GREAT FACTS.
THE PROGRESS OF INVENTION.
The inventive faculty of man tends more directly than any other intellectual power he possesses to raise him in the scale of creation above the brutes. Nearly every advance he makes beyond the exercise of his natural instincts is caused by invention—by that power of the mind which combines known properties in different ways to obtain new results.
When an Indian clothes himself with the skins of animals, and when he collects the dried leaves of the forest for his bed, he is either an original inventor, or he is profiting by the inventions of others. Those simple contrivances—the first steps in the progress of invention—are succeeded by the more labored efforts of inventive genius, such as contriving means of shelter from rain, or from the heat of the sun, when caves cannot be found to creep into, or the overhanging foliage fails to afford sufficient covering. The construction of places of shelter is an imitation of the protection formed by Nature; and the rudest hut and the most magnificent palaces have their prototypes in caverns and in the interlacing branches of trees.
Nature also supplies knowledge of the means by which inventors are enabled to work. The savage who seizes hold of a broken bough is in possession of the lever, the uses of which he learns by the facility it affords in moving other objects. He ascends to the top of a precipice by walking up the sloping hill behind, and he thus becomes practically acquainted with the principle of the inclined plane. The elements of all the mechanical powers are then at his command, to be applied by degrees in administering to his wants, as his inventive faculties, guided by observation and experience, suggest. An accidental kick against a loose stone shows the action of propulsive force; and the stone that he has struck with his foot, he learns to throw with his hand. The bending of the boughs of trees to and fro by the wind teaches the action of springs; and in the course of time the bow is bent by a strip of hide, and the relaxation of the spring, after farther bending, propels the arrow. Observation and imitation thus lead to invention, and every new invention forms the foundation of further progress.
It has been so with every invention at present known, and must so continue to the end of time:—"There is nothing new under the sun." Gas lighting, Steam locomotion, and the Electric Telegraph have each sprung from some source "old as the hills," though so modified by gradually progressive changes, that the giant we now see bears no resemblance to the infant of ages past.
The observation that light particles floating in the air are attracted by amber when rubbed, which was made known six centuries before the Christian era, was the origin of the invention by which communications are now transmitted, with the rapidity of lightning, from one part of the world to another. There is no apparent relation between effects so dissimilar; yet the steps of progress can be distinctly traced, from the attraction of a feather to the development of the electric telegraph.
Whenever the history of an invention can be thus tracked backward to its source, it will be found to have advanced to its present state by progressive steps, each additional advance having been dependent on the help given by the progress before made. Sometimes these onward movements are greater and more remarkable than others, and the persons who made them have become distinguished for their inventive genius, and are considered the benefactors of mankind; yet they were but the followers of those who had gone before and shown the way.
Many of the most remarkable inventions are attributable to accidents noted by observing and inventive minds. Not unfrequently also have important discoveries of truth been made in endeavouring to establish error; and new light is being constantly thrown on the path of invention by unsuccessful experiments.
This view of the means by which inventions originate and are brought to perfection may appear to detract from the merit of inventors, since it regards them as founding their conceptions altogether on the works of others, or on chance. But instead of diminishing their claims to approbation and reward, it places those claims on a more substantial foundation than that of abstract original ideas. The man who has the faculty to perceive that by a different application of well-known principles he can produce useful effects before unknown, directly benefits mankind far more than the discoverer of the principles which had till then lain dormant; and the numerous difficulties which ever arise before an invention can be practically operative, frequently afford exercise for reasoning powers of the highest kind, which may develop new arrangements, that exhibit as much originality and research as were displayed by the discoverers of the principles on which the invention depends.
The dependence of every invention on preceding ones produces very frequently conflicting claims among inventors, who, forgetting how much they were indebted to others, do not hesitate to charge those, who make still further improvements, with imitation and piracy. It is, indeed, sometimes difficult to determine whether the alterations made in well-known contrivances are, or are not, of sufficient importance to constitute inventions; and there can be no doubt that there is too great facility afforded, by the indiscriminate grant of letters patent, for the establishment of monopolies that often serve to obstruct further improvements. At the same time, it must be observed that a very trifling addition or change occasionally gives practical value to an invention, which had been useless without it. In such cases, though the individual merit of the inventor is small, the benefit conferred may be important, and may operate influentially in promoting the progress of civilization.
Scientific discovery goes hand in hand with invention, and they mutually assist each other's progress. Every discovery in science may be applicable to some new purpose, or give greater efficiency to what is old. Those new and improved instruments and processes provide science with the means of extending its researches into other fields of discovery; and thus, as every truth revealed, supplies inventive genius with fresh matter to mould into new forms, those creations become in their turn agents in promoting further discoveries.
The action and reaction thus constantly at work, tend to give accelerating impulse to invention, and are continually enlarging its sphere of operations. Instead, therefore, of supposing, as some do, that invention and discovery have nearly reached their limits, there is more reason to infer that they are only at the commencement of their careers; and that, great as have been the wonders accomplished by the applications of science during the first half of the present century, they will be at least equalled, if not surpassed, by those to be achieved before its close.