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American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D by Eric S. Hintz at Abbey's Bookshop,
American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D
— —
Eric S. Hintz

American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D

Eric S. Hintz

$130

Paperback

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English
MIT Press
21 September 2021
Technology: general issues
Series: Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation series
How America's individual inventors persisted alongside corporate R&D labs as an important source of inventions.

How America's individual inventors persisted alongside corporate R&D labs as an important source of inventions.

During the nineteenth century, heroic individual inventors such as Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell created entirely new industries while achieving widespread fame. However, by 1927, a New York Times editorial suggested that teams of corporate scientists at General Electric, AT&T, and DuPont had replaced the solitary ""garret inventor"" as the wellspring of invention. But these inventors never disappeared. In this book, Eric Hintz argues that lesser-known inventors such as Chester Carlson (Xerox photocopier), Samuel Ruben (Duracell batteries), and Earl Tupper (Tupperware) continued to develop important technologies throughout the twentieth century. Moreover, Hintz explains how independent inventors gradually fell from public view as corporate brands increasingly became associated with high-tech innovation.

Focusing on the years from 1890 to 1950, Hintz documents how American independent inventors competed (and sometimes partnered) with their corporate rivals, adopted a variety of flexible commercialization strategies, established a series of short-lived professional groups, lobbied for fairer patent laws, and mobilized for two world wars. After 1950, the experiences of independent inventors generally mirrored the patterns of their predecessors, and they continued to be overshadowed during corporate R&D's postwar golden age. The independents enjoyed a resurgence, however, at the turn of the twenty-first century, as Apple's Steve Jobs and Shark Tank's Lori Greiner heralded a new generation of heroic inventor-entrepreneurs. By recovering the stories of a group once considered extinct, Hintz shows that independent inventors have long been-and remain-an important source of new technologies.
By:  
Imprint:   MIT Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm, 
Weight:   368g
ISBN:   9780262542586
ISBN 10:   0262542587
Series:   Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation series
Pages:   336
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Eric S. Hintz is a Historian with the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History and coeditor of Does America Need More Innovators? (MIT Press).

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