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Topic 5: Innovation and Design

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Topic 5: Innovation and Design Topic 5: Innovation and design Invention Invention is the process of discovering a principle that enables a technical advance in a particular field and may result in a novel product. An inventor is an individual or group able to generate an idea for a new or improved device, product or ​ ​ process. The idea must then be transformed into concrete information in the form of a description, sketch or model. An invention is an idea, concept or design for a new or improved device, product or process that is ​ ​ available as concrete information in the form of a description, sketch or model. So an inventor may have many ideas for new products or improvements to existing processes, say, but these do not constitute an invention until the ideas have been transformed into something real, such as drawings or a prototype with the potential for practical application. The conditions for granting a patent to protect an invention from being copied are that the invention must be new, must not be obvious to someone who knows about the subject and must be capable of industrial application. Given that the process of invention takes place over time it is often not possible to be precise about the exact moment that an inventive idea becomes an invention. For example in 1878 the prolific US inventor, Thomas Edison, began work on inventing an incandescent lamp powered by electricity. He was enthused by a new kind of generator that had been developed to power a small arc-light system and realised the commercial possibilities of being the first to provide a large-scale electric lighting system. He had a vision of lighting up an entire city district with such a generator. However the arc-light (bright light produced by a continuous electric arc leaping between two electrodes) suffered from two problems: burnout of the tips of its electrodes meant regular replacement, and the problem of controlling the gap between the electrodes when they were constantly being burned up by the arc. Edison saw the need for inventing an electric lamp that would be effective and long lasting. He thought that the solution might lie in the incandescent lamp – that is, a lamp in which light is produced by using electricity to heat some substance ​ ​ to a high temperature, causing it to glow. Others had been trying for years to achieve this goal, and in fact the first patent on an incandescent lamp was taken out in Britain in 1841. The situation of many people working towards solving the same technological problem is common and often results in simultaneous invention – as you saw with the invention of the ​ ​ telephone. The most notable of these other inventors was Joseph Swan, an Englishman who had produced a design that featured a carbonised paper filament that glowed inside a glass when electricity was passed through it. The air was evacuated from the inside of the bulb so that oxygen would not cause the filament to burn up. However no one, including Swan, had managed to produce a filament that would glow for a useful length of time before being destroyed. Edison's challenge was to find a suitable material for the filament that would permit a bright glow without burning up too quickly. He had ideas about how it might be done but it took a year of searching for and experimenting with thousands of different filament materials. He also searched for a method of achieving the necessary vacuum inside the light bulb. Eventually he produced a working prototype of his carbon filament lamp in October 1879. This consisted of a thread of carbonised cotton bent into the shape of a horseshoe and mounted inside a glass bulb that had the air sucked out of it. When connected to an electric current the new ‘electric candle’ burned for almost 2 days. ​ ​ ​ ​ This apparatus was a combination of several existing technologies – Geissler and Sprengel's mercury pumps and ​ ​ McLeod's vacuum gauge. After only a few weeks of improvements in late 1879, Edison's team could evacuate a bulb to a millionth of an atmosphere in 20 minutes. This first reliable working prototype could be said to be the invention. However before the electric light could be offered for sale to customers there was still a great deal of work to be done by Edison and his team of workers at his Menlo Park laboratory in north-east USA. Though it is generally accepted that Edison was the 'inventor' of the light bulb, by the time he began his experiments with light bulbs, the general structure and technology for incandescent bulbs was already in place: a glass bulb evacuated of oxygen housing a filament of carbonized material that would glow but not burn when electrified. The crucial developments that laid the groundwork for Edison's success were achieved by more than a dozen scientists throughout the 19th century, most prominently by a British scientist named Joseph Swan, whose earlier published research was similar enough to Edison's prototype that he eventually won a court victory in Britain granting him partnership in Edison's UK business, very much against Edison's will. The inventive drive There are many drivers for invention, including: • a personal motivation to invent in order to express one’s creativity or personal interest ​ ​ • scientific and/or technical curiosity • constructive discontent with an existing invention/design • desire to make money • desire to help others. WORKMATE Ron Hickman was a do-it-yourself enthusiast (he was also an engineer for Lotus Cars) who damaged a chair being used to support a piece of wood he was sawing. Instead of merely being annoyed at the accident he set about designing and building a prototype of a combined workbench and sawhorse to prevent further damage to his furniture. This became the Workmate. Mr Hickman wrote an article in the CIPA Journal explaining how he was successful with his invention. He firstly made a number of prototypes and then he approached various manufacturers in 1968 including Stanley, Record, Black & Decker, Burgess, Polycell, Salmens and Marples. All these rejected it as having no commercial potential. Hickman then set up his own business and within 4 years was selling 14,000 units annually, mainly by mail order. It was then that Walter ​ ​ Goldsmith of Black and Decker approached him. A licence was agreed and by 1981 ten million had been sold. DYSON James Dyson was unhappy with the reduced suction power of his domestic vacuum cleaner as the bag filled with dust. So he took the industrial cyclone technology used to extract harmful particles by centrifugal force from factory paint shops and sawmills, scaled it down and applied it to improve the performance of domestic cleaners. His bagless cyclone cleaner has had worldwide success. If you can't be sure people will want to buy a new product in large enough numbers, then it's a financial gamble to try to commercialise an invention. However there are big money rewards for any individual or company brave enough to take risks. The cumulative effect of this combined inventive and commercial drive has led to the sorts of changes observed by the visitor from 1906. At the start of the twenty-first century technological innovation seems to be accelerating. This has resulted in an amazing variety of new products, processes and technical systems developed to meet ever more sophisticated sets of requirements. In the Westernised world at least, innovation is widely believed to be vital for ensuring the economic prosperity not only of individuals and commercial organisations, but also of nations. Progress itself is often defined in terms of the ability of individuals and organisations to invent new products and processes, devise improvements to existing products, and make a success of selling such innovations on the market. Products developed over the last 100 years such as the telephone (originating in the 1870s), motor vehicles (1880s), television (1920s), computers (1940s) have transformed the world and the way people organise their lives. efficient processes has enabled the quality of innovative products to be steadily improved over the lifetime of a product – at the same time the price to customers has been reduced, therefore increasing availability ​ ​ and profits. This process of steady improvement can continue for a long time, at least until the market is saturated or a newer innovation comes along that has a competitive advantage – cheaper, easier to use, more reliable or does the job better. Most mature, everyday products are now relatively cheaper than when they were ​ ​ introduced and certainly perform more reliably. For example the ballpoint pen was invented by Laszlo Biro in 1938. The first Biro pen to go on sale in the UK in 1946 cost 55 shillings (£2.75), which was more ​ ​ than half the average weekly wage at the time. It required refills and service to be carried out by the retailer. However, in 1953, Marcel Bich developed a process for manufacture and assembly of ballpoint pens that dramatically increased the volume of production and reduced the cost of each pen. Today, you can buy a perfectly adequate, reliable ballpoint pen very cheaply. The timescale for the widespread take-up (known as diffusion) of many innovations is shortening. For example it took radio 37 years to reach an audience of 50 million listeners, TV about 15 years to reach the same number of viewers and the World Wide Web just over 3 years to reach 50 million users. Over the period since the invention of radio the UK and US populations increased by 1.5 and 3 times respectively, so population increase alone doesn't explain a tenfold increase in the take-up rate of innovative products.
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