We inventors, entrepreneurs, and other idea-people are consistently told one thing by our wiser, more experienced elders: their must be a need for your product for it to be successful. Put simply into a common cliche, the elders are in one way saying “necessity is the mother of invention.”
However, in Guns, Germs, & Steel author Jared Diamond argues against this common perception, and other perceptions held by society regarding inventors and their inventions. Using examples of major historical inventions such as James Watt’s steam engine, Edison’s light bulb, Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, Otto’s internal combustion engine, and the Wright brothers’ plane, the author says that for major society-changing innovations, invention is the mother of necessity. For example, the steam engine was originally designed to pump water out of British coal mines. Only afterwards, when people thought to use the contraption to power locomotives or create electricity. In many of these other instances, the invention was built by someone who simply had a love for tinkering, and only afterwards needed to find an application for it. And only after someone used an invention in it’s new capacity for a long period of time, did they feel that they “needed” it.
Most interesting was Edison’s view of his own invention, the phonograph. In an article published by Edison, he listed the top 10 uses he saw for the phonograph. Nowhere in that top 10 list was the phonograph envisioned as being used to play music. Only when entrepreneurs started retrofitting the phonograph to play music did it take its later, more popular role, that of a music player.
So indeed, many major inventions were in fact developed first, sometimes for a different use, and then later put to the use in which we now read about in our history books.
One last comment on inventors and their inventions. The author points out that counter to all the stories we hear about Edison, the Wright brothers, and other famous inventors, their inventions did not appear out of the blue. Although we consider many of these inventors “geniuses”, in fact they were just normal people, like you and me, who were improving an already existing invention. Watt’s steam engine, in fact had numerous predecessors dating back to 1680. Watt merely improved the process slightly. The Wright brothers manned plane was preceded by several un-manned planes. Whitney’s cotton gin followed a design that was used to clean coastal varieties of cotton. I don’t mean to degrade the accomplishments of these inventors, but more help you realize that these inventors were rather normal people and not “rare geniuses.”
Although I’m not sure if I agree with the author’s point of view completely that inventions should be developed first and find a need later, it’s interesting to learn that many well-known inventions did in fact take this route. I’ll let you make your own decision.
Bryan Daigle
