Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879, by Various, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. HOW OUR PATENT LAWS PROMOTE AND IMPROVE AMERICAN INDUSTRIES.
HOW OUR PATENT LAWS PROMOTE AND IMPROVE AMERICAN INDUSTRIES.
On another page we print in full a most suggestive paper recently read before the Manchester (Eng.) Scientific and Mechanical Society, by Mr. Frederick Smith, a prominent builder of that city, contrasting the qualities, styles, and prices of American and English builders' hardware—a paper which the Ironmonger pronounces one of the most serious indictments yet preferred against British workmanship in that department.
The field covered by the paper—the supplying of house builders' hardware—embraces a multitude of conveniences, but no real necessities. Why is it that America has been prolific in novel devices and clever improvements in this department of manufacture as in so many others, while England has gone on stolidly copying ancient forms, changing only to cheapen by the introduction of poor material and sham construction? Mr. Smith mentions several reasons that English manufacturers have given him for the state of things he, as an Englishman, so greatly deplores; but evidently he is not satisfied with any of them, and very justly; for none of them touches the real cause—the radically different attitude of the public mind toward inventions, characteristic of the two countries.
In England the user of household inconveniences accepts them as matters of fact; or if he grumbles at them he never thinks of trying to change them. It is not his business; and if he should devise an improvement, ten to one he could not get it made. To patent it is practically out of the question, for if it were not condemned off-hand as trivial, the patent fees would make it cost more than it was likely to be worth. The mechanic who makes such things is trained to work to pattern, and not waste his time on experiments. Besides, if he should make a clever invention he would not be able to raise the necessary fees for a patent, or to get any one to help him thereto. The manufacturer "makes what his customers call for." Why should he spend his money and spoil his plant to introduce improvements? So things go, until some pestilent Yankees flood the markets with better articles at a lower price; and British consumers suddenly discover that they want something that the native manufacturer cannot make. The need was there; but invention did not follow. How happened it that the American manufacturer did not pursue the same uninventive course? What produced the radically different attitude of the American mind toward newfangled notions out of which inventions proceeded and flourished?
No doubt several causes have been at work: freedom of thought and action; popular education; a blending of races; and the tide of adventurous spirits naturally resorting to a new and free land. These have had their influence undoubtedly; but all these have existed, more or less completely, in other new lands, without that outburst of creative energy which has made America the nursery of inventions, great and small. The determining cause, the one condition that prevailed here and not elsewhere, was the circumstance that almost from the start new ideas were given a market value in this country. Unlike all others, the American patent law directly encouraged independent thinking in all classes. The fees were low and the protection offered fairly good. Men soon found that it paid to invent; that one of the surest roads to competency was a patented improvement on something of general use. If a household utensil or appliance went wrong or worked badly, every user was directly interested in devising something better; and, more than that, he was interested in making his invention known and in securing its adoption. The workman at his bench had an ever-present inducement to contrive something at once cheaper and better than the article he was hired to make. He could patent his improvement, or the wholly original device he might hit upon, for a few dollars; and his patent would count as capital. It would make him his own master, possibly bring him a fortune. The manufacturer could not rest contented with the thing he set out to make, for the meanest hired man in his employ might suddenly become a competitor. He must be constantly alert for possible improvements, or his rivals would get ahead of him. The result is a nation of inventors, at whose hands the newest of lands has leaped to the leadership in the arts, almost at a bound.
There is talk of changing all this; of emulating the conservative spirit of the Old World; of putting inventors under bonds; of stopping the rush of industrial improvement—to enable a few short-sighted yet grasping corporations to get along without paying license fees for such inventions as they happen to approve of. They profess to want inventors to go on making improvements. They are willing to ascribe all honor to the successful inventor; but they are determined not to pay him for his work. Still more they are determined to change the attitude of the public mind toward inventors and inventions, if such a change can be wrought by plausible misrepresentations. The fact that they were able to inveigle one branch of the American Congress into assenting to their unjust and mischievous scheme is one of the anomalies of our recent history. It should be taken as a timely warning of impending danger to all the industrial interests of the country. It is outrageous that the inventors of the land, after having raised their country to the first rank among industrial nations, should have to defend their constitutional rights against Congressional invasion; but the fact exists; and the defense should be made a matter of personal interest and effort not only by every inventor and manufacturer, but by every honest citizen.
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