other words, we should not fall into the error of dissociating the skill of Alexander and his soldiers from the machine itself; because it was part of Philip's invention that the training should produce that skill. The system of training was part of the invention.