Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World

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Invention is a strange business. Is it creative, like painting or sculpture? It’s certainly original, by definition genuinely new, but it’s also and fundamentally practical. Patent law says an idea must be “reduced to practice” to be patentable. That means an idea must be embodied in some new and useful mechanism or process or material. So invention is creative, but not in the same way the fine arts are. Usefulness isn’t fundamental to a sculpture or a painting.

Is invention, then, scientific? Many inventions today are explicitly derived from scientific discoveries. The discovery that certain materials, stimulated in a particular way, would emit coherent light—light all of the same wavelength—led to the invention of the laser. The laser was a practical device that embodied the discovery, but it wasn’t the discovery itself. The distinction is clear even in prescientific times: Fire was a discovery; the fireplace was an invention. That fire hardened clay was a discovery; pottery was an invention. Again, as with fine art, usefulness isn’t a requirement for scientific discovery.

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