Inventions in Retrospect

In 1913 The Scientific American held a contest open to the world to determine what were "the ten greatest inventions of our time." Commercial importance was to be the criterion of greatness, and by "our time" the preceding twenty-five years was meant. One of those who participated was Mr. WILLIAM J. WYMAN, who, as a Patent Office examiner, was in a peculiarly favorable position to appraise inventions. In The Journal of the Patent Office Society Mr. WYMAN now looks back at his list of nearly two decades ago and judges himself.

The ten inventions selected by him in 1913 were the electric furnace, which reduced the price of aluminum from $12 to 25 cents a pound; the steam turbine, which even then was driving ships at unprecedented speeds and generating energy at unprecedented low costs; the automobile, which was changing the habits of the American people and restoring the highway to its old social and economic importance; moving pictures; the airplane, which realized a dream as old as man; wireless communication, which was intangibly linking ships to their ports and colonies to their mother countries; the cyanide process, which trebled the output of gold; the induction motor of TESLA, which made it possible for alternating current, transmitted over long distances, to drive factory wheels and trolley cars; the linotype machine, which was the first great improvement in setting type since GUTENBERG, and the electric welding process of ELIHU THOMSON, which made it possible to fuse metals that had been previously joined by bolts or rivets.

The list testifies to Mr. WYMAN'S sound judgment. For the cyanide process, now outmoded, he would substitute the electron or vacuum tube. Otherwise the list holds good. Although well known in 1913, none of the contestants foresaw that the tube — now regarded as one of the greatest inventions — would simplify the control of a thousand industrial processes and find a place wherever it was necessary to receive, rectify and amplify a current.

In the wisdom of his hindsight Mr. WYMAN would probably admit that even in ten years the world may be transformed by devices that seem to us merely ingenious and curious. If a similar contest were held today, we should be struck by the mental change that has come over us. We take inventions almost for granted — regard them more as the natural outcome of technical progress. Our selections would be more "scientific" when we appraised such milestones as, the recovery of low-grade ores, synthetic methanol (wood alcohol) and ammonia, artificial lacquers and resins, rayon, the hydrogenation of oils and soft fats, and the cracking of gasoline. Here we see the influence of the Ph. D. — of organized research. Unknown men in laboratories are now the wonder-workers. Perhaps the greatest of all inventions is scientific method. Without a self-perpetuating system of discovery and invention, we could not rush on technically at such a pace that statesmen and economists of the world are for the moment helpless in coping with the problems presented by machines and processes in endowing us with riches that threaten to destroy us.