WE HAVE an unfortunate tendency to oversimplify invention to lists of names, dates and other statistics. Look more closely and you鈥檒l find a rich and fascinating ecosystem. It鈥檚 not just the idea that counts 鈥� the way it is implemented and the context are equally important. As John Lienhard acknowledges in this book, 鈥淭he steam engine had been 鈥榠nvented鈥� long before [James Watt] arrived.鈥� Lienhard devotes just five pages of his 100-page section on 鈥渟team and speed鈥� to Watt and his work. That is not to downplay Watt鈥檚 achievements, but to put them into the proper context of others who realised the potential of steam. Watt鈥檚 genius was in devising a practical engine; Lienhard鈥檚 genius is in telling the real story of invention.
How Invention Begins: Echoes of old voices in the rise of new machines
Oxford University Press
