The Art of Inventing

by Edwin J. Prindle

Aside from the question of financial returns from inventing, the inventor has the satisfaction of knowing that he is a producer of the most fundamental kind. All material progress has involved the production of inventions. Inventors are universally conceded to be among the greatest benefactors of the human race.

The art of invention is therefore one of great commercial and economical importance, and it becomes a matter of much interest to know how inventions are produced. It is my object to attempt an explanation of the manner of their production.

If it be inquired on what grounds I offer an explanation of this apparently most difficult subject, I reply that, in the practice of patent law, I have often had occasion and opportunity to inquire into the mental processes of inventors, and that the subject is one to which I have given considerable attention.

It seems to be popularly believed that the inventor must be born to his work, and that such people are born only occasionally. This is true, to a certain extent, but I am convinced there are many people who, without suspecting it, have latent inventive abilities, which could be put to work if they only knew how to go about it. The large percentage of inventors in this country compared with all other countries, shows that the inventive faculty is one which can be cultivated to some extent. The difference in ingenuity is not wholly a matter of race, for substantially the same blood exists in some other countries, but it is the encouragement of our patent laws that has stimulated the cultivation of this faculty.

The popular idea seems to be that an invention is produced by its inventor at a single effort of the imagination and complete, as Minerva sprang full grown and fully armed from the mind of Jove.

It is, undoubtedly, true that every inventor must have some imagination or creative faculty, but, as I shall seek to show, this faculty may be greatly assisted by method. While reasoning does not constitute the whole of an inventive act, it can, so to speak, clear the way and render the inventive act easier of accomplishment.

Invention has been defined as "In the nature of a guess; the mind leaps across a logical chasm. Instead of working out a conclusion, it imagines it." The courts have repeatedly held that that which could be produced purely by the process of reasoning or inference, on the part of one ordinarily skilled in the art is not patentable, but that the imaginative or creative faculty must somewhere be used in the process. The mind must somewhere leap from the known to the unknown by means of the imagination, and not by mere inference in making the invention. But the inventor, consciously or unconsciously, by proper method, reduces the length of this leap to much more moderate proportions than is popularly supposed.

That reasoning and research frequently enter very largely into the inventive act in aid of the creative faculty is the opinion of Dr. Trowbridge, of Columbia University who said:

"Important inventions leading to widespread improvements in the arts or to new industries do not come by chance, or as sudden inspiration, but are in almost every instance the result of long and exhaustive researches by men whose thorough familiarity with their subjects enables them to see clearly the way to improvements. Almost all important and successful inventions which have found their way into general use and acceptance have been the products of well-balanced and thoughtful minds, capable of patient laborious investigation."

Judge Drummond, in a decision many years ago, said: