Great Inventors Research Articles

“Schemes of Practical Utility”: Entrepreneurship and Innovation Among “Great Inventors” in the United States, 1790–1865

The growth in inventive activity during early American industrialization is explored by examining the careers of 160 inventors credited with important technological discoveries. Analysis of biographical information and complete patent histories through 1865 indicates that these “great inventors” were entrepreneurial and responded systematically to market demand. Their inventions were procyclical and originated disproportionately from localities linked with extensive markets. Although unexceptional in terms of schooling or technical skills, they vigorously pursued the returns to their inventions, redirected their inventive activity to meet emerging needs, and were distinguished by high geographical mobility toward districts conducive to invention and its commercialization.

Technology in America: A Brief History by Alan I. Marcus, Howard P. Segal

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 397 Technology in America: A Brief History. By Alan I. Marcus and Howard P. Segal. San Diego: Harcourt BraceJovanovich, 1989. Pp. xii + 380; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $10.00 (paper). Alan Marcus and Howard Segal have produced a concise and encyclopedic survey of the history of technology in the United States. Covering a wide range of technologies, including manufacturing, transportation, communications, and agriculture, the book begins with the colonial era and ends with the space program, computers, and robotics. The main focus, however, is on the period from 1830 to World War II. Designed for students new to the held, the book seeks to cast emerging technologies as products of America’s distinctive social, political, and economic contexts. Marcus and Segal are espe­ cially sensitive to the new social history of technology and balance their discussion of great inventors, engineers, and entrepreneurs with an examination of how workers and consumers helped shape the uses of new technologies. The book is also good at helping newcomers appreciate which technologies were evolving concomitantly during a particular era, as well as why certain established technologies, like the railroad, were displaced by new ones such as the automobile, bus, truck, and airplane. Technology in America is organized both chrono­ logically and thematically, with the authors identifying what they see as the dominant cultural values and social trends of different eras. In part 2, for example, the theme of the chapters is “Systematizing America,” and Marcus and Segal insist that the idea of the system was the pervasive late-19th-century notion, which affected everything from power distribution to manufacturing to leisure. Scholars of labor history, immigration, women’s history, or AfroAmerican history may find that some of the authors’ assessments about what “Americans” wanted from technology overemphasize national consensus and a desire for unity while underestimating sectional, ethnic, and gender-based conflicts over technological access and use. This is particularly true of the antebellum period; by the late 19th century, the authors do note the conflicts that resulted from increasingly rigid class hierarchies. More discussion of such disputes and inequities would have further enriched the authors’ analysis. In the final chapter, Marcus and Segal reflect on Americans’ disillusion­ ment with various technologies, such as television and the manned space program, and also note the environmental costs of proliferating technologies. The book is clearly written, well organized, and nicely illustrated. It is certainly a useful aid for teaching, particularly at the introductory level, and each chapter ends with an excellent bibliog­ raphy for further reading. Susan Douglas Dr. Douglas is associate professor of media and American studies at Hampshire College and is the author of Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899—1922. ...

International Trends in Museum Interpretation of Technology and Labor

Museums have collected machines for nearly as long as they have been con structed, allowing only for the interval generally required to permit the objects to change from novel to old, quaint, or antique. As artifacts, they were at least stored, at most revered. If interpreted, they tended to be seen as part of a con tinuum of change, most often as progress. Broader import, in cluding relationships to those who worked with the machines, rarely intruded. A collected machine is generally the oldest or most revolutionary, a super lative attachable to it being the sine qua non of determining worthiness. Exhib its, if any, show how it works or why it is unusual. They make it seem impor tant (as does the fact it is in a museum in the first place), productive, isolated, independent of most value systems, yet somehow good. I would argue that such practices are demeaning to the potential meaning and significance of artifacts, as well as condescending or insulting to the museum audience. They ignore the most important aspect of technology, its impact on the people to whom it relates, both producers and consumers. Fur thermore, such an approach ignores the most basic factor in directing the crea tion of a given technology: its purpose. The political significance of traditional museum practice is plain: collecting technological artifacts announces their importance; displaying them as the works of great inventors advances the great man theory of history. Attention to the parallel accomplishments of women extends, rather than solves, the prob lem; it does not redefine the debate. What is needed is a different use or interpre tation of technology, a different history, not a fuller rendition of the old one. Even the great person theory of history follows too small a group, ignores the masses of men and women directly and indirectly affected by technology, and thereby claims their stories are unimportant. Such collections and exhibits preach heroic individualism, defend the exploitation of labor which accompa nies it, and mythify the degradation of labor at which it aims. They endorse without discussion technologies aimed at labor-cheapening machinery, a dehu manizing technology. For example, while robotics might be displayed, there would be no discussion of the fact that a company would not buy a robot cap able of more functions than it needs, but conversely will take a human and de

Dictionaries of Philosophy: A Survey and a Proposal

Dictionaries, 1 (1979) DICTIONARIES OF PHILOSOPHY: A SURVEY AND A PROPOSAL Philip W. Cummings One would suppose that philosophers, with their professional selfconsciousness about language, would have spawned numerous dictionaries of philosophical terms, and of rather higher quality than one might expect from professionals in other fields. One would also expect to find that English-speaking philosophers of the twentieth century, who are often taken to task for an alleged over-concern with verbal niceties, would be even better represented than continental philosophers. The truth is quite otherwise. Philosophers' general interest in dictionaries has been spotty. They very often quote dictionary definitions, but they seem most often to quote the most impressionistic definitions from the OED, or even the Concise Oxford, as any others. One philosopher did a computer study of circular defining in Webster's 7th Collegiate. In the past there has been more interest: Noah Porter, who was remarkable as a philosopher only in comparison to the general mediocrity of mid-19th century American philosophy, co-edited the 1864 edition of Webster's American Dictionary, and edited the 1890 edition of Webster's New International Dictionary. The St. Louis Hegelian, William Torrey Harris, a much more important philosopher, edited the next edition, but the philosophical terminology was defined by an otherwise unknown consultant, also German idealist in orientation , from the Dakotas. Also around the turn of the century, America's greatest philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce, contributed to the Century Dictionary. Peirce, besides being an enormously original philosopher, logician, and mathematician , was an incredibly learned man, and his Century articles, though prescriptive and idiosyncratic, are still very useful. However, a general dictionary cannot fill the specialized needs of philosophers and students of philosophy. And the language of an anglicized German idealism (which is still the heart of philosophy definitions in Webster's Third New International) or of Pence's pragmaticism is not the philosophical language of today. (And Peirce is, with Jeremy Bentham and S. T. Coleridge, one of the great inventors of neologisms in English.) So one looks to the specialized dictionaries in philosophy, and finds very little, and even fewer that are really dictionaries, in whole or in part. What the distinguished Australian philosopher, John Passmore, wrote thirteen years ago still holds: "The best-known 'philosophical dictionaries' in the English-speaking world would more accurately have been defined 'concise encyclopedias.' " He went on "There is still need, then, of good philosophical reference works along the lines of the Italian Encyclopedia filosófica (1957) and a scholar's handbook 97 98PHILIP W. CUMMINGS of the sort exemplified in the Oxford 4COmPaTUOnS.' The first of these needs will, it is hoped, be met by the projected InternationalEncyclopedia ofPhilosophy to be published in America; the second, where the emphasis would be on compact information about a multitude of terms and authors, still remains a desideratum ."1 The Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy (its name was changed before publication ) does, if a senior editor of it can judge, meet the standards Passmore had in mind—thanks to Passmore himself and other such generous philosophical scholars . But the second desideratum has been only partly met. In fact, in the almost two centuries between 1780 and today, one finds only nine so-called "dictionaries" of philosophy. Of those published before 1900, only William Fleming's The Vocabulary ofPhilosophy, Mental, Moral, and Metaphysical, with Quotations and References, for the Use ofStudents (1857) was, for its day, an adequate philosophical reference work. It went through numerous editions, including several edited by Charles P. Krauth or Henry CaIderwood , between 1857 and 1890. Fleming's work was produced in an era when philosophical instruction in American colleges was dominated by the so-called Scottish school of common sense, and by its most uncommonsensical member, Sir William Hamilton. The concentration on the tenets of this not totally unjustifiably forgotten school is obvious, and I have found Fleming of little use through the years. In 1901 there appeared James Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. It consists of two volumes of moderately brief encyclopedia articles, and two half-volumes of bibliography. It is still an indispensable reference work, particularly for the bibliographies, but it has never been revised. Its contributors include...

Teaching invention

Is the established way of educating present-day scientists and engineers producing successors to such great inventors as Edison, Parsons or Whittle, or is it producing stereo-typed adaptors of long-established designs?

The Birth of an African Peasantry

The history of human societies, at least as it appears in books discussing this topic, is focussed as a rule on activities of heroes. Kings, rulers and conquerors were most often the heroes of historical analyses. Karl Marx, and later his followers, rejected such an approach. To them, the history of all hitherto existing societies was a history of class struggle and transformation of lower modes of production into higher ones. The Marxists proclaimed that the true heroes of the history are the masses, and the most dynamic and revolutionary hero among all is the worker. He is predestined to overthrow the capitalist order of exploitation and to establish a socialist society instead. Max Weber and Joseph A. Schumpeter paid tributes to the entrepreneur. From their perspective he was the inventor and organizer of modern productivity generating abundance, hence the true maker of history. Other writers viewed the literary men, the artists whose works became great monuments of human culture or the scientists whose discoveries have changed our understanding of nature, as the heroes of history. The only people which until recently were never accorded the status of heroes of history by anyone were the peasants. They were described as stubborn, conservative, backward oriented, parochial, without great imagination and initiative, unable to develop a common solidarity on their own. True, it was said that they too have produced their own folk-culture. This, however, was rather a culture of a lower quality in comparison with the culture engendered in urban centres and at the courts of the aristocracy. Some writers discovered a great beauty in the purity, naivety and virginity of the folk-culture; but even they wrote that peasant culture lacks the refinement and sophistication of urban culture. There were no peasants among great modern inventors, explorers, law-makers. It was said that even the peasant rebellions were spontaneous, unorganized, often purposeless and more frequently caused by religious motivations than by real

Creativity in Science Through Visualization*

ABSTRACT The fact that attempts to gain insight into the creative process have been so unsuccessful suggests that they have overlooked at least one basic ingredient in the process. This ingredient may lie in the way the individual mind goes about remembering and manipulating data. The hypothesis is advanced that the creative persons appear to have stumbled onto and then developed to a high degree of perfection the ability to visualize—almost hallucinate—in the area in which they are creative. And their visualizations seem to be of a sort that lend themselves to easy manipulation in the thinking process. This is illustrated by reports from many of the great inventors of the past and it is easy to demonstrate that individuals differ enormously in the kind and degree of their ability to think in such manipulatable visualizations. If correct, this view of creativity suggests many research attacks and many potential changes in education for creative activity.

Creativity in science through visualization.

The fact that attempts to gain insight into the creative process have been so unsuccessful suggests that they have overlooked at least one basic ingredient in the process. This ingredient may lie in the nature or way the individual mind goes about remembering and manipulating data. The hypothesis is advanced that the creative persons appear to have stumbled onto and then developed to a high degree of perfection the ability to visualize—almost hallucinate—in the area in which they are creative. And their visualizations seem to be of a sort that lend themselves to easy manipulation in the thinking process. This is illustrated by reports from many of the great inventors of the past and it is easy to demonstrate that individuals differ enormously in the kind and degree of their ability to think in such manipulatable visualizations. If correct, this aspect of creativity suggests many research attacks and many potential changes in education for creative activity.

Bicentenary of Sir Richard Arkwright, 1732–1792

ON December 14 at the Science Museum a public lecture was given by Mr. F. Nasmith, under the auspices of the Newcomen Society, to commemorate the bicentenary of the birth of Sir Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning machine known as the water frame and the founder of the factory system of cotton manufacture as we know it to-day. In introducing Mr. Nasmith, Mr. H. W. Dickinson, president of the Society, said that it is one of the aims of the Society to direct attention to the great inventors and engineers who are among the world's chief benefactors, and it is of interest to recall the remark of Lecky the historian, who said that it was largely the cotton mill and the steam engine which enabled Great Britain to stand the strain of the Napoleonic wars, and that Arkwright and Watt deserved statues as much as Wellington and Nelson.

Review of Great inventors and their inventions.

Review of Great inventors and their inventions.