STEALING OF ONE KIND OF PROPERTY A CRIMINAL OFFENSE, ANOTHER ONLY A CIVIL TORT?

BY
HENRY ROBINSON
ENGINEER AND INVENTOR

1911

DEDICATED
TO MY FRIEND AND BENEFACTOR
A. G. ARNOLD, ESQ.

A. G. ARNOLD. Esq.

A very large number of people in and out of the mechanical profession are intensely eager to know how to become successful inventors. Wealth, honor and glory are the reward of the successful. Disappointment, drudgery, oblivion, and poverty are often the portion of the less fortunate ones.

Many of the latter foolishly attribute the greater measure of success to their fellow-workers in the same chosen field of usefulness to luck, which is far from the truth, and to that fallacious belief they often owe their own less favored condition. It is also an injustice to those who have reached the summit; as there is one, and only one road that leads to it, and which they all have to take, and its name is "Endeavor."

There are numerous fictitious definitions of the successful inventor, and yet there is but one true gauge and test of merit that entitles one to membership in the none-too-numerous and select fraternity. This test is the ability of producing a commercially successful invention.

That "Ability" is but the concentrated name for the possession of numerous requirements, comprising a vast and varied knowledge, theoretical, scientific, and practical, not only of the various mechanical branches necessary for successful machine designing, but of the art and conditions for the manipulation of that product for which a machine is designed, with or without that machine, and the newly designed machine's economic relation to the same.

Then securing the necessary co-operation of financial means must be attended to; introducing the newly hatched-out novelty into the market, compelling its adoption and general use, for its purpose, and organizing the proper fabric for its production efficiently and economically.

THE SUCCESSFUL INVENTOR

THE UNSUCCESSFUL INVENTOR

Last, but not least, there must be secured the possession of a fair share of its benefits to its originator, and to those "financial interests" necessary in the production and marketing of a successful invention.

All of these accomplishments are the necessary elements and attributes of the successful inventor, and are the steps by which he is required to climb and mount that desired eminence and through the skipping or missing of any one of those steps, many aspiring climbers have been hurled headlong to the bottom of the abyss just as they were within reach of the goal.

No matter how naturally favored one may be, never has nature so favored any individual as to bestow on him those necessary accomplishments gratis.

It is one of the greatest anomalies of human nature, that the performance of most difficult tasks, requiring for their consummation numerous and rare attainments, are continually undertaken by those who are least qualified to perform them. Lured by the glittering reward of the few successful ones, they try to gain by chance what can only be gained by work.

While the elements of success in actual engineering are general, comprised by knowledge of well-known sciences and arts; yet the accomplishments of their undertaking must necessarily be stamped with the