Many people have great ideas, but finding the right information about taking the next steps and turning your ideas into reality isn't always easy. Written by a team of leading inventors and legal experts, this book guides you through every aspect of developing your inventive ideas. From protecting your invention and product development to finding investment and selling your product into the marketplace, Inventing For Dummies is the easiest way to get your great ideas off the ground and start your business.

The instant New York Times bestseller! A Wall Street Journal Best Science Book of the Year! A Popular Science Best Science Book of the Year! From a top scientist and the creator of the hugely popular web comic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, a hilariously illustrated investigation into future technologies -- from how to fling a ship into deep space on the cheap to 3D organ printing What will the world of tomorrow be like? How does progress happen? And why do we not have a lunar colony already? What is the hold-up? In this smart and funny book, celebrated cartoonist Zach Weinersmith and noted researcher Dr. Kelly Weinersmith give us a snapshot of what's coming next -- from robot swarms to nuclear fusion powered-toasters. By weaving their own research, interviews with the scientists who are making these advances happen, and Zach's trademark comics, the Weinersmiths investigate why these technologies are needed, how they would work, and what is standing in their way. New technologies are almost never the work of isolated geniuses with a neat idea. A given future technology may need any number of intermediate technologies to develop first, and many of these critical advances may appear to be irrelevant when they are first discovered. The journey to progress is full of strange detours and blind alleys that tell us so much about the human mind and the march of civilization. To this end, Soonish investigates ten different emerging fields, from programmable matter to augmented reality, from space elevators to robotic construction, to show us the amazing world we will have, you know, soonish. Soonish is the perfect gift for science lovers for the holidays!

The definitive primer on intellectual property for business professionals, non-IP attorneys, entrepreneurs, and inventors

Full of valuable tips, techniques, illustrative real-world examples, exhibits, and best practices, the "Second Edition" of this handy and concise paperback will help you stay up to date on the newest thinking, strategies, developments, and case law in intellectual property.Presents fundamentals of patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets and other less-know forms of IP, such as registered design and mask worksCovers important concepts such as IP strategy, protection, audits, valuation, management, and competitive intelligenceOffers an introduction to IP licensing and enforcementNow features discussion of critical precedent-setting recent IP cases and proposed patent reform

Providing business professionals and IP owners with in-depth knowledge of this extremely important subject, this book helps those new to this field gain a better understanding and appreciation for the results of their creative abilities.

The Internet once promised to be a place of extraordinary freedom beyond the control of money or politics, but today corporations and platforms exercise more control over our ability to access information and share knowledge to a greater extent than any state. In Silicon Values, leading campaigner Jillian York, looks at how our rights have become increasingly undermined by the major corporations desire to harvest our personal data and turn it into profit. She also looks at how governments have used the same technology to monitor citizens and threatened our ability to communicate. As a result our daily lives, and private thoughts, are being policed in an unprecedented manner. Who decides the difference between political debate and hate speech? How does this impact on our identity, our ability to create communities and to protest? Who regulates the censors? In response to this threat to our democracy, York proposes a user-powered movement against the platforms that demands change and a new form of ownership over our own data.

The formation of the Confederate States of America involved more than an attempt to create a new, sovereign nation -- it inspired a flurry of creativity and entrepreneurialism in the South that fiercely matched Union ingenuity. H. Jackson Knight's Confederate Invention brings to light the forgotten history of the Confederacy's industrious inventors and its active patent office.

Despite the destruction wrought by the Civil War, evidence of Confederate inventions exists in the registry of the Confederate States Patent Office. Hundreds of southerners submitted applications to the agency to secure patents on their intellectual property, which ranged from a "machine for operating submarine batteries," to a "steam plough," to a "combined knapsack and tent," to an "instrument for sighting cannon." The Confederacy's most successful inventors included entrepreneurs, educators, and military men who sought to develop new weapons, weapon improvements, or other inventions that could benefit the Confederate cause as well as their own lives. Each creation belied the conception of a technologically backward South, incapable of matching the creativity and output of northern counterparts.

Knight's work provides a groundbreaking study that includes neglected and largely forgotten patents as well as an array of other primary sources. Details on the patent office's origins, inner workings, and demise, and accounts of southern inventors who obtained patents before, during, and after the war reveal a captivating history recovered from obscurity.

A novel creation in its own right, Confederate Invention presents the remarkable story behind the South's long-forgotten Civil War inventors and offers a comprehensive account of Confederate patents.

Ingenium is medieval English vernacular for "an ingenious contrivance." In this fascinating book, physicist Mark Denny considers five such contrivances -- the bow and arrow, the waterwheel, the counterpoise siege engine (including the trebuchet), the pendulum clock anchor escapement, and the centrifugal governor -- and demonstrates how they literally changed the world. Interweaving an entertaining narrative with diagrams, equations, and drawings, Denny shares the history of each device, explains the physics behind it, and describes how it was used, how it evolved, and why it is significant in today's world.

Consider the bow and arrow, which transformed warfare by allowing soldiers to attack their enemies at a safe distance. Or the waterwheel, which enabled Old World civilizations to grind grain, pump water, and power machines during a period of extreme labor shortages. Medieval warriors engaged in an early form of biological warfare by using the trebuchet to launch dead animals or plague-ridden corpses over enormous fortress walls. The pendulum clock forever enslaved modern humans to the clock by linking the accurate measure of time to the burdens of schedules, deadlines, promptness, and tardiness. And the centrifugal governor gave rise to an entire branch of modern engineering science: feedback control.

Reflecting on the inventors of these ancient machines and the times in which they lived, Denny concludes with thought-provoking observations about inventors, inventiveness, genius, and innovation. Whether you dream of making a better mousetrap or launching pumpkins into the stratosphere, Ingenium will tickle your fancy.

The changing relationships between science and industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, illustrated by the career of the "father of plastics." The Belgian-born American chemist, inventor, and entrepreneur Leo Baekeland (1863-1944) is best known for his invention of the first synthetic plastic-his near-namesake Bakelite-which had applications ranging from electrical insulators to Art Deco jewelry. Toward the end of his career, Baekeland was called the "father of plastics"-given credit for the establishment of a sector to which many other researchers, inventors, and firms inside and outside the United States had also made significant contributions. In Beyond Bakelite, Joris Mercelis examines Baekeland's career, using it as a lens through which to view the changing relationships between science and industry on both sides of the Atlantic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He gives special attention to the intellectual property strategies and scientific entrepreneurship of the period, making clear their relevance to contemporary concerns. Mercelis describes the growth of what he terms the "science-industry nexus" and the developing interdependence of science and industry. After examining Baekeland's emergence as a pragmatic innovator and leader in scientific circles, Mercelis analyzes Baekeland's international and domestic IP strategies and his efforts to reform the US patent system; his dual roles as scientist and industrialist; the importance of theoretical knowledge to the science-industry nexus; and the American Bakelite companies' research and development practices, technically oriented sales approach, and remuneration schemes. Mercelis argues that the expansion and transformation of the science-industry nexus shaped the careers and legacies of Baekeland and many of his contemporaries.

Eyes were one of the very first body parts to evolve more than 500 million years ago, and their structure has remained virtually unchanged through most of evolutionary history. But eyes alone were never enough for Homo sapiens. From the mastery of fire a million years ago to the smartphone today, humans have repeatedly invented new ways to see their surroundings, each other and themselves. Artificial light, art, mirrors, writing, lenses, printing, photography, film, television, smartphones - these tools didn't just add to our visual repertoire, they shaped cultures around the world and made us who we are. Drawing on sources from anthropology to zoology, neuroscience to Netflix, As Far As the Eye Can See traces the history of seeing from the first evolutionary stirrings of sight and discovers that each time we changed how or what we see, we changed ourselves and the world around us. Along the way, it finds, sight slowly eclipsed our other senses. Are we now at 'peak seeing', the author asks. Can our eyes keep up with technology? Have we gone as far as the eye can see?

From Steven Johnson, the bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From, comes How We Got to Now, the companion book to his six-part BBC One television series exploring the power and the legacy of great ideas. How did photography bring about social reform? What connects refrigeration to Hollywood? And how did our battle against dirt help create smartphones? In this story of ingenious breakthroughs and unsung heroes, Steven Johnson explores the essential innovations that changed the world and how we live in it. 'A new Steven Johnson book is something not to be missed. The author has become the leading writer on how inventions happen' Daniel Finkelstein, The Times, Books of the Year 'Graceful and compelling ... you'll find yourself exhilarated' The New York Times Book Review 'Readable, entertaining, and a challenge to any jaded sensibility that has become inured to the everyday miracles all around us' Peter Forbes, Guardian'This nimble history of invention . . .is a many-layered delight' Nature

From as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century, Britain was at the forefront of powered flight. Across the country many places became centres of innovation and experimentation, as increasing numbers of daring men took to the skies. It was in 1799, at Brompton Hall, that Sir George Cayley Bart put forward ideas which formed the basis of powered flight. Cayley is widely regarded as the father of aviation and his ancestral home the cradle' of British aviation. There were balloon flights at Hendon from 1862, although attempts at powered flights from the area later used as the famous airfield, do not seem to have been particularly successful. Despite this, Louis Bleriot established a flying school there in 1910. It was gliders that Percy Pilcher flew from the grounds of Stamford Hall, Leicestershire during the 1890s. He was killed in a crash there in 1899, but Pilcher had plans for a powered aircraft which experts believe may well have enabled him to beat the Wright Brothers in becoming the first to make a fixed-wing powered flight. At Brooklands attempts were made to build and fly a powered aircraft in 1906 even before the banked racetrack was completed but these were unsuccessful. But on 8 June 1908, A.V. Roe made what is considered to be the first powered flight in Britain from there - in reality a short hop - in a machine of his own design and construction, enabling Brooklands to claim to be the birthplace of British aviation. These are just a few of the many places investigated by Bruce Hales-Dutton in this intriguing look at the early days of British aviation, which includes the first ever aircraft factory in Britain in the railway arches at Battersea; Larkhill on Salisbury Plain which became the British Army's first airfield, and Barking Creek where Frederick Handley Page established his first factory.

How Chinese characters triumphed over the QWERTY keyboard and laid the foundation for China's information technology successes today. Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters-in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and successes in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter. The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for "Jesus" to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained "typewriter girls" and "typewriter boys." Still later was the "Double Pigeon" typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an input method that was the first instance of "predictive text." Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an "object history" but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened. A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Columbia University

Preserving the Promise: Improving the Culture of Biotech Investment critically examines why most biotech startups fail, as they emerge from universities into an ecosystem that inhibits rather than encourages innovation. This "Valley of Death" squanders our public investments in medical research and with them, the promise of longer and healthier lives. The authors explicate the Translation Gap faced by early stage biotech companies, the result of problematic technology transfer and investment practices, and provide specific prescriptions for improving translation of important discoveries into safe and effective therapies. In Preserving the Promise, Dessain and Fishman build on their collective experience as company founders, healthcare investor (Fishman) and physician/scientist (Dessain). The book offers a forward-looking, critical analysis of "conventional wisdom" that encumbers commercialization practices. It exposes the self-defeating habits of drug development in the Valley of Death, that waste money and extinguish innovative technologies through distorted financial incentives.

The American entrepreneurial spirit burns bright today. As of 2018, the US Patent & Trademark Office had granted its ten millionth patent. But with over 500,000 applications now being filed annually, fewer than half of these applicants will be granted patents and far fewer still will realize commercial success. Some are flawed by mistakes or missing details, others too ridiculous to take seriously, still others simply ahead of their time. From the best and worst to the wackiest and most bizarre inventions and products -- from the horse headlight and Viagra to a motorized spaghetti fork and Slinky -- this collection of 100 life-altering and entertaining patents from the US Patent and Trademark Office includes humorous and informative descriptions of each patent and dozens of original diagrams, figures, and illustrations. The guide also provides insight into the creation and execution of great and not-so-great ideas, what most successful patents have in common, and how great inventors view the world.

Over the centuries, much has been written about Wolfgang von Kempelen, the inventor of the "speaking machine," and author of "Mechanism Of Human Speech" (1791) on philology, linguistic technology and phonetics.

This book illuminates the life of this very eccentric thinker, his achievements, and even his legendary reputation. Very little was known about his other achievements and the rest of his life. The subject addressed by most was and is what is commonly referred to as the "the Turk" (a chess-playing automaton) which for years has stimulated and still stimulates the fantasy of anyone who sees it.

Where studies on von Kempelen have in the past been based on speculation and tall tales, for the first time a complete and exact survey on the facts and dates of Kempelen's life are given. The research for this book concentrated on the facts which were found mainly in the archives in Vienna, Budapest, Bratislava among other institutions.

***One of BBC Focus magazine's top books of 2018*** Get ready to make history better... on the second try. Imagine you are stranded in the past (your time machine has broken) and the only way home is to rebuild civilization yourself. But you need to do it better and faster this time round. In this one amazing book, you will learn How to Invent Everything. Ryan North -- bestselling author, programmer and comic book legend -- provides all the science, engineering, mathematics, art, music, philosophy, facts and figures required for this challenge. Thanks to his detailed blueprint, humanity will mature quickly and efficiently - instead of spending 200,000 years stumbling around in the dark without language, not realising that tying a rock to a string would mean we could navigate the entire world. Or thinking disease was caused by weird smells. Fascinating and hilarious, How To Invent Everything is an epic, deeply researched history of the key technologies that made each stage of human history possible (from writing and farming to buttons and birth control) - and it's as entertaining as a great time-travel novel. So if you've ever secretly wondered if you could do history better yourself, now is your chance to find out how.

In this book, Richard W. Bulliet focuses on three major phases in the evolution of the wheel and their relationship to the needs and ambitions of human society. He begins in 4000 B.C.E. with the first wheels affixed to axles. He then follows with the innovation of wheels turning independently on their axles and concludes five thousand years later with the caster, a single rotating and pivoting wheel. Bulliet's most interesting finding is that a simple desire to move things from place to place did not drive the wheel's development. If that were the case, the wheel could have been invented at any time almost anywhere in the world. By dividing the history of this technology into three conceptual phases and focusing on the specific men, women, and societies that brought it about, Bulliet expands the social, economic, and political significance of a tool we only partially understand. He underscores the role of gender, combat, and competition in the design and manufacture of wheels, adding vivid imagery to illustrate each stage of their development.

Adopting the modernist master Vladimir Nabokov as its guide, Nabokov in Motion: Modernity and Movement is an exploration of the radically changing social, historical, technological, and literary culture of the early 20th century, a time when modes of communication and transportation, especially, were changing society in drastic and profound ways. Across seventy microchapters that are by turn serious, ironic, informative, and playful, and which take on topics such as automobiles, trains, airplanes, electricity, elevators, advertisements, telegraphs, and telephones, Yuri Leving offers new ways to understand Nabokov, Russian literature, and technology, modernism, and world material culture. Nabokov's writings are analyzed against a broad context of prose and poetry and from the point of view of what Leving calls the poetics of urbanism in literature. Nabokov in Motion is a ground-breaking exploration of urban and material themes in literature and creates a complex and vibrant cultural fabric of which Nabokov is the master weaver.

Smartphones, skyscrapers, spacecraft. Modern technology seems mind-bogglingly complex. But beneath the surface, it can be beautifully simple. In Nuts and Bolts, award-winning engineer and broadcaster Roma Agrawal deconstructs our most complex feats of engineering into seven fundamental inventions: the nail, spring, wheel, lens, magnet, string and pump. Each of these objects is itself a wonder of design, the result of many iterations and refinements. Together, they have enabled humanity to see the invisible, build the spectacular, communicate across vast distances, and even escape our planet. Tracing the surprising journeys of each invention through the millennia, Roma reveals how handmade Roman nails led to modern skyscrapers, how the potter's wheel enabled space exploration, and how humble lenses helped her conceive a child against the odds. She invites us to marvel at these small but perfectly formed inventions, sharing the stories of the remarkable, and often unknown, scientists and engineers who made them possible. The nuts and bolts that make up our world may be tiny, and are often hidden, but they've changed our lives in dramatic ways.

As Joe Biden has shown us all, the best is yet to come. Here are the stories of the inspiring, inventive, and brave things people have achieved in later life. With a foreword by Michael Whitehall, late bloomer par excellence. With life comes perspective, wisdom, judgement and depth. You are as likely to change the world after middle age as you were before it - and perhaps more likely to change it for the better. From the well known to the unsung, each entry tells the story of how older age was no barrier to impressive feats of intellect, creativity and daring. Ranging from Alexander Fleming, Stan Lee and Baroness Trumpington, to Whina Cooper and the bestselling novelist Mary Wesley who didn't write her first novel until she was 71, and William Ivy Baldwin who tightrope walked across a canyon at 82. Here is a celebration of the amazing things we humans have shown to be possible in later life. A gift book for late bloomers, baby boomers, and beyond; and an inspiring picture of the possibilities and potential that older age holds.