Invention

An invention is a unique or novel

device

, method, composition or process. The invention process is a process within an overall

engineering

and product development process. It may be an improvement upon a machine or product or a new process for creating an object or a result. An invention that achieves a completely unique function or result may be a radical breakthrough. Such works are novel and not obvious to others skilled in the same field. An inventor may be taking a big step toward success or failure.

An inventor is a person who creates or discovers an invention. The word ''inventor'' comes from the

Latin

verb ''invenire'', ''invent-'', to find. Although inventing is closely associated with science and engineering, inventors are not necessarily engineers nor scientists.

Some inventions can be patented. The system of

patent

s was established to encourage inventors by granting limited-term, limited

monopoly

on inventions determined to be sufficiently novel, non-obvious, and useful. A patent legally protects the intellectual property rights of the inventor and legally recognizes that a claimed invention is actually an invention. The rules and requirements for patenting an invention vary by country and the process of obtaining a patent is often expensive.

Another meaning of invention is cultural invention, which is an innovative set of useful social behaviours adopted by people and passed on to others. The Institute for Social Inventions collected many such ideas in magazines and books. Invention is also an important component of artistic and design

creativity

. Inventions often extend the boundaries of human knowledge, experience or capability.

Types

Inventions are of three kinds: scientific-technological (including medicine), sociopolitical (including economics and law), and humanistic, or cultural.

Scientific-technological inventions include railroads, aviation,

vaccination

, hybridization, antibiotics, astronautics,

holography

, the atomic bomb, computing, the

Internet

, and the smartphone.

Sociopolitical inventions comprise new laws, institutions, and procedures that change modes of social behavior and establish new forms of human interaction and organization. Examples include the British

Parliament

, the US

Constitution

, the Manchester (UK) General Union of Trades, the Boy Scouts, the

Red Cross

, the Olympic Games, the

United Nations

, the

European Union

, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as movements such as socialism, Zionism, suffragism,

feminism

, and animal-rights veganism.

Humanistic inventions encompass culture in its entirety and are as transformative and important as any in the sciences, although people tend to take them for granted. In the domain of linguistics, for example, many alphabets have been inventions, as are all neologisms (

Shakespeare

invented about 1,700 words). Literary inventions include the epic,

tragedy

, comedy, the

novel

, the sonnet, the

Renaissance

, neoclassicism, Romanticism, Symbolism, Aestheticism, Socialist Realism,

Surrealism

, postmodernism, and (according to Freud)

psychoanalysis

. Among the inventions of artists and musicians are oil painting, printmaking,

photography

,

cinema

, musical tonality, atonality, jazz, rock,

opera

, and the symphony orchestra. Philosophers have invented logic (several times),

dialectics

, idealism, materialism,

utopia

,

anarchism

,

semiotics

, phenomenology, behaviorism, positivism, pragmatism, and

deconstruction

. Religious thinkers are responsible for such inventions as monotheism,

pantheism

, Methodism, Mormonism, iconoclasm, puritanism, deism, secularism, ecumenism, and the Baháʼí Faith. Some of these disciplines, genres, and trends may seem to have existed eternally or to have emerged spontaneously of their own accord, but most of them have had inventors.

Process

Practical means

Ideas for an invention may be developed on paper or on a computer, by writing or drawing, by trial and error, by making models, by

experiment

ing, by testing and/or by making the invention in its whole form.

Brainstorming

also can spark new ideas for an invention. Collaborative creative processes are frequently used by engineers, designers, architects and scientists. Co-inventors are frequently named on patents.

In addition, many inventors keep records of their working process - notebooks, photos, etc., including

Leonardo da Vinci

,

Galileo Galilei

,

Evangelista Torricelli

,

Thomas Jefferson

and

Albert Einstein

.

In the process of developing an invention, the initial idea may change. The invention may become simpler, more practical, it may expand, or it may even ''morph'' into something totally different. Working on one invention can lead to others too.

History shows that turning the concept of an invention into a working device is not always swift or direct. Inventions may also become more useful after time passes and other changes occur. For example, the

parachute

became more useful once powered

flight

was a reality.

Conceptual means

Invention is often a creative process. An open and curious mind allows an inventor to see beyond what is known. Seeing a new possibility, connection or relationship can spark an invention. Inventive thinking frequently involves combining concepts or elements from different realms that would not normally be put together. Sometimes inventors disregard the boundaries between distinctly separate territories or fields. Several concepts may be considered when thinking about invention.

Play

Play may lead to invention. Childhood curiosity, experimentation, and imagination can develop one's play instinct. Inventors feel the need to play with things that interest them, and to explore, and this internal drive brings about novel creations.

Sometimes inventions and ideas may seem to arise spontaneously while

daydreaming

, especially when the mind is free from its usual concerns. For example, both J. K. Rowling (the creator of

Harry Potter

) and Frank Hornby (the inventor of Meccano) first had their ideas while on

train

journeys.

In contrast, the successful aerospace engineer Max Munk advocated "aimful thinking".

Re-envisioning

To invent is to see anew. Inventors often envision a new idea, seeing it in their mind's eye. New ideas can arise when the conscious mind turns away from the subject or problem when the inventor's focus is on something else, or while relaxing or sleeping. A novel idea may come in a flash—a Eureka! moment. For example, after years of working to figure out the general theory of relativity, the solution came to Einstein suddenly in a dream "like a giant die making an indelible impress, a huge map of the universe outlined itself in one clear vision". Inventions can also be accidental, such as in the case of

polytetrafluoroethylene

(Teflon).

Insight

Insight can also be a vital element of invention. Such inventive insight may begin with questions, doubt or a hunch. It may begin by recognizing that something unusual or accidental may be useful or that it could open a new avenue for exploration. For example, the odd metallic color of plastic made by accidentally adding a thousand times too much catalyst led scientists to explore its metal-like properties, inventing electrically conductive plastic and light emitting plastic-—an invention that won the Nobel Prize in 2000 and has led to innovative lighting, display screens, wallpaper and much more (see conductive polymer, and organic light-emitting diode or OLED).

Exploration

Invention is often an exploratory process with an uncertain or unknown outcome. There are failures as well as successes. Inspiration can start the process, but no matter how complete the initial idea, inventions typically must be developed.

Improvement

Inventors may, for example, try to improve something by making it more effective, healthier, faster, more efficient, easier to use, serve more purposes, longer lasting, cheaper, more ecologically friendly, or

aesthetic

ally different, lighter weight, more ergonomic, structurally different, with new light or color properties, etc.

Implementation

In economic theory, inventions are one of the chief examples of "

positive externalities

", a beneficial side effect that falls on those outside a transaction or activity. One of the central concepts of economics is that externalities should be internalized—unless some of the benefits of this positive externality can be captured by the parties, the parties are under-rewarded for their inventions, and systematic under-rewarding leads to under-investment in activities that lead to inventions. The

patent

system captures those

positive externalities

for the inventor or other patent owner so that the economy as a whole invests an optimum amount of resources in the invention process.

Comparison with innovation

In contrast to invention, innovation is the implementation of a

creative

idea that specifically leads to greater value or usefulness. That is, while an invention may be useless or have no value yet still be an invention, an innovation must have some sort of value, typically economic.

As defined by patent law

The term ''invention'' is also an important legal concept and central to patent law systems worldwide. As is often the case for legal concepts, its legal meaning is slightly different from common usage of the word. Additionally, the ''legal'' concept of invention is quite different in American and European patent law.

In Europe, the first test a patent application must pass is, "Is this an invention?" If it is, subsequent questions are whether it is new and sufficiently inventive. The implication—counter-intuitively—is that a legal invention is not inherently novel. Whether a patent application relates to an invention is governed by Article 52 of the European Patent Convention, that excludes, e.g., discoveries ''as such'' and software ''as such''. The EPO Boards of Appeal decided that the technical character of an application is decisive for it to represent an invention, following an age-old Italian and German tradition. British courts don't agree with this interpretation. Following a 1959 Australian decision ("NRDC"), they believe that it is not possible to grasp the invention concept in a single rule. A British court once stated that the technical character test implies a "restatement of the problem in more imprecise terminology."

In the United States, all patent applications are considered inventions. The statute explicitly says that the American invention concept includes discoveries (35 USC § 100(a)), contrary to the European invention concept. The European invention concept corresponds to the American "patentable subject matter" concept: the first test a patent application is submitted to. While the statute (35 USC § 101) virtually poses no limits to patenting whatsoever, courts have decided in binding precedents that abstract ideas, natural phenomena and laws of nature are not patentable. Various attempts have been made to substantiate the "abstract idea" test, which suffers from abstractness itself, but none have succeeded. The last attempt so far was the "machine or transformation" test, but the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2010 that it is merely an indication at best.

In India, invention means a new product or process that involves an inventive step, and capable of being made or used in an industry. Whereas, "new invention" means any invention that has not been anticipated in any prior art or used in the country or anywhere in the world.

In the arts

Invention has a long and important history in the arts. Inventive thinking has always played a vital role in the creative process. While some inventions in the arts are patentable, others are not because they cannot fulfill the strict requirements governments have established for granting them. (see

patent

).

Some inventions in art include the:

*

Collage

and construction invented by Picasso
* Readymade art invented by

Marcel Duchamp

* mobile invented by

Alexander Calder

* Combine invented by Robert Rauschenberg
* Shaped painting invented by Frank Stella
* Motion picture, the invention of which is attributed to Eadweard Muybridge

Likewise,

Jackson Pollock

invented an entirely new form of painting and a new kind of abstraction by dripping, pouring, splashing and splattering paint onto un-stretched canvas lying on the floor.

Inventive tools of the artist's trade also produced advances in creativity. Impressionist painting became possible because of newly invented collapsible, resealable metal paint tubes that facilitated spontaneous painting outdoors. Inventions originally created in the form of artwork can also develop other uses, e.g. Alexander Calder's mobile, which is now commonly used over babies' cribs. Funds generated from patents on inventions in art, design and architecture can support the realization of the invention or other creative work.

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi

's 1879 design patent on the Statue of Liberty helped fund the famous statue because it covered small replicas, including those sold as souvenirs.

The timeline for invention in the arts lists the most notable artistic inventors.

Gender gap in inventions

Historically, women have been unrecognised for their inventive contributions, despite being the sole inventor or co-inventor in inventions, including highly notable inventions. Notable examples include Margaret E. Knight, Margaret Knight who faced significant challenges in receiving credit for her inventions; Lizzie Magie, Elizabeth Magie who was not credited for her invention of the game of Monopoly (game), Monopoly; and Chien-Shiung Wu whose male colleagues alone were awarded the Nobel Prize for their joint contributions to physics. Societal prejudice and legal barriers have both played a role in the gender invention gap. For example, the patent applications made to the US Patent Office for inventions were less likely to succeed where the applicant had a "feminine" name, and women lost their independent legal rights to their husbands once married. See also the gender gap in Patent, Patents.

See also

* Bayh-Dole Act
* Bold hypothesis
* Chindōgu
* Creativity techniques
* Directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions
* Discovery (observation)
* Edisonian approach
* Heroic theory of invention and scientific development
* Independent inventor
* INPEX (invention show)
* International Innovation Index
* Invention promotion firm
* Inventors' Day
* Kranzberg's laws of technology
* Lemelson-MIT Prize
* :Lists of inventions or discoveries
* List of inventions named after people
* List of inventors
* List of prolific inventors
* Multiple discovery
* National Inventors Hall of Fame
* necessity is the mother of invention, Necessity (Invention's mother)
* Patent model
* Proof of concept
* Proposed directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions - it was rejected
* Scientific priority
* Technological revolution
* ''The Illustrated Science and Invention Encyclopedia''
* Timeline of historic inventions
* Science and invention in Birmingham - The first cotton spinning mill to plastics and steam power.

References

Further reading

* Isaac Asimov, Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery, Harper & Row, 1989.
* Edmund Fuller, Fuller, Edmund, ''Tinkers and Genius: The Story of the Yankee Inventors''. New York: Hastings House, 1955.

External links

List of PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) Notable Inventions
at WIPO

{{Authority control

Inventions,
Creativity
Human activities
Inventors