Page 31 - January 2006

NOT INVENTED HERE
Timothy L. O’Brien
The New York Times Agency New York, New York 10036
REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES CO. NOVEMBER 13, 2005
When James E. West was 8 years old, he propped him- self on his bed's brass foot- board one afternoon and stretched to plug the cord of a radio he had repaired into a ceiling outlet. It was one of his first experiments. Mr. West's hand sealed to the light socket as 120 volts of electricity shimmied through his body, freezing him in place until his brother knocked him from the footboard and onto the floor.
Like more storied inventors who preceded him, he was quickly hooked on the juice—even as he lay shivering from that first encounter. “I became fascinated by electricity after that, just completely fascinated,” recalled Mr. West, now 74 and an award-winning research professor at Johns Hopkins University. “I needed to learn every- thing I could about it.”
Over the past several decades, he has secured 50 domestic and more than 200 foreign patents on inventions relat- ing to his pioneering explorations of electrically charged materials and recording devices. According to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, an organization in Akron, Ohio, that counts Mr. West among its inductees, about 90 percent of all microphones used today in devices like cellphones, acoustic equipment and toys derive from electronic transducers that he helped to develop in the early 1960's.
Inventors have always held a spe- cial place in American history and busi- ness lore, embodying innovation and economic progress in a country that has long prized individual creativity and the power of great ideas. In recent decades, tinkerers and researchers have given society microchips, personal comput- ers, the Internet, balloon catheters, bar codes, fiber optics, e-mail systems, hearing aids, air bags and automated teller machines, among a bevy of other devices.
be regained at all.”
A committee of leading scientists,
corporate executives and educators oversaw the drafting of the report, enti- tled Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future. To spur American innovation, it recommends enhanced math and science education in grade school and high school, a more hospitable environment for sci- entific research and training at the col- lege and graduate levels, an increase in federal funds for basic scientific research and a mix of tax incentives and other measures to foster high-pay- ing jobs in groundbreaking industries. The report cites China and India among a number of economically promising countries that may be poised to usurp America's leadership in inno- vation and job growth.
“For the first time in generations, the nation's children could face poorer prospects than their parents and grandparents did,” the report said. “We owe our current prosperity, security and good health to the investments of past generations, and we are obliged to renew those commitments.”
The Industrial Research Institute, an organization in Arlington, Va., that represents some of the nation's largest corporations, is also concerned that the academic and financial support for sci- entific innovation is lagging in the United States. The group's most recent data indicate that from 1986 to 2001, China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan all awarded more doctoral degrees in science and engineering than did the United States. Between 1991 and 2003, research and development spending in America trailed that of China, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan— in China's case by billions of dollars.
Mr. West's personal journey has involved overcoming school segrega- tion and racism, a reading disability
James E. West (Marty Katz/The New York Times)
Mr. West stands firmly in this tra- dition—a tradition that he said may soon be upended. He fears that corpo- rate and public nurturing of inventors and scientific research is faltering and that America will pay a serious eco- nomic and intellectual penalty for this lapse.
A larger pool of Mr. West's col- leagues echoes his concerns. “The sci- entific and technical building blocks of our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength,” the National Academy of Sciences observed in a report released last month. “Although many people assume that the United States will always be a world leader in science and technology, this may not continue to be the case inasmuch as great minds and ideas exist throughout the world. We fear the abruptness with which a lead in science and technology can be lost—and the difficulty of recov- ering a lead once lost, if indeed it can
Not Invented Here 29