Who would be the Mother of invention, innovation or necessity?
Well, it’s supposed to be necessity, but so many inventions (the laser, fireworks) were invented by accident or as a by-product of other research, it should be: “Serendipity is the mother of invention.” Some examples for your amusement below; The world if full of accidental inventions. A few of the better known ones are Teflon (used for non-stick cookware, semiconductor manufacturing, soil resistant fabrics), TNT the explosive from Alfred Nobel (remember the Nobel Prize?), X-Rays (stumbled upon by William Roentgen), Bubble Gum, Velcro and so on, were all invented by accident. So were the telephone (Alexander Graham Bell) and the phonograph (Thomas Edison). Thomas Edison, after inventing the basic phonograph (called record player later), became a professional inventor, with a goal of doing a minor invention every 10 days and a major one every six months. He is credited with the electric lamp, movies, batteries, and hundreds of other things. Actually, he had a huge team of people working
I think that innovation implies more things that aren’t needed, but are useful to us – they are developments, changes on things that have already been invented. However, necessity made us invent the rudimentary things that could then be ‘innovated’, so necessity is still the mother of invention, in my humble opinion.
