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surgeries, Mr. West looks much younger than his age. Like all inspired inventors whose fertile imaginations make them both researchers and artists, Mr. West also still manages to bring a Zen-like focus to his endeavors. “If I'm concerned about what an electron does in an amorphous mass then I become an electron,” he allowed. “I try to have that picture in my mind and to behave like an electron, looking at the prob- lem in all its dimensions and scales.”
He and Ms. Busch-Vishniac are currently analyzing solu- tions to noise problems in hospitals, and they are mentoring two local high school students and a Johns Hopkins graduate student who have joined their team as young inventors. The graduate student, Emily Nalven, 22, said she decided to join Mr. West after taking classes with him.
“Even on the days he didn't lecture, he came to class, sat in the front row, took notes and spent his time after class answering student questions,” she said in an e-mail message. “One day, I asked him something about sound waves and he answered my question, then came back the next day with an even more detailed explanation to ensure that I truly under- stood.”The seeds of future inventions are sown in these kinds of interactions, but the possible erosion of fertile academic and financial soil in America concerns Mr. West and many others in science.
“The inventiveness of individuals depends on the con- text, including sociopolitical, economic, cultural and institu- tional factors,” said Merton C. Flemings, a professor emeritus at M.I.T. who holds 28 patents and oversees the Lemelson- M.I.T. Program for inventors. “We remain one of the most inventive countries in the world. But all the signs suggest that we won't retain that pre-eminence much longer. The future is very bleak, I'm afraid.”
Mr. Flemings said that private and public capital was not being adequately funneled to the kinds of projects and peo- ple that foster invention. The study of science is not valued in enough homes, he observed, and science education in grade school and high school is sorely lacking.
But quantitative goals, he said, are not enough. Singapore posts high national scores in mathematics, he said, but does not have a reputation for churning out new inventions. In fact, he added, researchers from Singapore have studied school systems in America to try to glean the source of some- thing ineffable and not really quantifiable: creativity.
“In addition to openness, tolerance is essential in an inventive modern society,” a report sponsored by the Lemelson-M.I.T. Program said last year. “Creative people, whether artists or inventive engineers, are often noncon- formists and rebels. Indeed, invention itself can be perceived as an act of rebellion against the status quo.”
Those who keep an eye on corporate behavior say they think that sober-minded risk taking—and the support of dar- ing research for research's sake—also needs to be on the strategic menus of more companies. “When inventors work independently, the invention itself is seen as an opportunity, whereas in the corporate world accidents are seen as failures,” said Peter Arnell, a marketing consultant who coaches com- panies about innovation. “When people exist outside of the corporate model and have vision and passion, then accidents and getting lost are beautiful things.”
6,870,942
43.38.Tj LOUDSPEAKER FOR LINE ARRAY SOUND SYSTEM
Curtis H. Graber, Woodburn, Indiana
22 March 2005 (Class 381/349); filed 3 September 2003
A two-way line array system is described. A ported enclosure 24 that can be trapezoidal in section contains a conventional low-frequency unit 18 and a planar transducer 16. Many, including the manufacturers of line array systems that are similar, if not identical, to the described invention, may be interested in how this invention may not only fail to be novel, but how it may also fail to be a non-obvious, or even obvious, improvement over the prior art.—NAS
Not Invented Here 31