Kitabı oku: «Invention: The Master-key to Progress», sayfa 2
We may reasonably conclude, therefore, that there were only a few men in primeval days who performed any acts that entitle them to individual recognition; and as the only records that have come down to us indicate that the most important acts were the inventing of certain implements, we seem forced to conclude that most of the recognition accorded to individuals of primeval days may be limited to a very small number, and they inventors.
Who they were, and where and when they lived, is not known and probably never will be. For countless centuries their names and personalities have been forgotten as wholly as those of many beasts. But maybe other achievements like those that have exposed the history of certain Oriental kings and wise men to our knowledge, will some day tell us who were the inventors who started the march of human progress, and pointed out the road that it should follow.
Yet, if we infer the probable conditions of the remote past from the conditions of the present and recent past, we shall have to conclude that, while the names and deeds of prehistoric rulers may some day become known to us, and even the names of authors, poets and song singers, the names of the original inventors will be forever hid. For inventors have ever been depreciated in their day; even at the present time, despite the known facts as to what inventions and inventors have done for every one of us, the inventor as an inventor is lightly regarded, and so are his inventions. So are his inventions until they have ceased to be regarded as inventions, and have been accepted as constituent parts of the machine of civilization. By that time the inventor has often been forgotten.
The Age of Iron succeeded the Age of Bronze in the countries from which we have inherited our civilization; but in Africa bronze does not seem to have been discovered until after iron was. Iron being an element like copper, and not an alloy of two metals like bronze, it seems probable that its discovery, like that of copper, followed the act of heating stones with fire. The coming of iron seems due therefore to discovery rather than to invention; but yet the mere discovery that a very hard substance had been accidentally produced would of itself have brought forth no fruit. One is almost forced to infer from probability that the fact must have become known to many men, but only as a plain and uninteresting fact. Finally, some man realized that that hard substance was superior to bronze for making weapons, and then set to work to ascertain exactly what kinds of stone it could be gotten from, and exactly what process gave the best results.
To us who have been carefully taught the facts known at the present day, and whose minds have been trained by logic and mathematics to reason from effect to cause, and to construct frameworks of cause wherefrom to gain effects, it seems that anyone who noted that the hard substance which we call iron came from heating certain stones, would immediately invent a process for making iron in quantities. But prehistoric man had no knowledge whatever save that coming from his own observation and the oral teachings of the wise men; mathematics and logic did not exist; and the only training given him was in those simple arts of hunting, fishing, field tilling, etc., by which he earned his livelihood. For a mind so untrained and ignorant to leap from the simple noting of the accidental production of the metal to a realization of its value, then to a correct inference as to the possibility of producing it at will, then to a correct inference as to the method of producing it, and then to devising the method and actually producing iron at will, suggests a reasoning intelligence of an order exceedingly high.
Nevertheless, the art of making iron may have originated not so much from effort as from inspiration; the process may have been less one of reasoning than one of imagination, less one of construction than one of invention. In fact, when we realize that imagination is almost wholly a pure gift (like beauty, or artistic genius or a singing voice) while the reasoning and constructive faculties require long education, we may reasonably conclude that the production of iron and of all the metals and processes in prehistoric times, was probably attributable mainly to invention.
The crowning invention of prehistoric man was that of writing; for it lifted him out of his dependence on oral teachings, with their liability to error and forgetfulness, into a condition in which the facts and experiences of life, and the reasons for failure or success, could be put into permanent form, and supply sure bases from which to start on any line of progress in the future.
The production of the art of writing seems to have been a pure invention, and it has always been so regarded. Nothing resembling writing is to be found in nature; nowhere do we see in nature any effort to preserve any records of any kind. How man, or a man, was led to invent writing we can only imagine, for we cannot ascertain. When we realize, however, how entirely novel an undertaking the production of writing was, and that there is no process of mere reasoning by which a man could arrive at a decision to produce it, we seem forced to conclude that it must have been caused by one of those inexplicable conceptions that imagination puts into the mind, and that constitute an inspiration, coming from the Great Outside and its ruler, the Almighty.
In fact, if one ponders the history and teachings of the Christian religion (in truth of all religions), and notes that the revelations on which they are believed to have been founded seem to have come unbidden to certain men as inspirations from On High, he must realize how similar are the conceptions that come to inventors in a field less spiritual, but yet actual. For in the case of each basic invention, an idea seems to have come unbidden to the mind, and grown and developed there.
The first writing was what we call picture writing, in which representations in outline of well-known objects were scratched with a hard point on some softer substance. This form of writing probably began in the Old Stone Age. It continued for different lengths of time among different peoples, as have all other characteristics of any stage of civilization; and it is practiced in some degree by some peoples even now. In fact, one might with reasonableness declare that many of the illustrations used in books and magazines and papers, many of the paintings and drawings that adorn our walls, and many of the moving pictures in our places of amusement convey messages by means of pictures, and are therefore forms of picture writing.
As the intelligence of man increased, and his consequent need for better means of expressing himself in writing increased, the idea occurred to someone to use conventional drawings to represent vocal sounds, instead of pictures of visible objects. The first writing of this kind, called phonetic writing, used characters that represented spoken words, and therefore required many characters and necessitated long and tedious study to master it. It was gradually replaced among most peoples by an improved phonetic system, in which each character represented a syllable instead of a word; though the Chinese have never wholly abandoned it. The syllabic system needed, of course, fewer characters, and was much more easily learned, much more flexible and generally satisfactory. The syllabic system was finally replaced among the more progressive peoples by the alphabetical system, in which each character represents a separate vocal sound. As the number of separate vocal sounds is few, only a few characters are needed. In most alphabets, the number of characters varies between twenty-two and thirty-six.
We of the present day plume ourselves greatly on our achievements in invention, and point to the tens of thousands of scientific appliances, books and works of art with which we have enriched our civilization. To most of us, prehistoric man was an uncouth creature, living in caves and uncleanly huts, and so far removed from us that in our hearts we class him as little higher than the beasts. Yet to prehistoric man we owe all that we are and all that we have. The gift of life itself came to us through him; and so did not only our physical faculties, but our mental, moral and spiritual faculties as well. It was prehistoric man who invented the appliances without which the wild beasts would not have been overcome, and the man, wilder than himself, been kept at bay; by means of which the soil was tilled, and boats were made to move upon the water, and villages and towns were built. It was prehistoric man who invented spoken language and the arts of drawing, painting, architecture, weaving and writing. It was prehistoric man who started the race on its forward march, and pointed it in the direction in which it has ever since advanced. It was prehistoric man who made the inventions on which all succeeding inventions have been based. The prehistoric inventor exercised an influence on progress greater than that of any other man.
CHAPTER II
INVENTION IN THE ORIENT
The first countries to pass into the stage of recorded history were Egypt and Babylonia. Excavations made near the sites of their ancient cities have brought to light many inscriptions which, being deciphered and translated, give us clear knowledge of the conditions under which they lived, and therefore of the degree of the civilization that they had attained.
As we note the progress that the inscriptions show us to have been made beyond the stage reached by prehistoric man, it becomes clear to us that much – if not most – of that progress could not have been made without the aid of writing. One cannot conceive of the invention and development of Astronomy, for instance, without some means of recording observations that had been made.
In developing the art of writing itself, much progress was effected in both countries, and many improvements were made in the art itself that must have been due to that lower order of invention which consists in improving on things already existing. In addition, invention was employed in devising and arranging means for preserving the writings in an enduring form. In Babylonia, this was done by making the writing on soft tablets of clay about an inch in thickness, that were afterwards baked to hardness. In the case of records of unusual importance, the precaution was sometimes taken of covering the baked inscription with a thin layer of clay, making a duplicate inscription on this layer, and then baking it also. If afterwards, from any cause, the outside inscription was defaced, it could be removed and the inside inscription exposed to view.
In Egypt, the writing was done on sheets of papyrus, made from a reed that grew in the marshes. To devise and make both the baked clay tablets and the papyrus, it is clear that invention had to be employed; for nothing exactly like them existed in nature. Thus the invention of the art of writing was supplemented by the invention of the art of preserving the records that writing made. The act of writing would have been useful, even if no means had been invented for preserving the things written; even if the things written had perished in a day. But the importance of the invention of writing was increased ten thousand fold by the invention of the means for preserving the things written; because without that means it would have been impossible by any process of continual copying of tablets to keep at hand for reference that library of records of the past on which all progress has been based, and from which every act of progress has started, since some inventor of Babylonia invented baked clay tablets and some inventor of Egypt invented papyrus.
It may be objected that there is no reason for assuming that any one man invented either; that each invention may have been the joint work of two men, or of several men. This of course, is true; but it does not minimize the importance of either invention, or the credit due to the inventors. It simply divides the credit of each invention among several men, instead of giving it all to one. It is a notable fact, however, that, although some inventions have been made by the joint work of two men, and although some books have been written, and some music has been composed by two men working in cooperation, yet such instances have been rare.
Many men combine to do constructive work of many kinds, and millions combine to work and fight together in armies; and it is an interesting fact that the working together of many men has been made possible by inventions, such as writing and printing. Yet there is hardly any other kind of work that is so wholly a "one man job" as inventing. The fact that only one man, as a rule, makes a certain invention, or writes a certain book, or composes a certain musical piece, or does any other inventional work, seems to spring naturally from the original fact that an invention begins with a picture made by imagination on a mind. Now a picture so made is an individual picture in an individual mind. If the picture is allowed to fade, or if from any cause the mind that received it does not form it into a definite entity, no invention is made. If, on the contrary, the mind develops the dim picture into a definite entity of some kind, that mind alone has made that invention; even if other minds improve it later by super-posing other inventions on it.
It is true that sometimes a man who receives from his imagination a mental picture of some possible invention will communicate it to another man, and that other man will contribute some constructive work, and make the dim picture into a reality; so that the complete invention resulting will be the joint product of two men. It seems to be a fact, however, that these dim pictures have rarely been disclosed while in the formless period, and that almost every invention of which we know the history, was made by one man only.
It need hardly be interjected here that we are discussing inventions only, and not the acts of making inventions practicable in the sense of making them useful or commercially successful. At the present day, there are few inventions indeed, which even after having been completed as inventions, need no modification at the hands of the engineer and the manufacturer, before they are suitable to be put to practical use.
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That the Babylonians realized the importance of their invention is proved by the fact that their baked tablets were carefully preserved, and that in some cities large libraries were built in which they were kept, as books are kept in our libraries at the present day. When the expedition of the University of Pennsylvania made its excavations near the site of the ancient city of Nippur, in the southern part of Babylonia near the city of Babylon, a library was discovered that contained more than thirty thousand tablets.
The writing of the Babylonians, while phonetic, was a development of picture writing, each character expressing a syllable, and was made of wedge-shaped characters. From the shape of the characters the adjective cuneiform has been applied to the writing, the word coming from the Latin word, cuneus, a wedge. Syllabic writing was in use for probably three thousand years among the peoples of western Asia.
The Babylonians utilized their ingenuity and inventiveness in divers ways, and accomplished many things that help to form the basis of our civilization, without which we cannot imagine it to exist. Their creations were of a highly practical and useful kind, and illustrate the proverb that "necessity is the mother of invention." From the fact that their ships sailed the waters of the Persian Gulf, and had need of means to locate their positions and determine their courses from port to port, and from the fact easily noted by their navigators that the heavenly bodies held positions in the firmament depending on their direction from an observer, and on the month and season and the time of day, the study of the heavens was undertaken; with the result that the science of astronomy was conceived and brought into existence.
It may here be asked if this achievement can properly be called an invention. One must hesitate a little before answering this question either negatively or positively; because such an achievement is not usually called an invention, and yet it cannot truthfully be denied that there is nothing in Nature like the science of astronomy, and that therefore it must have been created by man. It cannot reasonably be denied, also, that after the science had at last been formulated, it was as clearly a distinct entity as a bow and arrow or a telephone. Furthermore, it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that, before any of the principles of astronomy were laid down, before anyone even attempted to lay them down, before anyone even attempted to ascertain the laws that seemed to govern the movements of the heavenly bodies, the idea must have occurred to someone that those heavenly bodies were all moving in obedience to some law; and a more or less confused and yet real image must have been made upon his mind of a great celestial machine. He must actually have imagined such a machine. This first act would be quite like that of the inventor of a mechanical device. The next act would be to observe and record all the phenomena observable in connection with the movements of the celestial bodies, then to analyze and classify them. This series of acts would not, of course, be inventive or even constructive. They would rather be like those studies of any art, without which no man could be an inventor in that art.
The analysis having been completed, the positions of the heavenly bodies at various times having been ascertained and tabulated, the next step would seem to be to construct a supposititious machine of which each part would represent a heavenly body, and in which those various parts would move according to laws induced tentatively from the actual motions of certain heavenly bodies. If it were afterwards found that all positions of each part, predicted in advance by applying the laws tentatively induced, corresponded to the actual positions of the heavenly body that it represented, then the supposititious machine could be truthfully declared to be a correct imitation of the great celestial machine. That is, the machine could be declared to be successful.
The science of astronomy is, in effect, such a machine. Its parts are representations of the sun, moon and other heavenly bodies, that move according to laws that are illustrated in the diagrams, and expressed precisely in the formulas.
The first act of the originator of the science of astronomy being one of the imagination in conceiving a picture of a celestial machine, and being like that of the inventor in conceiving a picture of an earthly machine; and his second act being also like that of the inventor in developing the picture, a justification for speaking of the "invention" of the science of astronomy may perhaps be reasonably claimed.
(We must bear in mind, of course, that no invention is complete until the third act has been performed, and the thing invented has been actually produced.)
To speak of invention in connection with bringing forth novel creations is far from new, for the phrases "construct a theory," "invent a science," "invent a religion," etc., are in almost daily use; and it may seem unnecessary to some persons, therefore, to discuss it at such length. But most people seem to regard such phrases as merely figurative; while the author wishes to make it plain that they are not figurative but exact.
As this modest treatise does not pretend to be a learned one, and as the author is not a professional scholar, no further attempt will be made to claim the production of the science of astronomy as an invention. To pursue the subject further would be merely to enter a discussion as to the meaning, both original and derived, of the word invention. The author, however, cannot escape the conclusion that, no matter what may be the literally correct meaning of the word, the mental acts performed by the originators of the science of astronomy were like the mental acts performed by the inventors of mechanical appliances, and exerted a similar influence on history. That is, he believes that the men who brought into being the science of astronomy and the men who brought into being the bow and arrow, first saw pictures on the mental retina of some things actual yet vague and formless, and then constructed entities from them. He believes also that the creation of the bow and arrow, and the creation of the science of astronomy constituted actual and similar stepping-stones on which the race rose toward a higher civilization.
In default of any definition of the word invention, which precludes its application to the origination of a science, theory, religion or formulated school of thought, the author begs permission so to use it, in indicating the influence on history of the novel creations which, according to this meaning of the word, have been inventions.
The influence on history of the invention of the science of astronomy has been so great that we cannot estimate its greatness. On it the whole science of navigation rests. Without it, the science and the art of navigation could not exist, no ships could cross the ocean from one port to another, except by accident, and the lands that are separated by the ocean would still rest in complete ignorance of each other. This world would not be a world, but only a widely separated number of barbarian countries; most of them as ignorant of even the existence of the others as in the days before Columbus.
Following the invention of astronomy, or as it was first called, Astrology, the imaginative and practically constructive intellects of the Babylonians naturally led them to invent the sun-dial for indicating the time during the day, and the water-clock for indicating it during the night.
Another invention, doubtless brought into being by the study of the movements of the heavenly bodies, was the duodecimal system of notation, of which the base was twelve. In accordance with this system, the Babylonians divided the Zodiac into twelve equal parts or "signs"; divided the year into nearly equal months, that corresponded approximately to the length of a lunar month; divided a day and a night into twelve equal parts or hours; divided an hour in sixty (12 x 5) equal parts or minutes, and divided a minute into sixty (12 x 5) equal parts or seconds.
The duodecimal system of notation has been supplanted for many purposes by the more convenient decimal system, the invention of which is attributed by some to the Arabs; but the duodecimal divisions of time are still with us, and the duodecimal divisions of the circle are still used in most countries.
The duodecimal system of notation seems to have been the earliest system of notation invented; and it was an invention so important that we cannot imagine civilization without it and the decimal system, possibly its offspring. The influence of these two inventions on history has been so great that the mind is incapable of realizing its greatness, even approximately.
Who were the inventors, we do not know. It is almost certain that none of our generation ever will know, and it is far from probable that any one of any generation will ever know. If any knowledge on this subject is ever given to the world, it will be knowledge of names only – only names. Yet some human beings, forgotten now and probably obscure even in their lifetimes, invented those systems, and contributed more to the real progress of the race than many of the great statesmen and warriors of history.
The Babylonians invented measures of length, capacity and weight, also; and it is from those measures that all the later measures have been directly or indirectly derived. To have invented systems by which time, angle, distance, space, weight and volume were lifted out of the realm of the vague and formless into the realm of the definite and actual, was an achievement that almost suggests that noted in the first chapter of Genesis, in the words, "And God said 'Let there be light,' and there was light"; for what a clearing up of mental darkness followed, when the science of measurement turned its rays on the mysteries that beset the path of early man!
The Egyptians seem to have been inventors, though hardly to the same degree as were the Babylonians. The Egyptians studied the heavens and employed a science of astronomy; and it is possible that they, rather than the Babylonians, should be credited with its invention. But it is not the intention of this book to decide points in dispute in history, or even to discuss them. Its intention is merely to study the influence that inventions and inventors had. Whether the name of an inventor was John Smith or Archimedes, whether he lived in the year 1000 or 1100, or which one of two rival claimants should be credited with the honor of any invention, is often an interesting question; but it is not one that is especially important to us, unless it casts light on the main suggestion of our inquiry. The only reason for mentioning names and dates and countries in this book is to show the sequence of inventions as correctly as practicable. In order to show the influence of invention on history it seems best to give the treatment of the subject an historical character.
Possibly the most important invention of the Egyptians was papyrus, which was the precursor of the paper of today. The clay tablets of the Babylonians were clearly much less adapted to the making of many records than was papyrus. One cannot readily imagine an edition of 300,000 newspapers like the New York Times, made out of clay tablets an inch in thickness, and sold on the streets by newsboys. Clearly the invention of papyrus was one so important that we cannot declare any invention as more important, except on the basis that (other factors being equal) the earlier an invention was the more important it was. To assume such a basis would, of course, be eminently reasonable; because the earlier invention must have supplied the basis in part for the making of the later. The invention of writing, for instance, was more important than the invention of papyrus.
A curious invention of the Egyptians was the art of embalming the bodies of the dead, an art still practiced in civilized countries. It was prompted by their belief that the preservation of the body was necessary, in order to secure the welfare of the soul in the future life. This belief resulted further in building sepulchres of elaborate design, filling them with multitudes of objects of many kinds, decorating the walls with paintings, sculptures and inscriptions, and placing important manuscripts in the coffins with the mummies or embalmed bodies. The sepulchres of the kings were, of course, the largest and most elaborate of all; and of these sepulchres the grandest were the pyramids. By reason of the great care and labor lavished on tombs and sepulchres and pyramids, and by reason also of the dryness of the air in Egypt, and the consequent durability of works of stone, it has been from the tombs that many of the clearest items of information have come to us about old Egyptian times.
The Egyptians excelled in architecture, and the greatest of their buildings were the pyramids. As to whether or not there was much invention devoted to those works, it is virtually impossible now to know. The probability seems to be that they could not have been produced without the promptings of the inventor, but that the progress was a slow and gradual march. It seems that there was a long series of many small inventions that made short steps, and not a few basic inventions that proceeded by great leaps.
The Egyptians seem to have been the inventors of arithmetic and geometry. What men in particular should most be credited with inventing them, we do not know; but that some men were the original inventors the probabilities seem to intimate. For these sciences were creations just as actual as the steam engine, and could hardly have been produced save by similar procedures.
The suggestion may here be made that whatever we do is the result (or ought to be) of a decision to do it, that follows a mental process not very different from that invented by the German General Staff for solving military problems. By this process one writes down —
1. The mission – the thing which it is desired to accomplish.
2. The difficulties in the way of accomplishing it.
3. The facilities available for accomplishing it.
4. The decision – that is, how to employ the facilities to overcome the difficulties and accomplish the mission.
In solving a military problem (or in solving many of the problems of daily life) it is often a matter of great difficulty to arrive at a clear understanding of what the mission actually is, what one really wishes to accomplish. In the majority of ordinary cases, however, the mission stands out as a clear picture in the mind. Such a case would be one in which an enemy were making a direct attack; for the mission would be simply to repel it. Another case would be one in which the mission was stated by the terms of a problem itself; for instance, to build a steam engine to develop 1000 horse power. In the case of the inventor, the mission seems to be sent to him as a mental picture; he suddenly sees a dim picture in his mind of something that he must make.
Perhaps, many centuries ago, some man who had been laying out plots of ground in Egypt, of different shapes and sizes, and making computations for each one, suddenly saw a phantom picture in which all the lines and figures appeared grouped in a few classes, and arranged in conformity to a few fixed rules. The mission was given to him free, but it devolved on him to formulate the rules. As soon as he had formulated and proved the rules, the science of Geometry existed.
