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and the downsizing of Bell Labs, the legendary New Jersey research center where he once worked, and he fanta- sizes about a day when children hold inventors and scientists in higher esteem than hip-hop stars and profes- sional athletes.
“We need to bring the view back in this country that we're willing to make investments for the future because everything that's in the cellphone and the iPod today was known 20 years ago,” he said. “I think scientists and inventors are a very peculiar breed in that we're not in it for the money— we're in it for the knowledge.”
It all begins with a tingle of curios- ity. “If I had a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, anything that could be opened was in danger,” Mr. West recalled of his childhood. “I had this need to know what was inside.”
That need links Mr. West to a rich tradition in American life and civiliza- tion. Benjamin Franklin, his kite lofted into the sky to coax electricity from the clouds, is the totemic American inven- tor whose financial acumen gave him time to ponder and then spout a series of inventions that included a stove, catheter, glass harmonica, bifocals and, of course, the lightning rod—which he declined to patent so it would be freely available to the public.
No less a figure than Abraham Lincoln regarded the patent system, and the protections it offered for what he called the “fire of genius,” as one of history's signature achievements. Shortly after President Lincoln's death, Thomas Alva Edison filed a patent for his first invention, an electric vote recorder. Edison became widely her- alded not only as the creator of a longer-lasting light bulb and the phonograph but also as the inventor of the invention factory.
When the conglomerate that even- tually became General Electric began buying out Mr. Edison's operations in the 1890's, it represented the beginning of the corporate absorption of the inventive act. “Edison marks the end of the individual inventor and the pre- corporate phase of invention,” said Randall E. Stross, a contributor to The New York Times who is also working on an Edison biography titled The Wizard,
which Crown Publishing plans to release in 2007.
In 1932, a year after Edison died, corporations secured more patents than individuals for the first time, and a year later the Census Bureau elimi- nated “inventor” as a job class, accord- ing to Technology Review, a trade pub- lication. During the golden era of cor- porate research and development that followed Edison's death, G.E., DuPont, AT&T and eventually Lockheed, Eli Lilly, Intel and other corporate giants came to dominate innovation. And as that happened, some tensions arose between corporations and independent inventors and researchers.
While tipping their hats to the scores of breakthroughs that have emerged from corporate labs, inventors also say they are concerned that bot- tom-line pressures at many companies may cause pure research to be eclipsed by innovation tied to rapid commer- cialization—leading to routine refine- ments of existing products rather than to breathtaking advances.
A tug of war has emerged between individual inventors and corporations over proposed legislative changes in patent laws, with the inventors arguing that possible revisions would benefit the business giants. Corporations have argued that the system is equitable but flawed. Dean Kamen, an inventor whose creations include the wearable insulin pump and the Segway trans- porter, recently testified before Congress, calling for changes in the patent system that also preserve protec- tions for individual inventors.
Despite those tussles, Mr. Stross says he believes that recent technologi- cal advancements have helped to move innovation out of the corporate sphere and to “give the lone inventor access to inexpensive tools and resources to once again be master of one's own lab.”
Robert S. Langer, a research scien- tist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a biotechnology pio- neer, says that he shares the concerns raised in the National Academy of Sciences report but that he remains confident about the country's prospects. “While I think we can always do better, I am optimistic about the spirit of innovation in this country,”
he said. “I think we hold a lead, but no lead is unassailable.”
For Mr. West, whose career has spanned stretches in creative havens like Bell Labs, inventing has meant brainstorming sessions with fellow tinkerers and long hours walking the corridors of his own mind. “I spend a great deal of the hours that I'm awake within myself,” he said. “You never want to stop doing it, especially when it's a pleasure. It's vital to my existence and I couldn't live if I wasn't an inven- tor.”
Ilene Busch-Vishniac, a Johns Hopkins professor and inventor who has collaborated with Mr. West for more than two decades, most recently on acoustical research, called him the quin- tessential explorer. “For an inventor to be successful they have to think outside of the box and propose things that are wildly different,” she said. “Secondly, you need to be able to figure out how to do the tests that evaluate whether some- thing is plausible. Jim is great at both of those things, but especially at figuring out the tests.”
Mr. West began testing his limits at an early age, defying his family's wishes that he become a dentist and setting his sights on a doctorate in physics. To dis- suade him, his father introduced him to other African-American friends with doctorates—all of whom had failed to land university posts and held blue-col- lar jobs instead. Still, Mr. West pressed on, coached by a series of mentors, memorizing text and numbers to mask his reading problems, building on his mathematical gifts and eventually enrolling as an undergraduate in physics at Temple University.
After a summer internship at Bell Labs, he invented a pair of headphones; enthralled by his lab work, he decided to forgo his physics studies and to stay on at Bell Labs, where he developed microphone technologies and explored a range of interests in acoustics. When Bell Labs became part of Lucent after AT&T reorganized, the scope of its research operations shifted, and Mr. West eventually moved on as well. At Ms. Busch-Vishniac's invitation, he joined Johns Hopkins in 2000.
Although he walks with a slight limp caused by a series of lower back
30 Acoustics Today, January 2006