SUCCESSFUL INVENTORS.
THE new evidence on the Patent Laws which a Select Com- mittee of the House of Commons has just got together, strikes us as perhaps most interesting for the light it throws on the nature of invention and inventors. We fear that very little will be made of the numerous contradictory opinions given by the Nwitnesses in favour of different methods of amending the Patent 'laws or of abolishing them altogether ; but if the Committee fails in its main end, we shall still have to thank it for collecting the opiuions of distinguished inventors, which are by no means con- tradictory, regarding their own work. Mr. Bessemer, Mr. Nasmyth, Sir William Armstrong, and others who have made a tusiness of invention were all examined by the Conunittee, and while disagreeing by the way as to the utility of patents, unconsciously (revealed one or two points about their art. There are few things, we think, more astonishing than the magnitude of the capacity of invention possessed by a few favoured men, of whom the great in- ventors we have named may be taken as fit representatives. It is dittle better than a vulgar opinion which connects the name of our greatest inventors with single inventions only. Yet how few of us 'really understand that great inventors may not only excogitato in a life-time several groat works, as a man of genius may write one or two great books, but that invention is a daily and hourly act, .and a really clever inventor wilt be as brimful of ideas and notions as the author of genius is of the fancies and happy phrases which go to make up his books as well as his leading ideas. Yet this fertility of invention is the characteristic of their mind 'which is most familiar to inventors themselves, and is certainly an • essential mark of the inventive faculty in its highest form. Thus Mr. Holden, the inventor of the wool-combing machine, tells us that very early in life ho determined to substitute a machine for manual labour in the wool-combing process; but the substitution was only effected by a series of inventions occupying many years, and 'in the meantime he was partner in tt manufacturing concern where he (introduced "many improvements," which were lost to himself, but which wore of great use to the house with which he was connected. Eor what he knows, too, he was the inventor of lucifer matches, which was the result of a happy-thought,—the notion of putting sulphur under the explosive material necessary to produce instan- taneous light, so as to obtain a light on wood by that material. This is the experience of one inventor,. not the most distinguished, showing the multiplicity of notions belonging to the invent- ing man ; and the evidence of the other inventors is even more striking. Sir William Armstrong, who is one of the people who cotnplain of the patent laws, because they block up the path of invention, speaks quite coolly of having himself taken out a very few patents, "merely for the purpose of liberty to follow his own ideas," though he has "in many instances gone to a very great outlay without having the protection of a patent." Mr. Nasmyth,
again, is quite as proud of his revelations in astronomy as of his various inventions for the steam hammer with which his name is associated, and he tells us that " the mechanical faculty, the scheming impulse, I might almost call it, the power of making mechanical combinations to effect certain purposes, is the very condition of mind that leads to invention." Mr. Bessemer, how- ever, furnishes the most striking illustration in his own person of a riotous capacity of invention. His grand invention for making steel is the result, not of one idea, but of many. We learn that after his leading notion of making cast iron malleable by. intro- ducing atmospheric air into the fluid metal, he spent 21G,000 in various experiments to render the notion practicable, one of his " minor " ideas being the contrivance of an apparatus for turning on an axis " a furnace weighing eleven tons, con-
taining five tons of fluid metal, at a temperature that is scarcely approachable." Such a practical contrivance was essential, because the air ha -I to be introduced through holes in the bottom of the vessel, and the process had to be stopped instantly at a certain point, which could only be done by turning the vessel upside down. But long before this great invention, which made Mr. Bessemer famous, he had been a successful inventor. At this moment he is the owner, and has been so for thirty years, of a secret bronze manufacture—" the article used in gold work in japanning, gold printing, and that class of goods "- by which he has made a large income, as will be readily under- stood from the statement that the article produced has an extensive sale, and that he at first sold it for 1,000 per cent. profit, and now sells it for 300 per cent. This invention, again, he only arrived at by experiments for which he obtained the funds by means of prior inventions, and he hints at various ideas of other inventions which he has, though he has not yet found time to work them out. When we learn incidentally that Mr. Bassemer's father practised seventy years ago the invention of electrotyping, an invention which died with him and has since been re-invented, and another invention for hardening type-metal, which shared a similar fate, we can understand at once how the invention of the new process of steel manufacture was far from fortuitous, and was in truth the natural outcome of a hereditary inventive gift, which was sure in the present circumstances of the world to make discoveries of equal value. It is impossible to read the evidence without a conviction that Mr. Bessemer and a few' leading inventors possess in their own brains the means of revolu- tionizing the power over the physical forces of nature which the human race possesses. Now in one department, now in another, they discover some new law which can be utilized for practical purposes, and put together an instrument for the purpose which, like the series of inventions for making steel, adds immensely to the real wealth of mankind.
But the wealth which is made for mankind is not the only result which interests us in this prodigality of genius for invention. It is impossible in fact not to speculate on the remarkable position which great inventors acquire by means of this power, and the possibilities which lie before an inventor of transcendent genius, such as Mr. Bessemer appears to be. Some time ago, in writing about great fortunes, we showed how the business opportunities of the modern world, coupled with the possession of hereditary capital and the instincts and training for getting wealth, were such as to render possible gigantic accumulations of material power in the hands of one or two individuals such as were yet without example. Apparently the possession of transcendent genius for invention might be quite as serviceable to its possessor as the combination of hereditary wealth with a supreme faculty for business. We have all heard of inventors opining money, but the reality, it would seem, goes beyond the dullest imagination. The production of steel throughout the world, except in Germany, has for some years been subject to Bessemer royalties, which till lately ranged between 10s. and £2 per ton, and are still at a minimum of 2s. Od. per ton, and the present annual production of Bessemer steel in England alone is 300,000 tons. Of course, the production would not be quite so large all the time the royalties were in force ; but putting two and two together, it is easy to see that Mr. Bessemer's for- tune due to the steel-making invention alone must be reckoned by hundreds of thousands, if not by millioner.Auentiaon of 00,00
average per ton for two or three years on an annual pod
tons only, soon mounts up to a million. It is manifest, then, that one or two inventions of this kind would make the inventor in a short time a millionaire, and that an inventor who had the genius and worked the business properly might easily eclipse the achieve- ments in the way of money-getting of the great contractors and financiers whom we usually think of in connection with vast acquired fortunes. Nor can we consider the appearance
of an inventor with one or two such inventions at all im- probab]e. We are not sure but that Mr. Bessemer him- self must already have acquired about as large a fortune as any man has yet reached single-handed, and without the pre- liminary possession of a large capital. Besides, the whole circum- stances of modern industry are such as to make a very small in- vention, if a happy one, go a long way in the shape of profit to its deeiguer. It is the general object of an invention to "cheapen production," and production in all departments is now on so great a scale that a mere fraction of the amount cheapened, which no one in the community will feel, is a fortune to the inventor. To resume the illustration of steel-making, it is quite plain that a hundred years ago, so far as the personal fortune to the inventor is concerned, Mr. Bessemer's invention would have been entirely premature. There could not have been the effective demand for steel which there is now, when the steam-engine and a hundred other inventions have multiplied in proportion to the population the processes and purposes to which steel can be applied. Poten- tially, it may be admitted, Watt's invention of the steam-engine added more to the power of the race over nature than anything which preceded it or which has yet to come after it, but its actual addition to the wealth of the existing generation must have been far more than exceeded since by much smaller inventions,--say, the various improvements by which fuel has been so greatly economized in marine-engines during the last ten years. It is for this reason that new inventions are now so produc- tive, and that an inventor with a great gift may easily Lit upon " improvements " which will bring himself endless wealth, although he may only get a fraction of what the world gains. The objection may perhaps be made that an inventor is likely to be " dreamy " and unable to make a gain for himself, but this only brings out all the more strong our ease for an inventor becoming a millionaire. The highest genius for invention appears to be very much the same kind of faculty which succeeds in speculative business, consisting in the keen observation of an opportunity for a plan and the nice adjustment of means to ends ; and if there is any doubt about this, it will at least be admitted by those who read Mr. Bessemer's evidence that a high degree of business capacity is quite compatible with the strongest inven- tive powers. The ingenuity which first suggested to Mr. Bessemer the idea of selling special privileges to certain manu- facturers so as to interest them in practically developing his in- vention, and then induced him, When he had practically developed the invention himself, to buy back the privileges so as to let him charge a higher royalty, was clearly the ingenuity of a business man ; and other arrangements which he made bear the same stamp. Another objection which may be urged is this, that an inventor like Mr. Bessemer is only enabled to make a fortune by means of the Patent Laws. But this is not to be assuined. Mr. Bessemer's own experience proves that secrecy is possible for some important inventions in a money-making view, while Sir William Armstrong illuetrates the possibility of making a fortune mainly by inventing, while permitting the free use of the new ideas to all the world beside. Is there any danger to society in the existence of these colossal fortunes, which are already beginning to be possible from other causes, but which may equally have their origin, as we have seen, in the inventive faculty ? It is perhaps idle to speculate, though we hardly think so, as the danger, if there be one, is very imminent, and the first impression certainly is that it will be of a most for- midable kind. The concentration of wealth is only another name for the concentration of power, and a shiver passes through es when we think of what is in the power even of the millionaires the world has already got. What a mess things would soon be in if the Rothschilds and &rings of Europe only used their power as recklessly as the Vancierbilts of America! And the possibility of danger is not less, but more formidable, the more likely it is that the millionaires of the future will be men of original genius, full of strong capacity and presumably of strong passions, all the more likely to test their power to the utmost because it is not inherited but acquired. Still all this fear, it must be admitted, is only a first impression, the curious fact being that the possession of great wealth almost always brings a paralysis in the use of it. Either the trouble of keeping it exhausts the man, or the pleasure of pos- sessing potential force produces an intense fear of diminishing it by actual use, or there is a pleasure which is nearly the same thing in merely increasing the amount of the force itself, and therefore the alma which could be used upon occasion but are never in fact used. So long as this disposition prevails the world has little cause to fear great millionaires. The devotion of wealth to the increase of production is at any rate, among the most direct means of in- creasing the wealth of the masses which could be devised, so that
it is better for this purpose to have large fortunes in a few hands, than to have multitudes of moderately rich men whose aggregate unproductive expenditure would be many times larger than that of the few millionaires.
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