Is there a reason we almost never hear of “great inventors” anymore, but rather the companies and the CEOs said inventions were made under?
In: 5024
Technology is sufficiently advanced at this point that no single individual can invent a cutting edge piece of technology. It will always require a team of individuals working to push the technological envelope these days. However, human psychology basically wants to believe in this idea of heroes (Great Men Theory) who are able to transcend normal human limitations. Today the only logical person to consider the hero is the leader of the company which made the breakthrough even if they had little to do with personally creating that breakthrough.
I’d imagine in the past more inventors were self employed.
Nowadays ‘inventors’ (scientists/engineers/etc) mostly work for companies and design for a specific purpose (company product, specific requirements).
These companies usually have contracts that say any invention made in work hours for work purposes belongs to the company.
Also these inventions are often formed by a whole team of people so it would be unfair to give one person’s name and ignore the rest who also worked hard.
There are still small inventors, the kind seen on ‘dragons den’ or ‘shark tank’. They make their own invention, work very hard and hope it will be a success, but this is not always the case.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Adler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Adler)
This man is an inventor in the way that a person can be an inventor today. Inventions are more about finding a niche, marketable product that can be made with the resources available to a individual.
Larger more impactful inventions require more resources, not available to individuals. In most cases in history, the leader of whatever group of people invented something was given credit. Edison didn’t invent half of the things he is credited to, but Edison labs did. I am willing to bet that if the great men of history model continues Steve Jobs will be credited with inventing the mp3 Player, the Smart Phone, and the computer tablet. If the great men theory is dissolved, we may stop teaching simple ideas like Edison invented the sonogram and the lightbulb.
For older inventions its hard to tell – we credit Alexander Graham Bell with inventing the telephone, despite the story being it was a race to the patent office with Elisha Gray. We say Newton invented Calculus, despite acknowledging that Leibniz also invented Calculus. There is more nuance – and typically the product that endures, rather than the first is given the “invention” credit. (though being first to market is a HUGE advantage)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Johnson_(inventor)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Johnson_(inventor))
[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/how-instant-pot-became-a-kitchen-appliance-with-a-cult-following.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/how-instant-pot-became-a-kitchen-appliance-with-a-cult-following.html)
[https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Dyson](https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Dyson)
[https://chat.openai.com/share/d86c9d0e-0425-45a0-ab56-9e28278d6c3b](https://chat.openai.com/share/d86c9d0e-0425-45a0-ab56-9e28278d6c3b)
Have you never watched Shark Tank?
I have two theories. The first is that it’s not individuals but teams making inventions and it’s harder to credit a team than an individual. The second is that the inventors of old were actually the investors and were just taking credit for the inventions.
A lot of past inventions were credited to individual inventors, but not created them personally. For example, Stephenson Valve Gear for steam locomotives is named for Robert Stephenson, who also pioneered the modern steam locomotive. But, the valve gear was actually designed by two of his employees.
Many of the “great inventors” of the past made just incremental improvements on existing tech and/or worked with larger teams of assistants and helpers, but had great PR to get the sole credit.
Nowadays for these sort of things the people with the PR teams are the companies they work for not the leader of the research teams.
Another aspect is that all the low hanging fruit nowadays are already taken and what is left is more complex and less likely to be done by a single person.
Nowadays the same sort of people who might have pulled an Edison in the past instead make startups.
I’m not an inventor, but I’m cited on a dozen or so patents by people I’ve helped out with.
The idea that there was this “golden age” of invention is a fallacy. With enough time, stories of inventors get simplified so much that the story boils down to “John Smith invented this from scratch”. In reality, inventors *always* have teams directly supporting them and centuries of other inventors that they depended on. A patent I worked on for a 3D printing technique wouldn’t be possible without decades of other researchers and designers making small innovations leading up to it. We like to think inventors are lone geniuses working to spontaneously create something, but progress is always a small, incremental, team effort.
The reason people think there were “great inventors” only in the past is that over time, survivorship bias forgets the inventors that weren’t great. Same answer as “what happened to that good classic rock”, or “why did politicians use to be so noble”, or “what happened to chivalry”. Every one of these questions has been asked over and over throughout history because the past always looks more historic than today.
I worked with a guy that had his doctorate in Electrical Engineering and spent his time in a lab. Must have pumped out over a dozen patents over his many decades with the company. He would frame the certificates and hang them on the wall. Smartest guy I’ve ever met.
Didn’t get a dime from those patents, company took possession of them all. His name is on them but he owns none of them. Standard business practice for decades.
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