Swedish Inventor Research Articles

Inventors among the “Impoverished Sophisticate”

This paper examines the identity and origins of Swedish inventors prior to WWI, drawing on the universe of patent records linked to census data. We document that the rise of innovation during Sweden’s industrialization can largely be attributed to a small industrial elite belonging to the upper-tail of the economic, educational, and social status distribution. Analyzing children’s opportunities to become inventors, we show that inventors were disproportionately drawn from privileged family backgrounds. However, innovation was a path to upward mobility for the middle- and working-class children that managed to overcome the barriers to entry.

Do Higher Wages Reduce Knowledge Worker's Job Mobility? Evidence for Swedish Inventors

AbstractBased on linked employer‐employee panel data on all Swedish inventors, this paper analyses how wages affect inventors’ job mobility. It is commonly assumed that higher wages reduce mobility because they reduce the value of outside opportunities. We argue that higher wages also send performance signals to potential employers, who raise their wage offers in response. By disentangling the effects of higher wages, we show evidence of a utility and an opportunity cost effect, which reduce mobility, and a performance‐signalling effect, which increases mobility. In our data, the effects cancel each other out, with no effects of wages on mobility rates on average. We find, however, that for star inventors, who have sufficiently strong alternative performance signals (e.g., strong patent records), the performance signal sent by wages is crowded out by the alternative signals. Accordingly, for star inventors we find that higher wages decrease mobility.

The influence of the early formation of human and social capital on inventiveness: perspectives from a Swedish case study

Analysing life-history narratives of Swedish inventors, this paper explores how family background influences upon the formation of social and human capital and demonstrates how these capital resources affect the creative abilities of inventors. The main findings of the paper are that the socio-economic position one is born into has important implications for the development of human and social capital, and that the nature and extent of an inventor’s capital assets strongly influences the nature of his or her inventiveness. Inventors who come from higher socio-economic backgrounds have greater endowments of formal human capital than those from more modest backgrounds, and the social networks they use in their inventive work link them to other actors with human capital endowments similar to their own. Therefore, inventors with high human capital endowments will benefit from their social networks, as they constitute important means of gaining access to innovative knowledge and business advice. In contrast, inventors from lower socio-economic backgrounds with limited formal human capital resources are more likely to have actors in their social networks who themselves possess limited formal human capital. However, these inventors may become prosperous inventors if they are endowed with great social capital resources from their formative backgrounds because, for inventors, high endowments of social capital can compensate for a lack of formal human capital.

What shapes the anatomy of inventors? A life-history analysis of Swedish patent inventors

Using life-history interviews on a sample of Swedish inventors, this article studies seminal sociocultural factors and milieus that are critical for the development of inventive capacities. This approach allows the inventors to reflect on and describe the milieus, actors and events in their lives which they themselves believe have formed their inventive capacities. The main findings of the article are that the sociocultural milieus of early childhood, especially the educational backgrounds or skills of parents and grandparents, play an important role in shaping the anatomy of inventors. Further, the social milieu of an inventor’s final education, whether elementary school or university, is a seminal factor in the development of inventive creativity, given the importance of dedicated teachers, co-students and supervisors. Finally, egalitarian organizational structures in the workplace and a solid knowledge infrastructure are also important and influential factors. The study shows that the essence of these seminal milieus varies for different types of inventor, hence three descriptive ideal types of inventor are presented, namely the workshop inventor, the engineering inventor and the academic inventor.

On the Awarding of the First Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine to Emil von Behring

In his will of 1895, the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel laid the foundation for prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace to those who had "conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" during the last year. The Nobel Prize is today widely considered as the most prestigious international symbol of scientific excellence, but it still is an exciting research question how it gained such prestige. Drawing on files from the Emil von Behring Archive in Marburg, Germany, and the Archive of the Nobel Assembly for Physiology or Medicine in Stockholm this essay aims at shedding light on why the first Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1901 was awarded the German immunologist Emil von Behring, and how this decision was viewed at that time. This study is part of a research project that explores mechanisms leading to scientific recognition by using the example of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

The Nobel Pancreas: A Historical Perspective

b i d c U a d o For everyone interested in the pancreas, it is truly a noble organ. Known to the ancient Greeks, its name n Greek “pan kreas” translates as “all flesh.” Aristotle elieved its function was to protect the great vessels and 4 enturies later Galen claimed it to be a cushion for the tomach.1 The Renaissance anatomists, beginning with esalius, defined its structure with its ducts, first shown y Johann Wirsung in 1642, to empty into the intestine. egnier de Graaf, of the Graafian follicle, was the first to tudy pancreatic secretion in 1664, using a goose quill nserted into the duct. In the 19th century, Claude Bernard n Paris, and others, showed the digestive capabilities of ancreatic juice for fat, carbohydrate, and protein.1,2 Paul Langerhans, a medical student in Berlin, described the eponymous islets in 1869 and in 1889, Miring and Minkowski described experimental diabetes in the dog after pancreatectomy.3 In addition to understanding the natomy and physiology of the exocrine pancreas, Hans hiari had described the autodigestion of the pancreas hat accompanies pancreatitis in 1896. By 1900, the hisology and general understanding of the function of the ancreas was in place. The 20th century was to be occupied rst with understanding the control of pancreatic secreion and then the understanding of specific cell types of he pancreas as molecular machines evolved to carry out pecific functions. A timeline for this increase in undertanding of the pancreas and its diseases is shown in igure 1. More detailed coverage of the last 160 years is hown in Figure 2. In 1896, the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel died, and in is will he left much of his fortune— earned in the manfacture of explosives, including dynamite, which he inented—to establish prizes that bear his name in different reas of knowledge to be chosen by different academies in tockholm or Norway. One of these prizes in Physiology nd Medicine and another in Chemistry will be discussed ere. The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901 and they ave been awarded annually since then to one to three ndividuals in a specific area. In this Commentary, I will eview the advances in scientific knowledge in which the ancreas led the way to the extent that it was recognized y the awarding of 5 Nobel Prizes for work that either elated directly to products of the pancreas or used the ancreas as a cellular source to understand fundamental hysiological and cell biological processes. I will also note ome omissions and controversies. The early years of the 20th century were marked by nderstanding of the neural and hormonal control of the ancreas. One of the early giants of modern physiology as Ivan Petrovich Pavlov who, before studying the conitioned reflexes for which he is best known, studied the eural control of gastric and pancreatic secretion. Pavlov, orking in St Petersburg, Russia, developed the first modrn physiology laboratory with multiple staff who worked ogether as a team. They showed that psychic stimulation r putting food in the stomach led to secretion from the ancreas, which was collected via a pancreatic fistula.4 Acid and fat were especially good stimulants and carbohydrate was not. His laboratory also identified enterokinase, the intestinal activator of trypsin, and described the cephalic phase of pancreatic secretion. Pavlov’s work was first summarized in a series of lectures and then in a book published first in Russian and then in English in 1902 entitled, The Work of the Digestive Glands.5 Pavlov’s contriution was recognized when he received the Nobel Prize n 1904 “in recognition of his work on the physiology of igestion.” Meanwhile, another famous experiment was arried out by William Bayliss and Ernest Starling at niversity College in London, in which they showed that n extract of the intestinal mucosa, when injected into a og with its pancreas completely denervated, led to copius secretion of pancreatic juice.6 This was, in fact, the first demonstration of a chemical messenger or “hormone,” a term coined by Starling in his Croonian Lecture of 1905 to the Royal College of Physicians. Thus was born the field of Endocrinology. Starling, probably the most

Representations of technology in the “Technical Stories” for children of Otto Witt, early 20th century Swedish technology educator

Children’s fiction in school libraries have played and still play a role in mediating representations of technology and attitudes towards technology to schoolchildren. In early 20th century Sweden, elementary education, including textbooks and literature that were used in teaching, accounted for the main mediation of technological knowledge to schoolchildren. An investigation of children’s literature for schools is therefore important in order to understand what was considered worth knowing about technology at the time. The aim of this article is therefore to analyse the representations of technology and attitudes towards technology that were mediated through two children’s fiction books in Swedish elementary school libraries in the 1910s. We have limited the analysis of empirical material to the books Technical Stories for Young and Old (Tekniska sagor för stora och små, 1914) and Technical Stories of the War for Young and Old (Krigets tekniska sagor för stora och små, 1915) by the Swedish inventor, author and technology educator Otto Witt. Gauging Witt’s influence on the schoolchildren and educators of his time is very difficult, but in this first English-language article on his “technical stories” one can conclude that he was in many ways unique and probably fairly well-read in the schools of early 20th century Sweden and onward. He was also a particularly perceptive forerunner of today’s technology and science educators in his use of anthropomorphism as an educational tool.

Swedish Inventor Sven Berglund's Little-Known Achievements in the Development of Motion Picture Optical Sound Recording

Swedish Inventor Sven Berglund's Little-Known Achievements in the Development of Motion Picture Optical Sound Recording Robert J. Heiber (bio) On June 26, 2009, archivists at the Deutsches Film Museum (DFM) in Frankfurt found a lonely reel of cellulose nitrate base optical sound film. Labeled "Berglund VI Tonaufnahmen 1922," the 750-foot reel of 35mm nitrate film was in a can of film from the Filzinger Archive. The seemingly insignificant find turned out to be a rare artifact of Swedish inventor Sven Berglund and his colleague Wolfgang Filzinger from the early years of sound motion picture experimentation. Though Berglund is not a familiar name to most researchers and archivists, the documentation of his accomplishments confirms that synchronized sound motion picture production and exhibition was feasible in 1921. The recovery of this reel, which was lent by the DFM to the Swedish Film Institute, provided tangible evidence for the effectiveness of Berglund's optical sound recorder. At the beginning of the 1920s, technology was rapidly evolving in the motion picture industry. Though sound for motion pictures was scorned by a good portion of the production and exhibition community, a small but dedicated group of technologists persevered and forever changed an art form and commercial product. The key contributors in the history of motion picture sound—Lee de Forest, Theodore Case, E. I. Sponable, E. C. Wente, (Axel) Peterson and (Arnold) Poulsen, Eugene Lauste, and the team at Tri-Ergon—are well known to scholars, archivists, and researchers. However, Sven Berglund, a Swedish engineer, is not a name that many would immediately associate with the development of optical sound technology. Berglund was born on July 20, 1881, in Stockholm. His father, Archadius, was a military engineer who edited the second edition of The Book of Inventions (1898-1907), a worldwide compendium of registered current inventions. Berglund followed his father's scientific path by attending the Technical University of Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1901. Working in the photographic industry in Berlin after graduation, Berglund experimented with optically recording acoustical sound waves onto photographic plates. 1 By 1911, Berglund had perfected a system to record optical sound onto a continuous piece of nonperfed 35mm film. His original invention can be found in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. Working with Goerzen Optical Co., a German manufacturer of motion picture cameras and lenses, he attracted investors interested in developing a system for synchronizing sound for motion pictures. The venture, called Fotoaerofon, was one of a number of companies Berglund would form to raise capital for his motion picture sound system. During the early years of motion picture development, patents and licenses controlled the manufacturing of cameras and projectors, creating profitable monopolies for their owners. Technical innovators also understood that bringing a viable sound system to motion pictures would be another opportunity to cash in on the fledgling industry. Thus Berglund once said that "an inventor devotes at least as much time to raise money for his research, as he spends on the research work." 2 World War I interrupted Berglund's work in [End Page 76] Germany, and he returned home to Stockholm. When it was evident that the war would rage on for years, Berglund made a daring trip back to Goerzen in Berlin to pack up his equipment and ship it to Sweden to continue his research. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Sven Berglund in his laboratory at Lidingö. Originally published in the magazine The Film (1919). The cornerstone of Berglund's acoustical optical recording system was the ability to have sound waves modulate light so that the sound energy could be recorded photographically on black-and-white film. This is essentially the same technology that is used for motion picture optical sound tracks today. Converting sound waves to modulating light was not his original idea—Alexander Graham Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter pioneered this work in the 1880s with their invention of the photophone; however, by harnessing this phenomenon, Berglund could record sounds farther away from the recording funnel. This advantage is gained by the fact that light has no mass. Berglund's system therefore required much less acoustical energy than the traditional stylus-cutting method employed on...

Swedish Inventor Sven Berglund's Little-Known Achievements in the Development of Motion Picture Optical Sound Recording

Swedish Inventor Sven Berglund's Little-Known Achievements in the Development of Motion Picture Optical Sound Recording

The Alfred Nobel rocket camera. An early aerial photography attempt

Alfred Nobel (1833–1896), mainly known for his invention of dynamite and the creation of the Nobel Prices, was an engineer and inventor active in many fields of science and engineering, e.g. chemistry, medicine, mechanics, metallurgy, optics, armoury and rocketry. Amongst his inventions in rocketry was the smokeless solid propellant ballistite (i.e. cordite) patented for the first time in 1887. As a very wealthy person he actively supported many Swedish inventors in their work. One of them was W.T. Unge, who was devoted to the development of rockets and their applications. Nobel and Unge had several rocket patents together and also jointly worked on various rocket applications. In mid-1896 Nobel applied for patents in England and France for “An Improved Mode of Obtaining Photographic Maps and Earth or Ground Measurements” using a photographic camera carried by a “…balloon, rocket or missile…”. During the remaining of 1896 the mechanical design of the camera mechanism was pursued and cameras manufactured. In April 1897 (after the death of Alfred Nobel) the first aerial photos were taken by these cameras. These photos might be the first documented aerial photos taken by a rocket borne camera. Cameras and photos from 1897 have been preserved. Nobel did not only develop the rocket borne camera but also proposed methods on how to use the photographs taken for ground measurements and preparing maps.

Innovation Performance and Government Financing

External financing is important when inventors and small technology-based firms commercialize their inventions. However, the private information of inventors about the quality of their products causes information asymmetries and moral hazard problems. To help compensate for potentially non-existing capital markets,the Swedish Government has intervened by offering loans with different terms to firms and inventors. This study analyzes the association between various forms of external financing and performance in profit terms when patents are commercialized. The empirical work is based on a patent survey sent to Swedish inventors and small firms, where the response rate is 80%. The estimations show that projects with soft government financing in the Research and Development (R & D)-phase have a significantly inferior performance compared to projects without such financing, whereas those receiving government loans on commercial terms perform as the average.Distinguishing between governmental financing alternatives with different terms makes it possible to draw the conclusion that government failure primarily depends on bad financing terms, rather than bad project selection.A policy implication is therefore that public loans should be granted on commercial terms already in the R & Dphase of projects.

AKZO NOBEL BID WINS ICI

AKZO NOBEL HAS made an official offer to acquire the U.K. specialty chemical company ICI. After spurning earlier overtures from the Dutch firm, I d ' s board of directors has agreed to the deal and recommended that shareholders accept it. ICI is the last major British-owned chemical company and at one time was the bellwether of British industry. With the agreement, announced at a press conference on Aug. 13, ICI will be folded into its Netherlands- based rival. There is a poetic nature to the deal, as family ties rebind. ICI was formed 81 years ago through the merger of four British producers of alkali chemicals, explosives, and dyestuffs. One of them was Industries, the explosives company founded by Alfred in 1871. And the Nobel of Akzo is a legacy of various chemical operations founded by the Swedish inventor in the 1880s and acquired by Akzo in 1994. ...

The significance of April 4th, a reflection

April 4th 2006, is a special day. The significance of this day is not so much in the fact that it is my 65th birthday, which Arnoud de Kemp (against my advice and better judgment) just made so very clear to you in his own inimitable way. Rather, it has to do with the fact that today, exactly one hundred years ago, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, the forerunner of Academic Press, was born. On April 4th, 1906 a bookseller named Leo Jolowicz signed what in the UK would be called the ‘Articles of Association’ of a newly formed ‘GmbH’ (Limited Company) by that name in the city of Leipzig. [The reason that I stand here before you now to speak about this may be that I was the last president of Academic Press before it ceased to be a relatively independent entity and became an Elsevier imprint in 2002.] Jolowicz came from a Jewish family of booksellers and antiquarians and was born in Posen (now Poznan, well inside the Polish border) in August 1868 and moved to Leipzig, the city famous for its annual book fairs (a role taken over by Frankfurt after WW II), to work as an apprentice with a well known bookstore there (Gustav Fock). After spending some time with its overseas branch in New York (Fock had another one in Tokyo), Jolowicz married Martha Finkelstein in 1901 and ultimately settled in Leipzig. The couple had two daughters, Agnes-Charlotte in 1903 and Anna-Liese in 1906, and in 1908 his son Walter was born. Although Walter was destined to enter the book profession in the family tradition, he made some side steps and studied archaeology at the Universities of Heidelberg, Vienna, London and Leipzig, after which he became a partner in the family business. Agnes-Charlotte married Kurt Jacoby, who later played a prominent role in the company and its successor in the United States, Academic Press. In 1901, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded (in physics, chemistry, physiology & medicine, literature in peace), 5 years after the death of Alfred Bernhard Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and blasting gelatin. The importance of German science in the early 20th century was demonstrated by the fact that in the period from 1901 until 1932 31 Nobel Prize winners were German. As a result of this German predominance in the sciences, several German publishers had become or became prominent – Springer, Teubner, Thieme and Wolff, to name a few –, many new journals were started and many Nobel Prize winners were involved as authors and editors. In fact, Springer, which was started in 1842 alongside a bookstore, already published 20 science journals as early as 1889! From the beginning, Jolowicz aimed high in terms of quality. One of his first publications was ‘Theorien der Chemie’, by Svant Arrhenius, who had won the Nobel Prize in 1903. The ‘Akademische’ became the second German publisher after Springer in a relatively short time. As now, science was global and 60% of the sales of these publishers were from exports. Needless to say, the fact that German science publishing was so advanced in those days had everything to do with the eminence of German science.

Innovation Performance and Government Financing

External financing is important when inventors and small technology-based firms commercialize their inventions. However, the private information of inventors about the quality of their products causes information asymmetries and moral hazard problems. To help compensate for potentially non-existing capital markets, the Swedish Government has intervened by offering loans with different terms to firms and inventors. This paper analyzes the association between various forms of external financing and performance in profit-terms when patents are commercialized. The empirical work is based on a patent survey sent to Swedish inventors and small firms, where the response rate is 80%. The estimations show that projects with soft government financing in the R&D-phase have a significantly inferior performance compared to projects without such financing, whereas those receiving government loans on commercial terms perform as the average. Distinguishing between governmental financing alternatives with different terms makes it possible to draw the conclusion that government failure primarily depends on bad financing terms, rather than bad project selection. A policy implication is therefore that public loans should be granted on commercial terms already in the R&D-phase of projects.

Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles and Momentous Discoveries

In 1896 Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, created through his will annual awards for important discoveries in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine. Since 1901, when the first Nobel Prizes were awarded, over 300 men and only nine women have received this honor.<i>Nobel Prize Women in Science</i>examines in a series of informative and easily read biographical chapters the lives of these nine women as well as those of five other female scientists who played crucial roles in Nobel Prize—winning projects. The first female scientist described is Marie Curie, who, with her husband, won the first of two Nobel Prizes in 1903 for her work on radioactivity. Of note, initially only Pierre Curie was considered for the award, and he wrote, "If it is true that one is seriously thinking about me [for the prize], I very much wish to be considered together with Madame Curie [for]

Guided product idea generation

This article describes a successful method for getting many good product ideas during a short period of time, which was developed by the patent broker New Products NordInvent (NP) to be used instead of the normal method of spontaneous idea generation. The article is based on a project ‘Swede Innovation '81’ in which 12 large Swedish companies formulated 64 search profiles and asked all Swedish inventors to invent new products with this guide. NP formulated the original model—which has advantages for the companies, the patent broker and the inventors—and carried through the project on commission from these companies. Out of 2710 product idea contributions sent for evaluation, about ten products will go into production. This figure could have been higher if the companies had been better prepared to receive new products and had had a better knowledge of managing innovations.

Global survival: Challenge to engineers

Alfred Nobel — the Swedish inventor of dynamite — having considered the inherent danger of his invention as applied to warfare established in 1901 the Nobel prizes, recognizing individuals who contributed to peace either directly or through advances in science and medicine. He saw in science and technology those elements that would enhance the welfare and well-being of mankind, thereby reducing some of the causes of war.

The reduction of barrel erosion by wear-reducing additives

Abstract Wear-reducing liners such as polyurethane foam and TiO 2 -wax liners have markedly extended the useful life of 105 mm tank cannons. The wear life of 100 rounds without additives has been extended to 400 rounds with polyurethane foam and 10000 rounds with TiO 2 -wax liners in a flapped configuration suggested by the Swedish inventors of the TiO 2 -wax liner. When the TiO 2 -wax liner is placed in fin-stabilized rounds the liner is glued to the cartridge case wall without the flaps; the presence of fins precludes any other modification. The TiO 2 -wax liner in the fin-stabilized round improves cannon life from 100 to 1000 rounds. To discern the differences observed for the liners heat transfer measurements were made with thermocouples embedded in the barrel wall to within a millimeter of the bore surface. The reduction in heat transfer relative to standard rounds with the additives removed showed that the flapped configuration is more efficient than simply lining the case wall. In repeated firings of rounds with TiO 2 -wax additives it was observed that the heat input to the barrel steadily decreased during the first 13 rounds fired after which the heat input remained steady. This is attributed to the formation of an insulating layer on the bore surface and accounts for the higher wear life of the TiO 2 -wax liner relative to the polyurethane foam liner when used in the same configuration. It was also demonstrated that a talc-wax liner with the same dimensions as a TiO 2 -wax liner should produce improved wear life for finstabilized projectiles fired from the 105 mm tank cannon.

Thunder at Hampton Roads.

On March 9, 1862, the battle of the century took place at Hampton Roads. The U. S. S. Monitor, the world's first all-iron fighting ship, repulsed the Confederate ironclad Merrimack. In so doing, the Yankee vessel demolished forever the wooden walls of the fleets oak billowing canvas, helped ensure a Northern victory in the Civil War. Thunder at Hampton Roads is the only book that covers the entire story of the Monitor, from its inception to its rediscovery in 1973. Drawing on personal accounts old logs, describes the life times of the famous ship. Ridiculed as a freak of its day, the Monitor was specifically designed to combat the indestructible Merrimack. But is was such an odd-looking craft that one Union officer told the Swedish inventor, John Ericsson, to take his model home and worship it, as it would not be idolatry, because it was in the image of nothing in the heavens above, or on the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. Hoehling brings to life the exciting race between North South to achieve naval supremacy. He vividly re-creates the Monitor's famous clash with the Merrimack. And gives a dramatic account of how a team of marine scientists rediscovered the Monitor twelve miles off Cape Hatteras, resting on the ocean floor. Thunder at Hampton Roads is the complete story of one of the world's greatest fighting ships.

Alkaline Storage Batteries

not Available.