Some Sources of Technological Novelty: An Essay

By the end of the eighteenth century, the unfolding Industrial Revolution was seen to be based, in large part, on a rapidly evolving technological base. At the same time, the source of these innovations was thought to be the work of a new social type: the inventor. For a long century this font of change was encouraged by both public policies and cultural celebration. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the growth of industrial corporations and the increasing power of science to predict and control natural processes had led to the eclipse of the lone inventor and the rise of teams working in industrial research laboratories. The inventor lived on for a time as a semi-comic figure in popular culture but no longer as a popular folk hero.