Items ordinary in 20th-century America — the lock-and-key, the fire hydrant, the cheap flat-bottomed paper bag, the automatic dishwasher — were not ordinary at all for many 19th-century citizens.
The lock-and-key, invented by Linus Yale, received a U.S. patent in 1861; Birdsill Holly’s fire hydrant received its patent in 1869; Margaret Knight obtained a patent for her bag-making machine in 1879; Josephine Garis Cochran’s dishwasher was patented in 1886.
Americans all, according to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.
In 1984, Atherton resident and naturalized U.S. citizen Paul Baran received a patent for a modem designed for a dial telephone. On May 5, 2007, he and 16 other inventors will join the notables mentioned above in the Hall of Fame.
(Mr. Baran’s most significant invention, digital packet switching, laid the foundation for modern communication networks, including the Internet, but it was ineligible for his entry into the Hall of Fame because it went directly into the public domain without a patent.)
This list of famous inventors will get longer, but how many will be Americans in an era of packaged entertainment and career paths that focus on school-based learning? Is the United States still a nation of tinkerers who learn to think outside the box?
“I think that that same kind of eccentricity (still) lies at the foundation of American inventors’ personal genius,” says Portola Valley resident and intellectual property attorney Jim Pooley.
Mr. Pooley, 58, is a trial lawyer with 34 years of experience defending the rights of inventive people and companies in the high-technology industry. He is also the 2007 president of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, founded in 1973 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations.
“If you’re in a country that celebrates individualism, you’re more likely to buck and reject the assumptions of those around you and test those assumptions,” he says. “We’re a bunch of independent thinkers, notwithstanding the efforts by some media to make us conform.”
But perhaps to be on the safe side, the Inventors Hall of Fame and the Patent Office have engaged the nonprofit Ad Council to get middle-school kids thinking about careers they might forge for themselves as inventors.
“It’s a huge, huge, huge deal and represents a recognition by those who focus on public policy that we have a big challenge in the coming generation (to) stay at the forefront of innovation,” Mr. Pooley says. “I think that, while kids have a natural interest in inventing, modern culture and society (surrounds) them with so many other choices of what to do with their time and interests.
“We see a danger of allowing them to get distracted from their natural tendencies. It’s about reminding kids that there is excitement in doing something on your own and not just playing somebody else’s video game,” he says. “The Ad Council’s effort is to get above this noise.”
