Post on 14-Jul-2015
An history of inventorsthe anglo-saxon trail
Hervé Legenvre
hlegenvre@hotmail.com
This presentation was developped as an easy to read e-book capturing the mainlessons from my Ph. D thesisYou can send your feedback at the e-mail adress underneath, I am currently planning to publish a book on this topic
Who changed our world?
PoliticiansArmy GeneralsThinkers
Or Inventors?Source: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/HistSciTech/
History of inventions: a timeline
From machines….
to large scale systems….
… and deep into the matter
Attention
Expérimentation
PersuasionA: AttentivenessGrab and gather ideas, information, knowledge
E: ExperimentationCreate new ideas, information, knowledge, artefact
P: PersuasionSell your ideas and invention
The cradle of creativity
Alexander Fleming-attentiveness
"When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic, or bacteria killer, but I guess that was exactly what I did."
Fleming
I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years. Two years later we ourselves made flights. This demonstration of my impotence as a prophet gave me such a shock that ever since I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions.
Wilbur Wright (1867-1912)
Wright brothers- experimentation
Semmelweis - persuasion
Semmelweis was his own worst enemy:• He delayed publishing and presenting
his observations. • He had an inferiority complex and
became paranoid• He was lacking the pedigree lineage
and language mastery to convince his peers
The cradle of creativity in Perspective
Attentiveness
Experimentation
Persuasion
Lucky observations
Trial and error
Glibness
Scouting for information
AnalogiyMeans-end
analysis
Partenaires visibles
Systematicsearch
TheorySimulationCalculus
Established facts
Unknown Known
A passion for experimentation
“One day when Miss Cunegund went to take a walk in a little neighboring wood which was called a park, she saw, through the bushes, the sage Doctor Pangloss giving a lecture in experimental philosophy to her mother’s chambermaid, a little brown wench, very pretty, and very tractable. As Miss Cunegund had a great disposition for the sciences, she observed with the utmost attention the experiments, which were repeated before her eyes; she perfectly well understood the force of the doctor’s reasoning upon causes and effects. She retired greatly flurried, quite pensive and filled with the desire of knowledge, imagining that she might be a sufficing reason for young Candide, and he for her.”
Voltaire, Candid
Experimentation and Entertainment
700 Monks electrifiedAt french court
Balloons everywhereThe age of hope
Experiments represented onpaintings
Religion, experimentation, invention
“Truth about God’s creation was to be found through experimental practices”
Collaboration : the Lunar society
•Boulton•Darwin•Whitehurst•Galton•Small•Edgeworth•Day•Watt•Keir•Wedgwood
Arkwright
A: Chating in pubs – stealing ideas…E: Tinkering with machinesP: Fashionning oneself as a great man
Wedgwood
A: Scouting for ideas in the streets of LondonE: A laboratory in a kitchenP: The patronage of the queen
Watt
A: Observation and friends
E: Developing the concept of the ‘perfect engine’ to measure how far you are from an ideal
P: Using models and associates to convince people you are on the right track
Networks of inventors - Rail
A Giant experiment
Machine shop culture
Network of machinists/inventors who owned the patent
Strong informal relationships with railroad companies
Ad hoc experiments
Inventive hierarchy - rail
Re-assignment of patents to railroad companies
Challenge from suppliers
Quality control needed
Corporate departments staffed with professional engineers
Standardisation – cost reduction
Systematic experiments
Bell
A: family and Boston
E: Analogy of the piano; cross fertilization systematic debugging
P: Partners, public demonstration, eloquence
Edison
A: Systematic search
E: First modern laboratory
P: The wizard of Menlo park... Prophet of his time
Sperry
A: Understanding when to enter a specific field of activity
E: Managing breakthrough innovation and fine tuning in parralel
P: Courting the rich and governement
The rise of industrial laboratories
•General Electric (G.E.), •American Telephone and Telegraph Co. (A.T.T.), E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. (DuPont) •Eastman Kodak (Kodak), •General Chemical •Dow •Standard Oil of Indiana •Goodyear•American Cyanamid
Midgley (G.M.)
A: His company brought him the problems
E: The power of the periodic table of elements
P: Contributing to public disinformation
Coolidge (G.E)
A: continuous search for information and skills outside of the firm
E: serendipity and systematic analysis of design parameters
P: The house of Magic
Carothers (DuPont)
A: Picking the ripe fruits of science
E: Theory and practice as friends
P: building the case for Pure science
Science the endless frontier
"New frontiers of the mind are before us, and if they are pioneered with the same vision, boldness, and drive with which we have waged this war we can create a fuller and more fruitful employment and a fuller and more fruitful life."
-Franklin D. RooseveltNovember 17, 1944
From a passion for basic science…
American R&D expenditures were multiplied by more than three between 1945 and 1955
In 1952 two thirds of the Nation’s R&D expenditures were spent in the private industry while being funded by the government
…To myopia
Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove(1964).
Ivory tower
Loss of connection with reality, the users and other technical fields
New winnersDevelopment teams in specialised firms
Attentive to the customer &market needs and to technical developments
Engineers focus on practical challenge such as the ability to deliver defect free products
Engineers need to persuade customers that they can deliver the technical performance they promise
And to the networks of the Silicon valley
“The Apple I and II were designed strictly on a hobby, for-fun basis, not to be a product for a company. They were meant to bring down to the club and put on the table during the random access period and demonstrate: Look at this, it uses very few chips. It's got a video screen. You can type stuff on it. (...) There was a lot of showing off to other members of the club. Schematics of the Apple I were passed around freely, and I'd even go over to people's houses and help them build their own”
SteveWozniak about the Homebrew club
An ecosystem of inventive organisations
Unknown Known
Networksof independantinventors
Developmentteams
InventiveHierarchy
Research lab
User