The Sources of Invention

Abstract

This book has two very different parts. The first and main one, to page 260, evidently chiefly by Professor Jewkes, economist at Oxford University, is an argument aimed at belittling and casting doubt upon the inventiveness of the corporate laboratories; it fails. The second part, of 148 pages – more by Sawers, another English economist, and chiefly by Stillerman, a Chicago attorney – is “Summaries of Case Histories” of fifty important inventions from about the last sixty years, alphabetically arranged and including such inventions as the Ball-point pen, Freon, Cyclotron, Helicopter, Long-playing record, Synthetic detergents, and the Zipper. Eleven others are listed on page 72, and there is a chapter on nineteenth century invention, lists of inventors, etc. The histories of inventions are competent, highly factual, well documented, attentive to German, British and other foreign inventors, and can well correct our propagandized impressions that America has done it all; they are the valuable part of the boo...