In the great struggle after new methods, processes and implements that
characterizes our day, and which is a principal factor in our material
progress, there is a constant rule of the “survival of the fittest.”
Opposed to this is the claim, sometimes put forward, that the value of
a patented invention is not so much in its intrinsic worth as in the
method of presenting and introducing it to the world, or to a market.
Both propositions are in a sense true, but with this qualification,
that “permanent” success always depends upon intrinsic worth, and while
a short success may be attained by a plausible but faulty invention,
the future is sure to regulate it to the place it belongs. It is
perhaps unnecessary to argue this. Everyone’s observation will prove it.
=CASSIER’S MAGAZINE=, an engineering publication, gotten up in the
same style and equal in every respect to Harpers’, The Century, and
Scribners’, has begun a series of articles about “New and Patented
Inventions.” Many important things are to be considered in these
articles, among them that of “added detail.” This might properly
come under the head of “operative conditions,” because it involves
maintenance and attendance, but may be made more plain by quoting a
remark once made in England by an experienced designer and constructor
of machinery. He said: “The great art of designing machinery consists
in leaving out parts and pieces.”
The articles will be written by John Richards, in a popular style such
as the ordinary inventor and the busy business man can have time to
read and understand.
Mr. Richards is President of the Technical Society of the Pacific
Coast, and editor of the journal “Industry.” There are probably few
engineers so well known, or so capable of expressing an intelligent
opinion on the various classes of engineering matters, as is Mr.
Richards. He has had many years of active and practical experience in
the manufacture of machinery, and as a technical writer, and he is
known throughout the world by engineers and manufacturers as a man
from whom an honest, conscientious, as well as capable opinion can be
obtained.
=CASSIER’S MAGAZINE=--cost, $3.00 per year, 25 cents a copy--can be
obtained from newsdealers, or from the publishers, THE CASSIER’S
MAGAZINE CO., Potter Building, New York.