Most reinvented invention in history

Factual Questions
1

We’ve all heard the expression ‘reinventing the wheel,’ what the dictionary defines as ‘to do something again, from the beginning, especially in a needless or inefficient effort.’ Years ago at a youth retreat a trivia question came up, asking who invented the circular saw. Tonight, I happened to remember it, and decided to check Google for the answer.

The internet is known for giving incorrect information from a variety of biased/misinformed, joking, or lying sources, but those of these six that are slightly off fall into only the first category. Six claims for the inventor are

1777- Samuel Miller of England; NO WIKI PAGE
1780s- English guy named Gervinus, who may have worked at the shipyards? NO WIKI PAGE
1813- Tabitha Babbitt, a Shaker woman; has a wiki page
1834- Artstide Cavaille-Coll, a Frenchman; NWP
1849- Lemuel Hedge, NWP
1928- Arthur N. Emmons, NWP

Most people believe this- Samuel Miller invented the first circular saw, Gervinus invented a more barbaric one (I assume unbeknownst of Millers?) a few years later, then 30 years later Tabitha invented one w/o knowing of eithers of course, hers being the first used in a saw mill. As for the last three, only a few sites claim what they do about them. A few different sites- the only ones who mention this guy- claim Artstide the French instrument inventor either improved the circular saw already in existence, or won a contest by writing up the plans for the circular saw (the sites contradict?). As for Hedge, all I could find about this guy is he was at Harvard, he invented some stuff like a board for planning projects???, the pipe organ, and apparently the circular saw according to http://www.americanprofile.com/issues/20010429/20010429ne_792.asp. And as for Emmons, only http://www.asktooltalk.com/home/articles/toolhistory/divide.htm claims he invented this saw.

My point in all this is to start a discussion on what other inventions were invented numerous times by numerous people, unbeknownst or intentionally, in history. Most of us know of how the telephone was invented by Elisha Gray and others at the same time Graham did, but Gray was two hours later with the patent than Graham :smack: . The theory of evolution was originated by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, but Darwin made it popular.

I mean, looking at the history of inventions, it’s easy to see that many ideas were obvious steps up from the last memetic one- now that the saw exists, let’s improve it with a circular one, etc. etc. But also, one could get into a discussion of cognitive resonance, the idea that members of a given species get a certain idea at the same time for some reason.

2

This topic, cognitive resonance, has no wikipedia page as it turns out. I’d make one for it, but I’m sure someone else will have the same idea soon. :wink:

3

“It steam-engines when it’s steam-engine time.” -Charles Hoy Fort.

4

Try as I might, I can’t find the meaning of that quote. Care to explain?

5

From semi-personal experience, I can say that the Color Center Laser was “invented” theoretically many times, even after one had been built and demonstrated.

A Color Center Laser (I did one thesis on these) is a class of lasers that uses point defects in crystals as ther lasing medium. Its draw was that you could get tunable lasing out of it (you could change the color), and that you could get it in the near infrared, where dye lasers didn’t work or didn’t work well. Most CCLs had to be stored at cryogenic temperatures, or in the dark, or both, which made them a pain the neck to use. Other lasers can now do the same things without the hassles, and I don’t think that the sole manufacturer of commercial CCLs even makes them anymore.

CCLs were first suggested in the late 1950s, because they offered the perfect four-level-system, which is ideal for lasers. F.F. Markham suggested the F-center in potassium chloride. A Russian writer suggested something similar. In the early 1960s the F center in KCL was suggested again. The idea was proposed several times through the 1960s, up to about 1972. One guy wrote in his thesis about measuring gain in the F-center in KCl, and sughgested a laser be built.

Most of these writers failed to notice that in 1965 Fritz and Mencke had actually built a CCL using the F[sub]A[/sub] center in Lithium-doped KCl. They built it on the same plan as the ruby laser – sticking a cylindrical piece of crystal in the barrel of a helical flashlamp. The article was published in a mainstream Letters journal, and not in some obscure publication, so it shouldn’t have been missed. Moreover, the paqper was cited in W.B. Fowler’s book The Physics of Color Centers, one of only about three books on the topic that had been published by the early 1970s. You could find “Laser” in the book’s index. Yet people were still acting as if the concept was a new one until about 1972.

The kicker is that no one ever did make a laser out of F centers in KCl, or in any other crystal.

Clearly, people don’t read the literature.

Another example of this, although not an invention, is the theory that the myth of the Gorgon was inspired by the octopus/squid/cephalopod. The idea was independently proposed by about a dozen individuals between 1890 and 1990, only one of whom, in a last-minute note, acknowledged any predecessors. I was able to dig up all these references (and reported them in my own book on the topic), and there’s no reason previous writers couldn’t do so – most of the papers were in mainstream, easily accessible books and journals, and appeared in the relevant indices. People simply don’t research things well enough.

As for the general suggestion, I have long believed that many of man’s inventions qwere independently discovered (and forgotten, too) m,any times oveer. Fire is probably the most common discovery. Or maybe agriculture. Smelting, the bow and arrow, atlatls, preservation by salting, the list goes on.

6

Allowing for the eccentricity of Fort (who was known for obsessing over such things as rains of frogs and fish and the finding of toads inside 10 million year old coal lumps), it appears to mean that an idea has its time, in which multiple people appear to suddenly be inspired by it within a few years of each other. It DOES happen, fairly often if you examine the history of invention, but I’m sure Fort put a metaphysical spin on it that’s unsupported by evidence.

7

Well, to take the idea of “invention” broadly, you could say that the cow was “invented” a whole lotta times - the ancient auroch was independantly domesticated many times in many places into many similar but somewhat different animals, which is really something because by all accounts the ancient auroch was a real badass.

8

Meant that to be “the finding of LIVE toads inside 10 million year old coal lumps”, since I’m sure the discovery of amphibian fossils in coal seams is relatively common, as bone-huntin’ goes…

9

I was going to say that. :frowning: Oh well; you’re too quick on the draw for me, Cal.

For what it’s worth, the wheel seems to have occured repeatedly in prehistory, but rarely used for transportation owing to the lack of some way to secure it. I’m guessing the first guy to invent the wheel and axle was probably lynched by a crowd of his fellow tribesmen who decided that the one thing they really couldn’t stand was a smartass.

Stranger

10

Heinlein used a variant on the Fort phrase in The Door into Summer - “when it’s time to railroad, people start railroading.” In that particular case, the speaker was an inventor of robots who travelled into the future via suspended animation and found that another company had built the robot he was planning on building. At first he assumed convergent discoveries, as indicated by the quote, but he eventually discovered there was a more sinister explanation…

Getting back to the OP, the irony of that well-known phrase is that there are indications that the wheel was never re-invented, and that all known examples of the wheel as a form of transport date back to a single invention, likely in Sumer, c. 3500 B.C., by some unknown genius.

See the Master’s column: Why did the peoples of the New World fail to invent the wheel?:

11

I would imagine the bow and arrow ought to be on our list of frequently re-invented items.

12

Fishing hooks and line.