Inventive Minds

Is invention really "99 percent perspiration" and "one percent inspiration" as Thomas Edison assured us? Or does invention involve little recognized, often hidden principles that are accessible to most of us? Inventive Minds assembles a group of authors well qualified to address these questions: contemporary inventors of important new technologies, historians of science and industry, and cognitive psychologists interested in the process of creativity. In telling their stories, the inventors describe their groundbreaking work on ultrasound, synthetic fibers, petroleum cracking catalysts, electron microscopes, wonder drugs, artificial diamonds, and underground observatories. The historians help us look into the minds of innovators like Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Michael Faraday, and the Wright brothers, drawing on original notebooks and other sources to show how they made their key discoveries. The historians also reveal the dramatic transition from craft shop to the modern industrial laboratory. Finally, psychologists and educators explore the mental processes that figure in creative thinking and its cultivation in children and adults. Contributing to the authors' insight is their special focus on the "front end" of invention - where ideas come from and how they are transformed into physical prototypes. They answer three questions: How does invention happen? How does invention contrast with other commonly creative pursuits such as scientific inquiry, musical composition, or painting? And how might invention best happen - that is, what kinds of settings, conditions, and strategies appear to foster inventive activity? The book yields a wealth of insight for all those fascinatedby the psychology of creativity, the history of invention, and the roots of human ingenuity.