IBTIKAR USIM | JUN 2019

3 6 B i l . 7 J U N 2 0 1 9 of life-changing inventions exploited by greedy businessmen? To answer this question we have to first understand the difference between an invention and an innovation. Inventions are the driving force of technological development which is crucial for a civilization’s development. Prosperity, length, and quality of life, as well as the convenience of everyday lives of people all over the world, depend on technology. Technology has increased the productivity of manufactories several dozen times thanks to the use of steam engines. It freed farmers from hard and exhausting work from dawn till dusk because it provided them with tractors and harvesters. It made traveling around the world easier and faster thanks to railways, then cars, and then airplanes. However, not every invention contributes to technological development, and some even the brilliant ones – are never widely used.Why?Let’s lookatwhat an invention is. James Burke in an article on Encyclopædia Britannica Online defines an invention as an act of bringing ideas or objects together in a novel way to create something that did not exist before”. The first man-made wheel (and then axle, and wheelset) was an invention because it was a new way to solve the problem of transport and it made possible the creation of carts. The first hoe, the first sundial, the first water mill – each one of these was an invention, just like the inventions whose creators we know today by name, such as a modern printing press with a movable font by Johannes Gutenberg, an atmospheric steam engine by Thomas Newcomen, Orville and Wilbur Wright’s airplane or DYNABOOK, i.e. the first visionary portable personal computer designed by Alan Key in Xerox PARC laboratories. However, not every invention becomes as groundbreaking as the ones mentioned above – and it certainly does not become so immediately. History gives examples of numerous (known by name or nameless) inventors who created new technological solutions that surpassed everything that contemporary people knew about and yet their inventions were either forgotten or simply did not find a wider resonance in the society of their era. Leonardo da Vinci, widely recognized as the archetype of the Renaissanceman, was to be the creator of dozens of inventions that only centuries later were used, he is credited with, among others, inventing the parachute. However, parachutes (as well as many other inventions attributed to da Vinci) were not used until a few centuries later. You can even talk about the entire “nations of inventors” that gave the world the creators of extraordinary technologies, but often these technologies for centuries did not have any wider implications for these nations. Ancient and medieval China can be a good example of this a country of numerous inventions, that did not, however, significantly change the daily lives of average Chinese for a long time (often for centuries) after being invented. Even the famous Four Great Inventions (i.e. print, the compass, paper, andgunpowder), which in China are a classic symbol of the scientific and technological power of the country, found wider, more common, and more revolutionary applications later in Europe, and not in the Middle Kingdom itself. Not every invention changes the world, and certainly, not everyone does it immediately or through the actions of the inventor himself. It is not the fault of fate or immaturity of society unable to appreciate