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"Inventors Fiction."
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Flying feet
Charlie often thinks of inventions that seldom work, but his latest idea just might be able to help Jake the Sweeper get rid of a big pile of trash and save \"Come as a Character\" day, too.
Book
Shadowing Ralph Ellison
In 1952, Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) published his novelInvisible Man, which transformed the dynamics of American literature. The novel won the National Book Award, extended the themes of his early short stories, and dramatized in fictional form the cultural theories expressed in his later essay collectionsShadow & ActandGoing to the Territory.
InShadowing Ralph Ellison, John Wright traces Ellison's intellectual and aesthetic development and the evolution of his cultural philosophy throughout his long career. The book explores Ellison's published fiction, his criticism and correspondence, and his passionate exchanges with-and impact on-other literary intellectuals during the Cold War 1950s and during the culture wars of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
Wright examines Ellison's body of work through the lens of Ellison's cosmopolitan philosophy of art and culture, which the writer began to construct during the late 1930s. Ellison, Wright argues, eschewed orthodoxy in both political and cultural discourse, maintaining that to achieve the highest cultural awareness and the greatest personal integrity, the individual must cultivate forms of thinking and acting that are fluid, improvisational, and vitalistic-like the blues and jazz. Accordingly, Ellison elaborated throughout his body of work the innumerable ways that rigid cultural labels, categories, and concepts-from racial stereotypes and fashionable academic theories to conventional political doctrines-fail to capture the full potential of human consciousness. Instead, Ellison advocated forms of consciousness and culture akin to what the blues and jazz reveal, and he portrayed those musical traditions as the best embodiment of the evolving American spirit.
John Wright is associate professor of African American and African studies and English at the University of Minnesota and is faculty scholar for the Archie Givens, Sr., Collection of African American Literature and Life. He coedited, with Michael S. Harper,A Ralph Ellison Festival(a special volume of the Carleton Miscellany).
eBook
Sky high
\"Charlie has lots of ideas. Need something to go sky high? Ah-ha! The zinger-winger! Need to launch a cheese popper into soup? The amazing popper-upper! But the zinger-winger zings more than wings and the popper-upper plops. Charlie isn't allowed to invent for a week. Meanwhile, the afterschool invention fair is coming up. He needs time to make something special. Good thing he has his friends and Mr. Redfern, another inventor, to help him out\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Towards History and Beyond: Hawthorne and the American Short Story
This chapter contains sections titled:
Hawthorne: A Portrait of an Artist
Hawthorne and the Historical Tale
Hawthorne Beyond History
References and Further Reading
Book Chapter
The Patent Law Origins of Science Fiction
This Article reveals the surprising role of patent law in shaping the literary genre of science fiction. Drawing on previously unpublished sources, the Article shows that Hugo Gernsback— the so-called “father” of science fiction who started the first all-science-fiction magazine in 1926—believed that works of science fiction are analogous to patents. Like patents, science fiction stories can disclose useful information to the public about new inventions. Like patents, science fiction stories can influence future inventors and drive innovation. Gernsback went even further, positing that some of the inventions depicted in science fiction should themselves be patentable. In 1952, he urged Congress to reform the Patent Act to make so-called “Provisional Patents” available to science fiction authors who depicted major technological developments before their time. He argued that science fiction authors who filed for Provisional Patents should get an extra thirty years in which to show their invention worked. If they could do so, they would thereafter be able to obtain an ordinary patent, to last another twenty years. Many will find Gernsback’s proposal deeply problematic from the perspective of patent policy, and rightly so. Granting patent rights too early in an invention’s lifecycle creates new and unjustified opportunities to hold up innovation. A science fiction author who obtained a Provisional Patent for a theoretical invention could crawl out of the woodwork half a century later and sue the very people who figured out how to make the invention work. Gernsback’s ideas for patent reform were half-baked and, the Article shows, probably self-serving. Nonetheless, exploring the connection he cultivated between patents and science fiction yields many surprising insights for science fiction and for innovation policy. Science fiction has more in common with patents than it might seem. Although science fiction does not typically impart enough information to “enable” others to make and use the inventions it describes, science fiction can inspire readers and supply them with a motivation—in Gernsback’s words, a “stimulus”—to implement science fictional inventions in the real world. Science fiction, like patents, can play a role in promoting innovation.
Journal Article
Buzz Beaker and the cave creatures
Father and son inventors explore a cave using a new invention, the cat-eye vest.
Book
Science fiction
Prophetic examples may unnecessarily distort understanding Although it may surprise scientists, one can receive a patent in many jurisdictions without implementing an invention in practice and demonstrating that it works as expected. Instead, inventors applying for patents are allowed to include predicted experimental methods and results, known as prophetic examples, as long as the examples are not written in the past tense ( 1 – 3 ). Allowing untested inventions to be patented may encourage earlier disclosures about new ideas and provide earlier certainty regarding legal rights—which may help small firms acquire financing to bring their ideas to market. Yet granting patents too early may also discourage researchers from doing the work to bring ideas to fruition ( 4 , 5 ). Even if allowing untested inventions to be patented is desirable, we think prophetic examples deserve closer scrutiny, and clearer labeling, because of the likelihood that they are unnecessarily confusing—particularly to scientists, many of whom read patents but are unlikely to appreciate that not all the claims are based on actual data.
Journal Article
Melonhead
In Washington, D.C., Lucy Rose's friend Adam \"Melonhead\" Melon, a budding inventor with a knack for getting into trouble, enters a science contest that challenges students to recycle an older invention into a new invention.
Book
Inventors: incredible stories of the world's most ingenious inventions
Step into Leonardo da Vinci's workshop, relax on board Hideo Shima's speedy bullet train, and join movie star Hedy Lamarr to bounce ideas around in between takes. Inventors looks at the towering achievements of more than 50 inventors in great detail. From Lizzie Magie, who came up with the idea for the game Monopoly, but had it stolen, to the ancient Turkish polymath Ismail al-Jazari, who decided the best way to power a clock was with a model elephant, to Richard Turere, the Maasai inventor who created a lion-scaring device when he was just 13 years old - the inventors of this ebook have all used buckets-full of creativity to find ways to improve our world. Each page is packed with jaw-dropping facts, with every inventor's achievements written as a story. Professor Robert Winston's beautiful descriptions of the inventors' lives are brought to life through stunning illustrations by Jessamy Hawke and fantastic photography highlights the detail of their designs.The inventors come from all walks of life and parts of the world, making this the perfect ebook for every budding inventor.
eBook