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OF INVENTION:

A STUDY OF INDUSTRY AMONG

PRIMITIVE PEOPLES.

BY

OTIS T. MASON, A.M., PH.D.,

Curator of the Department of Ethnology in the United States National
Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, U.S.A.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD.,
PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.C.

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS,

153-157 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.

1902.

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PREFACE.

AT the celebration of the centenary of the American patent system in Washington (1891), I read a paper on the "Birth of Invention." The present volume is an expansion and illustration of the principles laid down in that paper. The history of the development of the inventive faculty is the history of humanity. In other respects we may resemble our friends the brutes, but here we part company intellectually, subdue and enslave them, and have dominion over the earth.

The term invention applies to four different yet related groups of phenomena :

1. The things and institutions invented.

2. The mental acts involved.

3. The rewards and benefits of these acts.

4.

The powers and materials of nature invoked.

I hold that all industries, arts, languages, institutions, and philosophies are inventions. The history of the mental acts is the account of an evolutionary series, beginning with taking notice and following examples, and ending with the highest co-operation in a great industrial establishment, with a symphony, with the writing of a dictionary, or with the framing of a government. The benefit or reward has

also followed by analogy the processes of creation in Nature, 'from a single advantage accruing only to the inventor, up to a world-blessing conception.

As to the resources and powers of nature invoked, these have come into the service of man according to the law of ever-increasing complexity of structure for the performance of a greater variety of functions. The order of commanding kinetic energy has been the employment of—

1. Man-power in every pursuit.

2. Fire as an agent, in cooking, pottery, metallurgy, &c. 3. The power of a spring as in a bow or trap.

4. Beast-power, for burden and traction.

5. Wind-power, on sails, and mills, and in draught.

6. Water-power, as a conveyance, and a motor, and gravity or weight generally.

7. Steam-power, utilisation of an expanding gas.

8. Chemical power, in the arts of the civilised.

9. Electric power, motors, message-bearers, in mechanics and illumination.

10. Light as a mechanical servant, only beginning to be domesticated.

With Professor Payne I hold that the course of civilisation has been from naturalism to artificialism. And upon the lines of Mr. Spencer's division of activity into regulative and operative categories, it is the regulative side that exhibits the greatest differentiation and improvement. For instance, in simple tools, consisting of a working part and a manual part, it is the latter that has undergone enormous differentiations in applying the variety of kinetic energies.

I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Tylor, General Pitt Rivers, and Sir John Lubbock, without whose aid no one could write upon primitive technological subjects;

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