Automatic Recorder to Measure the Muscular Control of a Pianist While He Plays: the Bellows on Each Wrist Actuates the Pair of Pens Which Mark the Revolving Chart
By DONALD A. LAIRD
(Professor of Psychology, Colgate University)
"What chances have I to be an inventor?" With hard work, sufficient knowledge, and a harnessed imagination the chances are good.
Inventors differ from the rest of us only by having better success at putting their imagination to work. We all have imagination, but not all of us have yet found how to make use of it.
When we look into a show window, or read a magazine, or examine a radio set, we are using our minds for discovery.
Dr. Robert S. Woodworth, head of the department of psychology at Columbia university, says that as soon as we use imagination our mental processes change from discovery into invention.
When Benjamin Franklin watched the discharge from crude batteries and the flash of lightning, he was using his mind for discovery. Franklin stepped out of the crowd when he put his imagination to work on these discoveries and made inventions.
There are five conditions which help the use of imagination for invention:
Youth is a favorable condition. The ages from twenty to forty are the best. Under twenty is the time to master the subject; after twenty is the time to use this knowledge through the imagination for invention.
Good physical condition is essential. The world's geniuses are not weaklings,
