ORIGIN OF INVENTION

Evening Post, Volume XCIX, Issue 83, 8 April 1920, Page 2

ORIGIN OF INVENTION

NOT ALWAYS NECESSITY . " GROPING FOR THE LIGHT " Ona of the many benefits which we are reaping, in partial compensation for the terrible cost of the war, is a clearer, more widespread recognition of the' inestimable value to the community of scientific knowledge and scientific methods, writes the Scientific American. Before the war \ye had reached tho point of acknowledging the utility of science as a servant. But there was no equally well-diffused appreciation of the great value of the scientific investigator as a leader, as one who advances to meet human needs before they are felt. ..Yet. it is in just this that the value of scientific research lies. The born investigator never waits until he can see practical application before setting to work upon a problem. If he did this he would often not only be late in bringing liis results into use, but in many cases he would fail to reach any solution at all. For many truths are perceived as^inks in a chain. The solution of some practical problem> may call for an understanding of some of the middle links; but this cannot be realised till some person; from motives which may have nothing to do with this practical problem in question, has .forged the first links in the chain. Again, in many instances, even the existence .of a practical problem is not foreseen till the trail has been blazed by some worker in pure science. Hertz would not have produced electrical waves in the laboratory if the genius of Maxwell had never foretold their existence, and even their velocity) twenty years earlier And Marconi would never even have had an opportunity to exercise vis ingenuity in making practical wireless telegraphy an accomplished fact had not Herta thus forged the second link. Here invention was born, not of necessity, but of opportunity. And the opportunity was furnished by labours ' pursued and discoveries made from that sheer curiosity which gropes in the dark to find the light from mere love of light, and without, any thought of utility. It is not for nothing that nature has put into the mind of man this snjrit of inquiry. By it he is enabled, inueed compelled to gather knowledge before the necessity arises and to meet the emergency, when it comes, prepared. * Necessity is not the mother of invention ; knowledge and experiment are its parents. This is seen clearly in many industrial discoveries ; high-speed cutting . tools were not a necessity which preceded, but an application that followed, the discovery of the properties of tung-sten-chromium alloys; so, too, the use of titanium in arc ■ lamps and of vanadium in steel were sequels to the industrial I preparation of these metals, 'and not discoveries made by force of necessity. It is a poor policy that waits upon necessity to pcjint the way to progress. The man who is wide awake has his eves open for opportunity: and this anticipates the call for necessity. The modern version of the old proverb is : Opportunity is the mother of invention. '