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Title (Dublin Core)
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Inventors being search for a secret weapon
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Article Title and/or Image Caption (Dublin Core)
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Title: Inventors being search for a secret weapon
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extracted text (Extract Text)
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THE greatest American inventors alive
today are organizing a country-wide
search for a secret weapon.
It may come from a tiny workshop in a
country lean-to. It may come from the
benches of a great research laboratory. It
may be the brain child of an already-famous
scientist, or the ugly duckling of an un-
known inventor. It may be the result of
long, painstaking experiment, or the result
of an accident. It may concern a rocket ship
that will change all aviation—or a cheap,
light substitute for lead that can be as
readily cast and as easily bent.
To find that priceless idea—to mobilize
American genius in the development of all
ideas that will make this country a more
formidable adversary—the United States
Government has created the Na-
tional Inventors’ Council. Its
business is to stimulate, find, and
appraise suggestions, ideas, and
devices that may be useful in time of war.
To a greater extent than ever before, war
has become a contest of inventors. Fighting
in three dimensions, foreshadowed twenty-
five years ago by the first war planes and
the submarine blockade, has now become an
accepted fact; it is still so new that nobody
yet knows what developments may change
it completely. A single idea may bring
victory to one side or another.
That is where the National Inventors’
Council comes in. American inventive
brains are recognized as the best in the
world. Americans were the first to fly, first
to build seagoing submarines, first to put
armor on warships and change the navies
of the world, first to put armor on automo-
biles and create modern tanks, first to “fix”
nitrogen, first in mass-production methods.
Every inventor in this country, amateur
or professional, is being urged to send in to
the Inventors’ Council whatever designs he
has been experimenting with, whatever de-
vices he has already worked out, that may
be valuable from the standpoint of defense.
One may have found a way to keep metal
from heating rapidly, that can be used in
the manufacture of rifie barrels. Possibly
another knows of some substitute for
gelatin, that will help give muscular strength
in an emergency. The National Inventors’
Council, at the Chamber of Commerce Build-
ing, Washington, D. C., can make them
available for the whole country. 1
The N.ILC. will not pay for ideas, nor
have anything to do with their being
patented. It has no connection with the |
United States Patent Office. Nor will it give |
advice as to whether or not an idea should
be patented; that is the sender's business.
But suggestions or devices found useful
will be turned over to the Army or Navy,
or whatever government department may
decide to use them, and will then be nego-
tiated or paid for in accordance with the
regular custom and rate of that particular
department.
No suggestions will be considered that do |
not relate to defense. All suggestions must
be in writing, in English, each one separate,
supplemented by drawings if necessary.
Senders are advised to keep duplicates of
their suggestions, signed and dated, prefer-
ably in the presence of witnesses. Models,
and materials of all kinds such as chemical
substances, are to be forwarded to the
Council only if requested. |
A certain amount of data is also neces-
sary: Sender's name and address. Is the
suggestion in use, or merely an idea re-
quiring further development? Has it been
patented? Has a patent been applied for?
Is the sender the sole inventor? Has he
assigned any rights? Is he acting as owner
or agent? Has the idea been divulged to
any foreign government ?
Nothing should be sent in that has al-
ready been submitted to any other govern-
ment department.
Ideas that state only objectives, instead
of a means of accomplishing something, are
not wanted. “A bomb that will follow an
airplane around until it hits it” is no use
to anybody unless the sender tells how it
can be done.
Also, ideas concerning things of which the
sender is ignorant will, obviously, be worth-
less. A device that works all right on a ta-
ble might be useless on the wave-swept deck
of a battleship. Creators of ideas outside
of their own lines of knowledge are advised
to discuss their inventions with an expert
in that field, whom they can trust, before
submitting them.
There is no time to be lost. Production of
next year’s airplanes is already under way;
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Contributor (Dublin Core)
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Mayron M. Stearns (article writer)
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Language (Dublin Core)
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Eng
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Date Issued (Dublin Core)
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1941-01
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pages (Bibliographic Ontology)
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68-71
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Rights (Dublin Core)
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Public domain
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Archived by (Dublin Core)
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Sami Akbiyik
Popular Science Monthly, v. 138, n. 1, 1941
