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We commonly use the word invention to describe the first identified examples of end products such as the steam engine, the printing press, or the airplane. This matches the popular western notion that credits these products to individuals of mythic proportions. We have been taught to focus on James Watts’, Johann Gutenberg’s or the Wright brothers’ seminal contributions. But in fact the “Eureka” moments of thousands (including Watts, Gutenburg, and the Wrights) are woven into each of these engines of so many people’s ingenuity.
John H. Lienhard challenges us to reconcile large technologies with the vast parade of strokes-of-genius upon which each is built. He offers a new way to look at the work of the “canonical” creative geniuses in the context of their predecessors. He also urges us to view invention as the confluence of a communal hunger for an experience, not just as a product. The automobile and the airplane sated a collective craving for speed, not for the “vehicles” themselves. Speed, then, was the sought after invention, and society as a whole its inventor.
The typical language that we use to describe the rise of the new machines does not usually acknowledge such multifaceted and collective initiatives. Thus Lienhard suggests that we need to reserve “invention” for the contributions that we all make repeatedly in our everyday lives. Airplanes, locomotives, and printed books each took centuries to evolve, and the rich stories that surround them uncover collaboration fueled by zeitgeist. Through his prehistory of cultural development and biography of ideas and their originators, the author gives us cause to celebrate technological creativity as a powerful aspect of our own human experience.
Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering and History at the University of Houston, John H. Lienhard is a mechanical engineer by training and also a popular syndicated essayist on Public Radio. This book reflects a view of invention that he has honed in over 2000 of his daily broadcasts.
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