Mathematics is key to successful science. The difference between an inventor and a scientist is mainly the results they each produce. Inventing requires patenting while making a scientific discovery does not. Scientists can contribute to research that leads to an invention, but an inventor is considered the chief creator of the concept and physical prototype of the invention. Research and development is important to inventors and scientists alike. Many scientists become inventors -- especially when their research on a particular subject leads to an idea for a technology that can put what is being studied into practical use.
Inventors apply the scientific method as they go to the drawing board again and again, testing and re-thinking until they reach that eureka moment where an invention is complete.
A writer since , Christian Fisher is an author specializing in personal empowerment and professional success. An invention However, a correlation exists with already known items, to which changes are made, meaning that the effect is improved in terms of quantity or quality.
Today there is a tendency only to refer to tangible matters and exclude abstract notions from inventions. Inventions are creative achievements, which allow for previously unknown solutions and applications in the area of technology. In case of inventions, natural laws are applied in an unprecedented constellation to solve a given problem, whereby the first description or application of this technology constitutes an invention.
The constructive faculty is absolutely necessary to the inventor. He takes the facts discovered by the scientist and gives them form, which the mere student never could have done. In his hands the crude or bare facts of scientific investigation, in connection with the experiments necessary to their development, assume form and may be brought forth into useful shapes to bless and assist toiling millions, instead of merely astonishing and entertaining gaping audiences.
The curious experiment becomes under him the useful possibility; the discovery of the student becomes to him a suggestion of practical use ; facts, or even possibilities, are to him living realities.
But it is the mechanic who elaborates the idea of the inventor. He it is who clothes it with a practical form, furnishes it with nerves of steel and muscles of iron, and endows it with life and motion.
Without his skill the result of the scientist's search and of the inventor's thought would be comparatively valueless. Indeed, his skill is frequently the only means of making the inventor's idea useful. In short, the mechanic, who as the model maker elaborates the inventor's idea, is often the real inventor. The crude, unworkmanlike contrivance of the inventor, that in his unskillful hands is merely a travesty on a machine, is made to assume form, proportions, elegance, and efficiency.
So valuable is mechanical skill to the perfection of an invention that it is not surprising that practical mechanics constitute the large proportion of invent' ors. But if valuable inventions are often made by unskilled persons, it is seldom they are successful until after they have passed through the hands of the mechanic ; and sometimes the addition or alteration, made by the mechanic and modestly termed an improvement, is the element of the inventor's success.
This article was originally published with the title "The Scientist, Inventor, and Mechanic" in Scientific American 20, 15, April
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