7 Introduction 7ever want to use one of them?” he scoffed. In 1968, the
audience attending a computer conference at the San
Francisco Civic Auditorium likely didn’t know what to
make of Douglas Engelbart’s invention—a small wooden
box with a button that moved a cursor on an attached
machine. His “mouse,” so named for its tail-like cable, now
enables virtually every home and business computer user
to navigate around their computer screens.
Inventors themselves have sometimes been skeptical
about the ability of their own creations to endure. Despite
the public excitement that greeted their Cinèmatographe
motion picture machine when it was released in 1895,
the Lumière brothers felt that their invention was just a
fad. In fact, Louis Lumière referred to the cinema as “an
invention without a future.” In spite of the Lumière brothers’
initial cynicism, film endures as one of the most popular
art forms today.
What InspIres InventIon?
The old saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention,”
couldn’t be more true. Inventors have had a knack for rec-
ognizing a need or problem in society and then discovering
a way to fill that need or solve that problem.
In the 15th century, as the number of universities in
Europe grew and public literacy spread, a more efficient
method was needed for reproducing books—a demand
that was met by Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press.
Sometimes it was the inventor’s own necessity that
gave birth to invention. Frustrated at having to change
pairs of glasses whenever he switched from reading to
viewing objects at a distance, Benjamin Franklin invented
a new type of glasses—bifocals—that could easily accom-
modate both views.