Elegant Inventions

If you have a tendency to wonder about the things that make up our technological surroundings, as I do, then you have probably had the experience of imagining, or designing, or inventing a new thing or a modification of an existing thing. The earliest invention of mine that I recall was made in 1937 upon seeing a DC-3 passenger airplane land at the Newark, New Jersey, airport. On the spot I invented a landingwheel spinner to prevent the sudden scuffing action of getting the wheel up to speed, as it touches down, in order to prevent a blowout of its tires. I even wrote to the Douglas Aircraft Company to announce my invention. I received a friendly letter from a vice-president (I suppose he was vice-president in charge of the nut letters). My vice-president told me that many people had tackled the problem, that there were several ways of spinning the wheels to get them up to landing speed, but that all of them required weight that would be better spent in making the treads of the tires heavier. It is interesting to note that the 1937 solution is also the 1977 solution: when an airplane touches down, the tires screech and the airplane bucks as the wheels suddenly, by friction on the runway, are brought up to landing speed. My invention, clearly not unique, is an example of what I should call low-level inventing: it is mechanical design, the sort of thing most technologists do readily and habitually. It is a kind of technical problem solving that is carried out many millions of times a day by millions of people. The mechanic, engineer, and draftsman designer must respond continually to problems set by their materials, their tools, and their imaginations. It is pretty well established that design and invention involve visual thinking, although the mechanism is not understood at all.1 Until Edwin Layton analyzed the nature of technological design and its

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  David Topper, David R Topper et al.•Leonardo•1985

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