What do you need for an invention(发明) to be a success? Well, the invention must be made at the right time, for a start. It is possible to have a great idea, which the public simply doesn't want yet. Take the Italian (意大利的) priest(牧师), Giovanni Caselli(乔瓦尼·卡塞利), who invented the first fax(电传) machine in the 1860s using a huge weight hanging from a string. Despite the high quality of the copies, his invention was too far ahead of its time, never made any money, and was forgotten. It was not until the 1980s that the fax machine became an important piece of equipment in every office - too late for Giovanni Caselli.
Money also helps. Denis Papin(德尼·珀潘) (1647-1712) of France had the idea for a steam engine(发动机) almost a hundred years before James Watt(詹姆斯·瓦特), the famous inventor from Scotland(苏格兰), was even born… but he never had enough money to build one.
One also needs to be patient - it took scientists nearly eighty years to develop an electric light bulb(灯泡) which actually worked - but not too patient. In the 1870s, Elisha Gray(伊莱沙·格雷), an inventor from Chicago(芝加哥), developed plans for a telephone. Gray saw it as no more than a beautiful toy, however. When he finally sent information about his invention to the government on February 14th, 1876, it was too late; designs that were nearly the same had arrived just two hours earlier - and the young man who sent them, Alexander Graham Bell(亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔), will always be remembered as the inventor of the telephone.
Of course what one really needs is a great idea - but if one hasn't got one, a walk in the country and a careful look at nature can help. The Swiss(瑞士) scientist, George de Mestral(乔治·德·梅斯特拉尔), had the idea for velcro(尼龙搭链) when he found his clothes covered in sticky(粘的) seeds after a walk in the country. During a similar walk in the French countryside some 250 years earlier, René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur（勒内·安托万·费尔绍·雷米尔）got the idea that paper could be made from wood when he found an old wasp's nest(马蜂窝).
You also need good business sense. Willy Higinbotham(威利·希金博特姆) was a scientist doing research in the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton(厄普顿的布鲁克黑文国家实验室), USA. In 1958 the public was invited to the lab to see their work; but both parents and children were less interested in the equipment and the designs than in a tiny 12cm monitor with a white ball which could be hit back and forth over a "net" using a button(按钮) and a knob(旋钮). Soon hundreds of people were ignoring everything else to play the first-ever computer game - made from a simple piece of lab equipment. Higinbotham, however, never made a penny from his invention: he thought people were only interested in the game because everything else in the lab was so dull.
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Becoming a Successful Inventor 课文讲解
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