Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1891 — Invention. [ARTICLE]

Invention.

If one were asked, says Lock and Bell, to tell the reason why the present age, when compared with all past ages, is so conspicuously an inventive age, he might have difficulty in finding a reason that would be satisfactory, even to his own judgment. Down to the beginning of the last century men had invented but very little. They had necessarily contrived a great d'eal. They had learned to make boats so far back in the legendary ages that history could only find a place for beginning after men had been taught to navigate the sea. But then, the boat is only an evolution of the log floating on the water, and it came into form by such easy gradations through the raft that it is. hardly to be called an invention. So with most of the household implements, and even of the tools of mechanics that have long been in use. They grew by such slow processes from the crudest beginnings that iio man could be called their inventor. As we look back beyond-the beginning of the last century, we discover barely more than a half-dozen new devices that could justly be called inventions. The art of printing is the most conspicuous of these few; but even this invention was so simple that one cannot help feeling that the old monks who copied manuscriptsfor centuries must have been exceedingly stupid or they would have created the art at a much earlier date. But the inventive activity of the present age is a source of continual wonder, and it is difficult to explain the impulse that leads to its indulgence. Much is attributed, and much, doubtless, is due to the patent right system; but this will not explain everything. A few fortunes have been made by inventors; but it is notoriously true that the authors of new inventions rarely realize much for their happy thoughts, and few men would ever think of turning their attention to invention as a profession. Yastly the larger number of inventions are the work of men who have merely conceived a good idea, and then proceeded to put it in mechanical form because their idea has made them enthsiastic. In such cases they may have been stimulated somewhat by hope of pecuniary reward; but it was not this hope that gave the impulse to their labor. Neither can it be justly said that the intellectual activity of the current age is greater than that of any preceding period in the world’s history. In some departments of human endeavor we are less active than the men of the renaissance period and the years immediately following the renaissance. We are producing no Shakspeares, Dantes, Tassos, iftiltons, Michael Angelos, and Raphaels at the present 'time, and considering the models from which those men were forced to draw their instruction, they were so immeasurably superior to their successors in corresponding fields that no comparison is possible. Herschel, Galileo, and Newton, estimated according to their opportunities, were greater than the men of scientific research to-day. The present generation has reached its high ground more largely through the labors of past generations than through its own endeavor, and we cannot say that men have become more inventive because their brains are more active. Is it not more reasonable to say that invention, which is largely science applied, is a characteristic of the highest civilization? It is the last manifestation of human activity following after all the fine and industrial arts and literature have reached their highest degree of perfection. Great writers, great painters and great actors are all imitators. However great they may be, they are only doing what men have done before, and they think themselves most happy when they can trace some sort oi resemblance between their own works and the works of their exemplars. But the inventor comes nearer to the production of something absolutely original than the worker in any other field of intellectual activity, and we take it that the search after the new is a pursuit most congenial to the most advanced society. Men have got tired of learning. Some of them tire too early in life, but we are all growing tired of accomplished facts and want novelty.