How Invention Begins: Echoes of Old Voices in the Rise of New Machines.HOW INVENTION BEGINS: Echoes of Old Voices in the Rise of New Machines JOHN H. LIENHARD Who invented the airplane airplane, aeroplane, or aircraft, heavier-than-air vehicle, mechanically driven and fitted with fixed wings that support it in flight through the dynamic action of the air. ? The Wright brothers, correct? What about the doughnut or the steam engine? Though an individual or small group of collaborators can be given credit for almost any invention, who is to say that that credit is well placed? Lienhard looks at the notion of invention and human creativity as a cultural phenomenon. He asserts that most inventions are not the work of one person or collaboration Working together on a project. See collaborative software. , but the result of the efforts of many people in many places over expanses of time. Almost all such efforts are undertaken to fulfill ful·fill also ful·fil tr.v. ful·filled, ful·fill·ing, ful·fills also ful·fils 1. To bring into actuality; effect: fulfilled their promises. 2. some human need. For example, Lienhard describes how the human desire for speed and flight resulted in the antecedents of the locomotive locomotive, vehicle used to pull a train of unpowered railroad cars. Types of Locomotives The steam-powered locomotive played a key role during the development and golden age of railroading, but, despite its long and picturesque history, it has and airplane. He examines the idea of a collective unconscious col·lec·tive unconscious n. In Jungian psychology, a part of the unconscious mind that is shared by a society, a people, or all humankind. The product of ancestral experience, it contains such concepts as science, religion, and morality. driving technological innovation, motivating such inventions as vehicles for sharing people's ideas: books. Oxford, 2006, 277 p., b&w images, hardcover, $30.00. |
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