How to Be a Successful Inventor

What do you need for an invention to be a success?

Well, good timing for a start. You can have a great idea which the public simply doesn't want... yet. Take the Italian priest, Giovanni Caselli, who invented the first fax machine using an enormous pendulum in the 1860s. Despite the excellent quality of the reproductions, his invention quickly died a commercial death. It was not until the 1980s that the fax became an essential piece of equipment in every office … too late for Signor Caselli.

Money also helps. The Frenchman Denis Papin (1647 – 1712) had the idea for a steam engine almost a hundred years before the better-remembered Scotsman James Watt was even born … but he never had enough money to build one.

You also need to be patient (it took scientists nearly eighty years to develop a light bulb which actually worked) … but not too patient. In the 1870s, Elisha Gray, a professional inventor from Chicago, developed plans for a telephone. Gray saw it as no more than ‘a beautiful toy’, however. When he finally sent details of his invention to the Patent Office on February 14th 1876, it was too late: almost identical designs had arrived just two hours earlier... and the young man who sent them, Alexander Graham Bell, will always be remembered as the inventor of the telephone.

Of course what you really need is a great idea - but if you haven’t got one, a walk in the country and a careful look at nature can help. The Swiss scientist, George de Mestral, had the idea for Velcro when he found his clothes covered in sticky seed pods after a walk in the country. During a similar walk in the French countryside some 250 years earlier, Rene-Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur had the idea that paper could be made from wood when he found an abandoned wasps’ nest.

You also need good commercial sense. Willy Higinbotham was a scientist doing nuclear research in the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, USA. In 1958 the public were invited to the Laboratory to see their work; but both parents and children were less interested in the complicated equipment and diagrams than in a tiny 120cm screen with a white dot which could be hit back and forth over a 'net' using a button and a knob. Soon hundreds of people were ignoring the other exhibits to play the first ever computer game – made from a simple laboratory instrument called an oscilloscope. Higinbotham, however, never made a cent from his invention: he thought people were only interested in the game because the other exhibits were so boring.

/Cutting Edge. Intermediate. /

priest [priː st] - священник

enormous [ɪ 'nɔ ː mə s] - громадный; гигантский, обширный, огромный

pendulum ['pendj(ə)lə m] - маятник, маятник, чередование

essential [ɪ 'sen(t)ʃ (ə)l] - внутренне присущий, основной

to be patient ['peɪ ʃ (ə)nt] - терпеливый, упорный, настойчивый

to arrive [ə 'raɪ v] - прибывать, приезжать to a. at a station /in a country, приходить (к чему-л.) - arrive at a conclusion

sticky ['stɪ kɪ ] - клейкий, липкий; вязкий; тягучий

seed [siː d] - семя; семечко

abandoned [ə 'bæ ndə nd] - заброшенный, покинутый

wasp [wɔ sp] - оса

sense [sen(t)s] - чувство; ощущение, рассудок, сознание, разум

button['bʌ tn] - кнопка

knob [nɔ b] - шарообразная ручка (двери, ящика)

exhibit [ɪ g'zɪ bɪ t], [eg-], [ɪ k'siː -], [ek-] - экспонат (на выставке), выставка

boring ['bɔ ː rɪ ŋ ] - неинтересный, скучный

B. Answer these questions:

1. Who invested the first “fax machine”?

2. Did the first “fax machine” actually work?

3. Who designed the first steam engine? Did the inventor have enough to build one?

4. Who built the first steam engine?

5. Why does the story of the light bulb show that inventors need to be patient?

6. Who developed plans for the first telephone?

7. What did the inventors of Velcro and of paper have in common?

8. Why were the public invited to the exhibition of the National Laboratory in Upton, USA, in 1958?

9. Did Professor Higinbotham understand the potential of his “computer game”?