An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an idea is unique enough either as a stand-alone invention or as a significant improvement over the work of others, it can be patented. A patent, if granted, gives the inventor a proprietary interest in the patent over a specific period of time, which can be licensed for financial gain.
An inventor creates or discovers an invention. The word inventor comes from the Latin verb invenire, invent-, to find.inventor. Dictionary.com. Retrieved 1 October 2017.invent . Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 1 October 2017. Although inventing is closely associated with science and engineering, inventors are not necessarily engineers or scientists.*Inventor. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 1 October 2017. Due to advances in artificial intelligence, the term "inventor" no longer exclusively applies to an occupation.
Some inventions can be patented. The system of patents was established to encourage inventors by granting limited-term, limited monopoly on inventions determined to be sufficiently novel, non-obvious, and useful or with industrial applicability. A patent is jurisdictional, meaning that a patent only provides rights to the patent owner within the jurisdiction (Country or Countries) in which the patent was obtained. A patent provides the patent owner (who may or may not be an inventor) the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling an invention or importing it into the jurisdiction. 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.
History The earliest inventions pre-date anatomically modern humans. Crude stone tools, such as the Oldowan tools, date back around 2.9 million years. Other inventions of the Lower Paleolithic era are rafts and cooking (which dates back to Homo habilis).
Some of the first human inventions were bedding, clothing, and hafting. Other notable pre-historic inventions were agriculture, fish hooks, pottery (including bricks), bread, flutes, and tally sticks.
The 21st century has seen several notable machine-generated inventions. For example, the 2006 evolved antenna from NASA. Genetic algorithms are widely studied in computer science to develop software and the same approach has been with hardware since at least the 1990s.
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 [such as calpol], 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. Another example of an invention is the Walkman. 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, Hunminjeongeum or 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 experimenting, 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.Leonardo da Vinci: Artist, Scientist, Inventor by Simona Cremante (2005)
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.White, Lynn: The Invention of the Parachute, Technology and Culture, Vol. 9, Nremante (2005)
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.Juice: The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors (2004), pp. 14–15 by Evan I. Schwartz.
Sometimes inventions and ideas may seem to arise spontaneously while daydreaming, especially when the mind is free from its usual concerns.Claxton, Guy. "Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: Why intelligence increases when you think less". Fourth Estate, London, 1997. For example, both J. K. Rowling (the creator of Harry Potter)Smith, Sean. "J. K. Rowling: A Biography." Michael O'Mara Books Limited, 2001. and Frank Hornby (the inventor of Meccano)Jack, Ian. "Before the Oil Ran Out: Britain 1977–87". Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, 1987. 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".Einstein: A Life by Denis Brian p.159 (1996) 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 insights 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).Nobelprize.org, The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2000
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 aesthetically 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.