Learn to Invent: First Steps for Beginners Young and Old

Every man should strive to be the architect of his own fortune. Although this work was originally published in the early 1900's, the wisdom and ideas are timeless. Invention is the fountain source of material progress. It would indeed be a fruitless effort to try to express in adequate language its wondrous possibilities and practical worth to mankind. Its field of action surpasses all others. It is most apparent in our daily walks of life. Every human effort owes it homage. The fame of many inventors has encircled the earth. They have been feted and honored in many ways, their names indelibly inscribed on the roll of the earth's greatest men. Fortune and fame have been showered on them with a lavish hand, and yet little or no effort is made to direct thought into this vast and unlimited field for study, that people may learn to invent. The whole subject is left quite in the dark. It is on the go-as-you-please, hit-and-miss plan. People become inventors by mere chance, and are viewed as possessing a special gift of nature. I hold that invention is just as tangible as any of the sciences and can just as well be taught. The human mind is naturally inventive. The trend will improve and grow or it will wilt and die, according to the attention it receives. To learn to invent we should apprentice ourselves, as it were, to the inventor, take up his invention and study the original lines of his thought, as the young artist studies the master work.