The Art of Inventing

by Edwin J. Prindle

Fig. 12.

Thus the accomplishment of a seemingly almost impossible function was rendered mechanically simple by an evolution from the human hand, after an exhaustive and ingenious analysis of the conditions involved.

It will be seen from the examples I have given that the constructive part of inventing consists of evolution, and it is the association of previously known elements in new relations (using the term elements in its broadest sense). The results of such new association may, themselves, be treated as elements of the next stage of development, but in the last analysis nothing is invented or created absolutely out of nothing.

Fig. 13.

It must also be apparent, that pure reason and method, while not taking the place of the inventive faculty, can clear the way for the exercise of that faculty and very greatly reduce the demands upon it.

Where it is desired to make a broadly new invention on fundamentally different lines from those before—having first studied the art to find the results needed, the qualities of the material or other absolutely controlling conditions should be exhaustively considered; but at the time of making the inventive effort, the details should be dismissed from the mind of how results already obtained in the art were gotten. One should endeavor to conceive how he would accomplish the desired result if he were attempting the problem before any one else had ever solved it. In other words, he should endeavor to provide himself with the idea elements on which the imagination will operate, but to dismiss from his mind as much as possible the old ways in which these elements have been associated, and thus leave his imagination free to associate them in original and, as to be hoped, better relations than before. He should invent all the means he can possibly invent to accomplish the desired result, and should then, before experimenting, go to the art to see whether or not these means have before been invented. He would probably find that some of the elements, at least, have been better worked out than he has worked them out. Of course, mechanical dictionaries, and other sources of mechanical elements and movements will be found useful in arriving at means for accomplishing certain of the motions, if the invention be a machine. Many important inventions have been made by persons whose occupation is wholly disconnected with the art in which they are inventing, because their minds were not prejudiced by what had already been done. While such an effort is likely to possess more originality than that on the part of a person in the art, there is, of course, less probability of its being thoroughly practical. The mind well stored with the old ways of solving the problem will, of course, be less likely to repeat any of the mistakes of the earlier inventors, but it will also not be as apt to strike out on distinctly original lines. It is so full, already, of the old forms of association of the elements as to be less likely to think of associating them in broadly new relations.

Fig. 14.