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"The
little-known stories behind well-known inventions"
Independent inventors, not corporations,
responsible for most inventions
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"The world is created by independent
inventors, not the big corporations."
-- Joanne Hayes-Rines,editor of
Inventors' Digest magazine |
By Paul Niemann
[AUG. 11,
2005]
If March is Women's History Month, May is National
Military Appreciation Month and November is National Adoption
Awareness Month, then what is August known as?
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Since this column is about inventors,
you're probably going to go out on a limb and say that August is
National Inventors Month, right? Good guess, as August recognizes
the achievement of independent inventors everywhere.
Most of the truly revolutionary inventions -- the ones that have
changed our lives -- are invented by the little guys, the
independent inventors. Independent inventors create all kinds of
successful new products from A to Z or, in this case, from the ATM
to the zipper. In fact, two-thirds of the 100,000 patents issued by
the U.S. patent office each year are issued to independent
inventors.
Most people think that new inventions usually come from big
corporations. Many of these corporations, though, started out as
one- or two-person operations when they launched their first big
product. Think Mattel before Ruth Handler invented the Barbie doll
or before her husband Elliott invented the first Hot Wheels cars.
And Apple Computer was nothing before Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
teamed up in Jobs' garage to begin making personal computers.
Sometimes you'll see a great new product hit the store shelves
with a big company's name on it, but that doesn't mean that the
company actually invented it. Following the successful Barbie dolls,
Hasbro launched the popular G.I. Joe action figures. But it wasn't
Hasbro who invented them; it was independent inventor Stanley Weston
who created them in 1962 and then licensed them to the company.
The Black & Decker Workmate® is another example. It was invented
by Englishman Ron Hackman, an independent inventor, who then
licensed his rights to the company.
The board game that we grew up with, Monopoly, was invented by
independent inventor Charles Darrow, who then licensed it to Parker
Brothers. Another board game, Trivial Pursuit®, was created by two
independent inventors from Canada who licensed their rights to the
Selchow & Richter Company.
[to top of second column
in this article]
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But those are just toys, a workbench and a couple of board games,
right? Have independent inventors ever created anything really
important?
We all know that it was Alexander Graham Bell, not Verizon or
Cingular, who invented the telephone. And it was the Wright
brothers, not Boeing or Airbus, who invented the airplane. The name
of 17-year-old Idaho farm boy Philo Farnsworth is not nearly as
recognizable as RCA or Zenith, even though he was the main inventor
of television.
From old products to new technologies, it's often the independent
inventors who are the creative minds behind them. In 1886, Atlanta
pharmacist John Pemberton formulated the soft drink that became
known as Coke -- before there was a company called Coca-Cola. And a
technology as complex as the World Wide Web was invented by a sole
British computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.
It doesn't matter whether the idea is born in the garage, a spare
bedroom, the family den or in the shower; many of the best new
products come from independent inventors. Sure, there are
exceptions, with big corporations like Oreck, 3M and Bose
specializing in creating innovative new products. Yet Oreck and Bose
both started out as one-person companies with a single invention.
Many big corporations prefer to create "new and improved"
versions of existing brands. It's safer to take proven products that
have a track record and then create variations of those products.
Think New Coke. Never mind.
As for the ATM and the zipper mentioned in the beginning of this
story: The first ATM was invented by Luther Simjian in 1939, while
the zipper was invented by Whitcomb Judson in 1893.
[Paul Niemann]
Paul Niemann may be reached at
niemann7@aol.com.
© Paul Niemann 2005
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