Lesson 5: Inventors and Entrepreneurs
This lesson will introduce you to some of the most important early inventors and entrepreneurs in American technological history, and explain their importance.
Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Engineers
Cowan states on page 119 that “industrialization sounds like an impersonal process, but it was actually one of the great dramas of human history, replete with comedy, tragedy, tenderness, cruelty - the full range of human passions and possibilities.” It is the inventors, entrepreneurs and the engineers that give industrialization these all too human qualities.
Inventors do more than simply invent. They create things and then generate things from the things they create. While we may not always see them as such, they are often truly artists.
An entrepreneur will innovate and diffuse. They put their stuff out into the marketplace in whatever way works best to spread it around efficiently and profitably. They are also the ones who turn inventions into innovations.
An inventor can also be an entrepreneur; take Cowan’s perfect example of Thomas Edison. He invented the light bulb and then put on his entrepreneur cap to manufacture it, and spread it (and electric service) across the land.
Engineers hold a special place in this puzzle. They are the ones that build and perfect inventions. They make the bridges and buildings into which inventions go; they can make other people's designs reality. Cowan defines engineers on page 120 as the people who “have systematically acquired knowledge about the natural world and who put that knowledge to use in achieving some practical goal."
This lesson will demonstrate how important all three of these classes of people are to the technological history of the United States.
