In the same vein, predicting the telephone answering machine in the fifties was easy. Predicting that people would use it even when they were at home, to screen unwanted callers, was something else. And I swear he actually did that in one of his stories, I just can’t remember which…
Doesn’t Friday use the internet? Was that pre-DARPA?
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/AuthorTotalAlphaList.asp?AuNum=2
I think that’s the working link for the inventions/Heinlein site.
Heinlein didn’t “invent” – officially – anything.
He did, however, describe enough of some new things that someone else couldn’t obtain a patent on the same concept.
This is known as “prior art” – if the subject of the patent is commonly known, no one can patent it. This is why sand, or tying your shoes, or singing cannot be patented.
That list of supposed inventions of Heinlein’s in the link is ridiculous. Let me go through some of them:
cold-sleep: This is a commonplace of science fiction. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction gives examples in fiction of this going back for centuries. Coming up with the idea of suspended animation is trivial. (Come to think of it, it’s really just taking the idea of hibernation in animals and applying it to people.) The hard part is to find a scientifically plausible way to make it work, and no one has done that.
grok: In what sense is this an invention? So Heinlein made up a word with a vague definition, which some people now use (but not very many people). Does the person who made up this list even know what the term “invention” means?
stereovision: This is just three-dimensional television, and a lot of science fiction writers thought of this. The Heinlein novel that the list says that this was “invented” in came out in 1961. Anybody could have proposed 3-D TV in 1961. There were probably articles in TV Guide in 1961 talking about the wonderful world of the future in which we would be watching 3-D TV. Heck, I remember 1961, and there were cartoons for kids with “inventions” that were more interesting than Heinlein’s supposed inventions.
truth meter: Why is the list proposing this as a Heinlein invention in a novel that came out in 1956? Lie detectors existed in 1956. In what sense is it an “invention” to use a different word for it? It doesn’t matter if Heinlein was saying, “Oh, but a truth meter is completely accurate.” How is it an invention if all you do is take an already-existing object and say, “Let’s suppose that they perfect this object in the future.”?
rolling road: I thought this list was supposed to be about things proposed in Heinlein that have since come about. Rolling roads don’t exist now, and nowhere does Heinlein explain how they would work. Why is it an invention if Heinlein takes some common object of contemporary society (at the time of his writing) like roads and says, “Hey, maybe they’ll improve them in the future by making them mechanical - or something.”?
I write the Technovelgy.com site. I’ve been on vacation; it took me a while to find this thread in my referrer logs. Here are some comments:
Weird_Al_Einstein wrote:
“…inventing the telephone answering machine in the fifties…”
I thought about that one, and I may still include it. Actually, the telephone answering machine was proposed by Thomas Edison in the 1880’s as a possible use for the early phonograph (which could be used to record as well as play back). Wire recorders were actually used for this purpose in Europe in the 1920’s and 1930’s - but the Bell monopoly refused to allow them to be connected to its precious network in America at the time.
Little Nemo writes:
“While Heinlein is generally given credit for “inventing” the waterbed, he did no such thing.”
Yes, that’s true. The text for this entry on my site begins “Yes, many science fiction fans believe that Robert Heinlein thought up the waterbed. However, see the comments below before making up your mind…” In fact, the ancient Persians used beds made of goatskins filled with water 3,600 years ago.
Wendell Wagner wrote:
“That list of supposed inventions of Heinlein’s in the link is ridiculous.”
It’s sometimes helpful to have a set of 50 or so items representing a hundred pages of material summed up in one sentence. However, I look at this list, knowing that Heinlein was the first to propose many of them (waldoes, powered armor, air blast, pocket phone, telechronometer, newsbox, and of course Drafting Dan) and I’d say that Mr. Wagner’s comment is ridiculous.
With regard to the concept “grok” Mr. Wagner writes “Does the person who made up this list even know what the term “invention” means?”
Well, I think so, but let’s see what the dictionaries say:
- A new device, method, or process developed from study and experimentation
- A mental fabrication, especially a falsehood
- The act of finding out or inventing; contrivance or construction of that which has not before existed; as, the invention of logarithms; the invention of the art of printing
- the creation of something in the mind.
I think even Mr. Wagner would find at least one definition of “invention” that fits for “grok.”
“Why is it an invention if Heinlein takes some common object of contemporary society (at the time of his writing) like roads and says, “Hey, maybe they’ll improve them in the future by making them mechanical - or something.”?”
Why? Because this is exactly how the process of invention works, most of the time. Many patented inventions are derived from existing processes or devices, because that’s how the mind works. Even the idea for waldoes (telefactoring devices) is derived from using some sort of simple tool to effect action at a distance; a fireplace poker can be used as a primitive telefactoring device to prod the fire instead of using your hand.
Sam Stone wrote:
“Describing something in the future is not inventing it. To qualify as the ‘inventor’ of something, you have to actually come up with a way to make it happen.”
Falling back again on that old standby, the dictionary, we find the following entries for the word ‘inventor’:
-To produce or contrive (something previously unknown) by the use of ingenuity or imagination.
-Someone who is the first to think of or make something.
Based on that, I don’t have a problem with saying that Heinlein invented the telechronometer (a watch that synchronizes itself with a remote source).
There is a difference between being the first person to think of something (and write about it), and being the first person to file a patent for a specific implementation of an idea. I’m interested in the history of ideas; the “gadgets” and “technology” of science fiction have always interested me. I think it does count for something if a science fiction writer both thinks of something original, and then describes it in use. And so does the patent office (consider the remarks earlier in the thread about “prior art”).
Are there errors in my site? I’m sure. Is my site incomplete? Unfortunately. I am, after all, only one science fiction fan.
But that’s why, at the bottom of every technovelgy entry page, you will find my plea for “Suggestions? Comments? Corrections? Contact Us!” with a link to my comments form.
I appreciate the constructive suggestions in this thread - I’ll get to work!
For a science fiction writer to have been said to have invented something in his fiction, it’s necessary for him to have mentioned the item in his fiction. He must be the first writer to have mentioned the item in sufficient detail (which I’ll now specify). It’s not necessary for him to have sufficient detail that it would be accepted as a patent application, but the item must be the sort of thing that can be patented. A word cannot be patented, for instance. There must be enough detail about what the item is that it’s not just an unspecified improvement on a present-day item.
grok: Not an invention because it’s not patentable.
cold-sleep: Not Heinlein’s invention because it had been proposed in others’ writings before Heinlein used it.
stereovision: Not Heinlein’s invention because it had been proposed many times in others’ writings. Indeed, my memory of 1961 is that a lot of people were discussing the idea.
truth meter: Not Heinlein’s invention because the lie detector already existed in 1956. If it’s a specific improvement on the lie detector, what sort of improvement is it? Other than the fact that it perfectly detects lies, what is it?
rolling roads: Clearly, roads aren’t a new invention. There doesn’t seem to be any detail about what rolling roads are. There’s something mechanical about them, but what exactly are they?
Another example:
Jump harnesses (rocket packs): This is a commonplace of science fiction. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction lists examples going back for centuries. It was common in 1930’s movie serials, for instance.
This list is full of examples that are vague or don’t exist as yet and may never exist. Coming up with clever words for future items isn’t inventing anything. Yes, in the future we’ll have lots of wonderful items. If you don’t propose any new, semi-specific description of the item, you haven’t invented anything.
**ChiefTechnovelgist
**
Thanks for dropping by. I don’t know if you have been a lurker in these parts, but you are a welcome addition to the group.
Anything that lowers our level of ignorance is appreciated.
Stick around. Start a thread. I’m sure you have a question that you haven’t been able to answer. Give some of us a chance.
Well, of course not! Everybody knows that only gay men wear jewelry, and homosexuality wasn’t invented until 1979.
I was always of the opinion that the…vision…was the truly brilliant part of discovery and invention.
Everything else was just nuts, bolts and math. Important things, to be sure, and necessary. But typically proceeding from a known point.
How many of us have seen or heard of a new item or concept and gone “DOH! I could’ve thought of that!”?
But we (I’m sure there’s a few exceptions here on the SD) didn’t.
Robert A. may or may not have truly thought up or visualized many of the things he’s being credited for; I really don’t care one way or the other. But if so, he just joins a long and growing list of luminaries who have paved humanity’s way forward through the millenia.