Invention on Demand

considerations on photography invention and its beginning

presented to the world in french academy of science on 1839, photography foundations were laid centuries ago. as documents suggest, the invention of photography was not the outcome of creativity and efforts of an individual or a group of people, but the result of a need by the people living in a specific geographical territory, sharing the same concerns. in fact, the foundations of photography ...

John Rae on the Causes of Invention

John Rae’s Statement of Some New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy (1834; cited below as NP) was intended to refute Adam Smith’s analysis of the causes of the wealth of nations and the laissez-faire conclusions generally drawn from it. ‘Invention’ plays a central role in Rae’s argument. He accused Smith of attributing economic growth exclusively to the accumulation of capital and o...

Collective Invention

This paper argues that many new production techniques have been developed by a process called 'collective invention'. When firms collectively invent, they make available to their competitors the results of new plant designs so that their competitors can incorporate extensions of tliose designs into new facilities they build. The paper analyses the implications of this behavior for the rate and ...

the invention of capitalism

The structure of invention

This paper explores the process by which radically novel technologies – ones such as radar, the turbojet, or the polymerase chain reaction – come into being. It shows that this process – “invention” – has a certain logical structure common to all cases. Invention is a process of linking some purpose or need with an effect that can be exploited to satisfy it. It may begin with a purpose or need ...