Inventions in the Century

by William Henry Doolittle

Admitting that man possesses the faculty of invention, what are the motives that induce its exercise? Why so prolific in inventions now? And will they continue to increase in number and importance, or decrease?

An interesting treatise of bulky dimensions might be written in answer to these queries, and the answers might not then be wholly satisfactory. Space permits the submission of but a few observations and suggestions on these points:——

Necessity is still the mother of inventions, but not of all of them. The pressing needs of man in fighting nakedness and hunger, wild beasts and storms, may have driven him to the production of most of his early contrivances; but as time went on and his wants of every kind multiplied, other factors than mere necessity entered into the problem, and now it is required to account for the multiplicity of inventions under the general head of Wants.

To-day it is the want of the luxuries, as well as of the necessities of life, the want of riches, distinction, power, and place, the wants of philanthropy and the wants of selfishness, and that restless, inherent, unsatisfied, indescribable want which is ever pushing man onward on the road of progress, that must be regarded as the springs of invention.

Accident is thought to be the fruitful source of great inventions. It is a factor that cannot be ignored. But accidents are only occasional helps, rarely occurring,—flashes of light suddenly revealing the end of the path along which the inventor has been painfully toiling, and unnoticed except by him alone. They are sudden discoveries which for the most part simply shorten his journey. The rare complete contrivance revealed by accident is not an invention at all, but a discovery.

The greatest incentive in modern times to the production of inventions is governmental protection.

When governments began to recognize the right of property in inventions, and to devise and enforce means by which their author should hold and enjoy the same, as he holds his land, his house, or his horse, then inventions sprung forth as from a great unsealed fountain.

This principle first found recognition in England in 1623, when parliament, stung by the abuse of the royal prerogative in the grant of exclusive personal privileges that served to crush the growth of inventions and not to multiply them, by its celebrated Statute of Monopolies, abolished all such privileges, but excepted from its provisions the grant of patents “for the sole working or making of any manner of new manufactures within this realm to the true and first inventor” thereof.

This statute had little force, however, in encouraging and protecting inventors until the next century, and until after the great inventions of Arkwright in spinning and James Watt in steam-engines had been invaded, and the attention of the courts called more seriously thereby to the property rights of inventors, and to the necessity of a liberal exposition of the law and its proper enforcement.

Then followed in 1789 the incorporation of that famous provision in the Constitution of the United States, declaring that Congress shall have the power “To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”