7 Introduction 7stove. He discovered that instead of melting, the rubber
became more elastic. Thus was the vulcanization process
born, and with it a whole range of uses for rubber.
For other inventions, however, the process was pains-
takingly slow and required many hours of trial and error.
Thomas Edison experimented with 6,000 different
materials before finally discovering a filament (carbonized
thread) that would stay lit for many hours inside a bulb
without burning up. It’s no wonder that the famous quote
“Genius is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration”
is attributed to him.
Despite the hard work that was often required to
produce an invention, money was not always the impetus
for the inventors in this book. In fact, before the 18th
century, inventors had no guarantee that their ideas would
not be stolen. The design of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin was
so basic that manufacturers throughout the South began
to copy it, and Whitney was never able to profit from his
own invention.
However, the introduction of the U.S. Patent system
in 1790 meant that inventors could for the first time pre-
vent others from copying their work. (Thomas Edison was
issued some 1,093 U.S. patents during his prolific career.)
With the protection that patents afforded often came
huge profits. When Henry Ford died in 1947, his estimated
net worth was around $600 million.
Money was just one of the benefits awarded to those
who came up with a successful invention. Inventors also
earned fame, recognition, and a place in history. Some
received what is thought to be the highest honour—the
Nobel Prize. (The man responsible for establishing this
prize, Alfred Nobel, is himself included in the pages of
this book for his invention of dynamite.) In 1909,
Guglielmo Marconi received the Nobel Prize in Physics
for developing the first practical radio. English biochemist