book by [Kenneth Brown] ISBN:1556151233

From Publishers Weekly: Brown here conducts in-depth interviews with 16 notable inventors, from independent tinkerers to professional research and design specialists. In his foreword, BBC writer-producer James Burke (Connections) notes that the subjects tend to "look at the world in a highly idiosyncratic manner," are "refreshingly and sometimes sharply individualistic" and have "provocative views" about the effects of formal education on imaginative and creative thinking. [Paul Mac Cready] explains how he solved the puzzle of human-powered flight by watching birds soar. Steve Wozniak, designer of the Apple [II] computer, talks about ideas suddenly clicking: "Maybe my learning is subliminal. . . . You think it out in your sleep." [Nat Wyeth], inventor of the plastic soft-drink bottle, discusses the influence on him of his father, illustrator N. C. Wyeth. Other subjects include [Jacob Rabinow] (postal sorting), [Raymond Kurzweil] (voice-operated word processing), [Harold Rosen] (geosynchronous satellite), [Bob Gundlach] (xerography and imaging science) and [TedHoff] (microprocessor). Invention becomes an art in these accounts of serendipitous associations and "lateral thinking."

From Library Journal: This is an interesting collection of 16 interviews conducted by a journalist. It covers a diverse group of inventors from [Marvin Camras] who invented magnetic recording, to [Gordon Gould] who invented the laser, to Steve Wozniak whose Apple computer began the personal computer industry. The interviews read smoothly and the author's message that we must become more like these inventors in order to deal with rapid technological change is valid.

see Innovat Ion

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