Twentieth Century Inventions: A Forecast

by George Sutherland

The questions to be answered in an inquiry as to the chances of failure or success which lie before any invention or proposed improvement are, first, whether it is really wanted; and, secondly, whether the environment in the midst of which it must make its début is favourable. These requirements generally depend upon matters which, to a large extent, stand apart from the personal qualifications of any individual inventor.

In the course of a search through the vast accumulations of the patent specifications of various countries, the thought is almost irresistibly forced upon the mind of the investigator that "there is nothing new under the sun". No matter how far back he may push his inquiry in attempting to unveil the true source of any important idea, he will always find at some antecedent date the germ, either of the same inventive conception, or of something which is hardly distinguishable from it. The habit of research into the origin of improved industrial method must therefore help to strengthen the impression of the importance of gradual growth, and of general tendencies, as being the prime factors in promoting social advancement through the success of invention.

The same habit will also generally have the effect of rendering the searcher more diffident in any claims which he may entertain as to the originality of his own ideas. Inventive thought has been so enormously stimulated during the past two or three generations, that the public recognition of a want invariably sets thousands of minds thinking about the possible methods of ministering to it.

Startling illustrations of this fact are continually cropping up in the experiences of patent agents and others who are engaged in technological work and its literature. The average inventor is almost always inclined to imagine—when he finds another man working in exactly the same groove as himself—that by some means his ideas have leaked out, and have been pirated. But those who have studied invention, as a social and industrial force, know that nothing is more common than to find two or more inventors making entirely independent progress in the same direction.

For example, while this book was in course of preparation the author wrote out an account of an application of wireless telegraphy to the purpose of keeping all the clocks within a given area correct to one standard time. Within a few days there came to hand a copy of Engineering in which exactly the same suggestion was put forward, and an announcement was made to the effect that Mr. Richard Kerr, F.G.S., had been working independently on the same lines, the details of his method of applying the Hertzian waves to the purpose being practically the same as those sketched out by the author. This is only one of several instances of coincidences in independent work which have been noticed during the period while this volume was in course of preparation.

It may, therefore, be readily understood that the author would hardly like to undertake the task of attempting to discriminate between those forecasts in the subsequent pages which are the results of his own original suggestions, and those which have been derived from other sources. Whatever is of value has in all probability been thought of, or perhaps patented and otherwise publicly suggested, before. At any rate, the great majority of the forecasts are based on actual records of the trials of inventions which distinctly have a future lying before them in the years of the twentieth century.

In declining to enter into questions relating to the original authorship of the improvements or discoveries discussed, it should not be supposed that any wish is implied to detract from the merits of inventors and promoters of inventions, either individually or collectively. Many of these are the heroes and statesmen of that great nation which is gradually coming to be recognised as a true entity under the name of Civilisation. Their life's work is to elevate humanity, and if mankind paid more attention to them, and to what they are thinking and doing, instead of setting so much store by the veriest tittle-tattle of what is called political life, it would make much faster progress.

Some of the industrial improvements referred to in the succeeding pages are necessarily sketched in an indefinite manner. The outlines, as it were, have been only roughed in; and no attempt has been made to supply particulars, which in fact would be out of place in an essay towards a comprehensive survey in so small a space. It is upon the wise and skilful arrangement of details that sound and commercially profitable patents are usually founded, rather than upon the broad general principles of a proposed industrial advance or reform.

During the twentieth century this latter fact, already well recognised by experts in what is known as industrial property, will doubtless force itself more and more upon the attention of inventors. Every specification will require to be drawn up with the very greatest care in observing the truth taught by the fable of the boy and the jar of nuts. So rapidly does the mass of bygone patent records accumulate, that almost any kind of claim based upon very wide foundations will be found to have trenched upon ground already in some degree taken up.

Probably there is hardly anything indicated in this work which is not—in the strict sense of the rules laid down for examiners in those countries which make search as to originality—common public property. The labour involved in gathering the data for a forecast of the inventions likely to produce important effects during the twentieth century has been chiefly that of selecting from out of a vast mass of heterogeneous ideas those which give promise of springing up amidst favourable conditions and of growing to large proportions and bearing valuable fruit. Such ideas, when planted in the soil of the collective mind through the medium of official or other records, generally require for their germination a longer time than that for which the patent laws grant protection for industrial property. Many of them, indeed, have formed the subjects of patents which, from one reason or another, lapsed long before the expiration of the maximum terms. Nature is ever prodigal of seeds and of "seed-thoughts" but comparatively niggardly of places in which the young plant will find exactly the kind of soil, air, rain, and sunshine which the young plant needs.