The Joy of Inventing

Perhaps the most important thing to realize about inventing is that anyone can do it! You do not have to have advanced degrees or even a particular type of intelligence or training. Before I retired, I had in my office a framed 8x10 picture of a simple paper clip with the caption: “A great solution doesn’t have to be complicated.” Yes, I still have it in my office at home. It is difficult to imagine an office without paper clips, one of the most pervasive inventions of all time, even in the present day where we tend to think that if it doesn’t involve computers, either it is unimportant, it doesn’t exist, or nobody would want it or need it anyway.

I believe that the main difference between an inventor and the rest of us is the willingness to go beyond the first idea to a practical, useful, and successful device. I have a close personal friend (also an engineer) who has on many occasions mentioned to me that “what’s really needed is a simpler device for cleaning teeth at home that would replace brushing and flossing!” But to my knowledge, he has never suggested, or attempted to find, a new way of approaching the problem, much less presented or tried an idea for making such a device. In the meantime, I have long since developed several prototypes, but have so far abandoned all as inadequate or impractical. The key difference is that I have attempted several ways of approaching the problem, while he continues to state the need, but goes no further. The odds that I will succeed are infinitely higher than that he will. You cannot win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket!

Getting started as an inventor is not usually something that one decides to do, but rather it most often begins with an observation of a particular need that has not been filled, or from experience with a device that does not do what it is supposed to do. In other words, it is not ordinarily something that you do, but rather something that happens to you in the form of an idea that particularly appeals to you at that time. However, I believe that anyone can train his/her mind to have the mindset of an inventor. That is, in fact, the main purpose of this book. You don’t have to wait for that rare experience when something happens by chance to start your mind working like an inventor’s mind.

I recently heard an interview on the radio of a fourteen-year-old boy who has invented a new magnetic paint that allows hanging things on a wall without using any nails, as you would hang something on the refrigerator door. As he describes it, he was helping his mother to repaint his room after she complained of all the damage caused by his taping and nailing things to the wall. This started his mind “thinking of stuff” (e.g., recalling the refrigerator door), which made him wonder about making the wall itself magnetic. Then, with the help of his stepfather, who was familiar with magnetizing metals (which the boy himself had been learning about in school), they developed a magnetic paint. He has since received many inquiries, including one from the U.S. Air Force.

I still remember my own first invention idea (at the age of 10), which was to be a perpetual motion machine consisting of a simple lever (a horizontal bar supported by a pin at the middle), with a rubber band at one end and a weight on the other. My “working prototype” ran for only one half of a cycle and quit. It seems I should have waited until I understood the basic laws of friction and energy. (I had the time and the desire, but not the background.) This is a typical case of trying to invent something beyond your own experience or knowledge. Many years later, I was much more successful with an invention well within my own experience and training, as discussed in Chapter V.

Most of us have heard about or seen things that give instant rise to an idea for a new practical device, but we quickly move on to something else and forget the new idea. The serious inventor, on the other hand, makes immediate notes to be explored and expanded at a later time. Or, if appropriate, s/he explores the idea in the moment, either on paper or in the mind. The inventor then moves ahead with the intent of making a working model, no matter how crude. Somehow, the goal may be later achieved in fits and starts by mysterious means, primarily persistence. As Thomas Edison once said, “Invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

In summary, just as for other endeavors in life, the difference between the successful inventor and the rest of us lies in one’s willingness to stick with the selected project, no matter how many false starts may be required, and no matter how long it may take. There are often many attempts made before completion of a successful working prototype. And there are also failed projects that are appropriately abandoned by the inventor and used as a learning experience to guide later projects. It is important also to recognize that just because something can be done does not necessarily mean that it should be. Prospective inventions are sometimes abandoned either because one is not capable of developing it, or because the market is found to be too small or nonexistent, or perhaps because the prospective invention raises ethical issues with which the inventor may not be comfortable.