The British as Inventors.

Progress, Volume III, Issue I, 1 November 1907, Page 25

The British as Inventors.

The details which we published lately of Mr. Brennans wonderful " spinning-top railway," suggest that the world may be on the eve of a new revolution in the art of transport. The new balancing train has, it is true, yet to be tried on a large scale, but as a working model its success has been startling. The principle which it embodies is capable of the widest application. It may affect the future design of motor cars, and may even lead to a complete change in the method of working railways, though for obvious reasons any such transformation will be but slowly accomplished. In itself the gyroscopic railway is a miracle of ingenuity, and it is most satisfactory to reflect that it is the product of the British mind. The Britisher has often been reproached with a want of inventiveness. There is a strange want of humour in such a reproach, and a complete ignorance of the history of invention. For, as a matter of fact, almost all the great and fundamental inventions have been the work of British subjects. We have even heard a distinguished American authority assert that all the devices with which the ingenuity of the United States is commonly credited have been the achievement of Englishmen. Such a view is an overstatement and far from being absolutely correct, but it contains a measure of truth. Thus, the Northrop loom, of which so much has been "heard, waspatented first in the United States, but it was the invention of an Englishman. The pressed-steel car, the manufactuie of which employs an enormous amount of capital and labour in the United States was of British origin. These examples could be multiplied almost indefinitely. It is no small tribute to the energy and persistence of the Englishman that he should be thus distinguished, when we remember that the State places every conceivable obstacle in his way. The English patent laws tax him unjustly, and penalise him for his very inventiveness. In the United States, on the other hand, very diff erect treatment is accorded to the inventor. American statesmen have alwa\s borne in mind Washington's insistence on the importance of giving " effectual encouragement as well to the introduction of new and useful inventions from abroad, as to the exertions of skill and genius in producing them at home." At the same time the British policy of reserving for municipal monopolists the exploitation of electricial supply and electric traction has gravely affected the British inventor in the electrical industries. Here, again, the fundamental discoveries were made by Englishmen. Davy discovered the arc lamp ; Faraday, Varley, and Wheatstone made the dynamo possible ; Grove produced the first accumulator • Swan the earliest electric incandescent lamp ; Hughes the microphone on which the modern telephone transmitting instrument is based. It was not for want of British originality that the electric industries were developed abroad, but because Englishmen were denied the opportunity of practical knowledge and experience in the years when the world was turning to the use of electricity. In other directions, passing over the great names of Stephenson, Watt, Arkwright, Brindley, and Smeaton, r the pneumatic tyre, on which till mechanical road propulsion is now based,

where speed is a matter of moment, was a British invention In maritime engineering the turbine is the product of British brains, and may rapidly supplant the older reciprocating engine. In naval engineering the originality that produced the Dreadnought shows that England has nothing to fear in any contest of skill. Given better patevt laws, and more encouragement from the State to the inventor, given also a fair chance to new industries, with exemption from mandarin control, and there is every reason to think that England would surpass her former record. The country of Armstrong, Whitworth, Whithead, and Parsons has no cause to fear an}4hing except its Government.