IEEE Spectrum August, 2010 - 7

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Whimsy and Invention

G
popperfoto/getty images

o into any library,
said Samuel Johnson,
and survey the vanity
of human hopes. There you
will see a "wall crowded on
every side by mighty volumes,
the works of laborious
meditations and accurate
inquiry, now scarcely known
but by the catalogue."
Library, shmibrary.
For vain hopes, try the
files of the patent office.
A laser pointer to divert
a cat? A plastic sphere of
silence, for tête-à-têtes in
noisy bars? A rocket belt, for
escaping boring tête-à-têtes?
spectrum.ieee.org

An atomic-powered airplane?
A life-expectancy watch? An
electric spaghetti-twirling
fork? A tiny generator of
random noise, to secrete
in a friend's office to drive
him crazy? An air-bag
bodysuit for motorcyclists?
It's easy to poke fun at
inventors, but let's not forget
the patent lawyers and
judges. In June we learned
again that lawyers' hopes
of defining what can and
cannot be patented would
still not be satisfied. The U.S.
Supreme Court, in a decision
awaited all around the world,

essentially punted on the key
question: the patentability
of algorithms and business
methods. In ruling on
Bilski v. Kappos, the court
"has thrown up its hands and
refused to endorse any one
test" of patentability, says
Steven J. Frank, who wrote
on Bilski in our March 2009
issue. We are still no clearer
than we were before the
decision was handed down.
The more closely you scrutinize the process of invention,
the less confident you will be
of understanding it. We are
told, for instance, that invention typically begins in one
person's exasperation over a
defect in the standard way of
doing things. Oh, really? Then
there must be a great deal of
exasperation concerning the
care and feeding of pets. Look
at an airline gift catalog and
you'll see dozens of gadgets
that appeal to the frequent
flier's guilt over neglecting
Fluffy or Fido-a pet
petter, a doggie umbrella,
a timed-release cat feeder, a
combination bird trap and
cat feeder, a horse diaper.
Whoa, there, horsie.
Here we've veered from the
ridiculous to the useful. It
turns out that miniature
horses are particularly good
guide animals for the blind-
trainable, low-maintenance,
long-lived, more dogged than
a dog. However, horses can't
be toilet trained, and that
means they need...diapers.
(And toddler-size sneakers, to
keep their little hooves from
slipping on floors.) Vanity of
vanity-yet all is not vanity.
Horse diapers make sense.
Again and again this
pattern recurs: What begins
as a lark develops into a
major invention. Remember

back when big-iron jockeys
dismissed the early personal
computers as mere toys? They
had a point: The first PCs
really were toys. Now, though,
PCs and their handheld
descendants rule the world.
Facebook, begun as a way
to keep up with members
of the opposite sex on the
Harvard campus, is now also
poised for world domination.
We see the reverse
pattern as well, when what
begins with serious intent
devolves into a form of
whimsy. Take the antimissile
laser: After decades of work
and tens of billions of dollars
of government funding, the
technology has yet to prove
itself on the field of battle.
Yet substantial aspects of
that technology have found
application in protecting
backyard barbecues from
mosquitoes, as Jordin Kare
described in these pages
in May. And behind that
whimsical invention lies a
deeper layer of seriousness,
for Kare hopes to use lasers
to protect crops from pests.
If he does, then he will
surely have hammered a
sword into a plowshare.
Of course, most inventions,
big and little, go nowhere.
You have to sift a lot of
pebbles to find a grain of
gold. That's why the patent
law (such as it is) tolerates-
indeed, encourages-a playful
attitude among the tiny sliver
of the population that ever
invents anything. Among
IEEE Spectrum's readership,
of course, that sliver isn't a
sliver-it's a goodly slice.
If you have a patent of
which you are particularly
proud, tell us about it. We
promise to take it seriously.
-Philip E. Ross

August 2010 * IEEE spEctrum * NA

7
http://spectrum.ieee.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum August, 2010
