Where Are the Tinkerers?

Historically, the U.S. has been the most inventive of modern nations. Telephone and television, the cotton gin and the airplane, Thomas Edison's magic lamp and Henry Ford's indestructible Model T--these are but a few of the wondrous works of Yankee tinkerers. Such inventions have enriched society and stimulated the economy by spurring consumer demand, putting men to work and raising purchasing power, which in turn spurs demand afresh.

But today some businessmen have a new worry: not since television has the U.S. developed any major new product so dramatic that almost all American families feel compelled to buy it.

Instead of innovation in the arena of consumer products, there is modification and trimming up of products that were developed well before World War II, such as TV and plastics, processed foods and synthetic textiles. But people can easily postpone their purchases of older products that are merely improved. Were there more genuinely new products on the market--for example, an economical family hovercraft or truly wrinkle-free and spot-resistant clothes--the public might well start spending more for goods and less for services and thus rev up the whole economy.

Shooting for the Moon. At a time when the orbiting Telstar has created international television and Tiros satellites are predicting the weather, U.S. scientists justifiably scoff at charges that they lack inventiveness. But the consumer has little everyday use for a rocket or a reactor, and many economists fear that so much ingenuity is being spent on space and defense that the consumer sector is shortchanged. More than 70% of the $16 billion which the U.S. invests each year in research and development goes for Government work, with the result that the share of the gross national product spent on civilian research is smaller in the U.S. than in Britain, Germany or Japan.

Conceding the necessity of spending for sheer survival, corporate executives nonetheless complain that the brightest young scientists are flocking into Government-guided work instead of into what Zenith Radio President J. S. Wright calls "the mundane world of household goods." Not only are the glamorous frontier technologies more challenging to inventors, but they are also more rewarding because of generous Government cost-plus contracts.

Says University of Chicago Economist Yale Brozen: "This may represent an uneconomic use of resources because defense potential is more than a matter of having the most advanced weapons. It also depends on the productivity of the economy." Collectivizing the Research. With conspicuous exceptions, such as jet planes, and modern computers, defense research has yielded relatively little "fallout" of new civilian products. As a result of their work for NASA over the past three years, thousands of civilian contractors have received only 23 patents; NASA likes to claim that Pyroceram cooking pots and dishes are a result of research into nose cones, but the manufacturer, Corning Glass Works, denies it. Moreover, "fallout" seems to be shrinking as defense gear becomes increasingly esoteric. "Complexity breeds specialization--you find out everything there is to know about a progressively smaller area--and that is almost the opposite of invention," says Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Vice President Simon ("Si") Ramo, who bossed the original Atlas ICBM program.

Despite the discouraging results so far, many scientists argue that military-space research will ultimately produce an overflowing cornucopia of marketable consumer products, from supersonic planes to small nuclear reactors for home power.

The question is: When?"There is an adequate base of pure research, but it has just not been applied," says Economist J. J. McSweeny, Sperry's director of long-range planning. Scientists point out that it often takes decades for research to translate itself into standard-of-living goods, and right now there is a lull. The man who led the development of the U-2 spy plane, Lockheed Vice President Kelly Johnson, says: "We are not lacking in the capability to invent. Where we have trouble is in the incentive to invent." Raising the Rewards. With much fanfare, corporations have been tinkering for years with breakthrough inventions that, disappointingly, have yet to appear on the market: ultrasonic washers that would clean without water, thermoelectric devices that would use power to produce heat and cold with no moving parts, portable radio telephones. Any of these would help to generate a new wave of consumer buying and melt unemployment.

Worried about the sluggishness in inventiveness, the New Frontier has set up a high-powered Panel on Civilian Technology. Its chief, Management Consultant Michael Michaelis, 43, argues that the railroads could enjoy a renaissance by finding ways to speed rocket-powered passenger trains between cities through tunnels, and that the coal industry could recapture many of the markets it has lost to oil by developing methods to liquefy coal for use in planes or cars. But, he asks, "who wants to be researching the uses of coal when he could be working on getting a man to the moon?" Recognizing that stiff Government laws may be stifling inventiveness, the Michaelis group is debating whether it would be wise to loosen antitrust rules to permit companies to join in research. It is also investigating possible liberalization of tax laws to give higher rewards to inventors. Another way to boost the rewards would be to revamp the nation's confused patent policies; businessmen complain that NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission automatically get patent rights on any inventions that they help to bankroll, then undercut the developing companies by opening the secrets to other manufacturers. Increasing the economic rewards would give a real lift to U.S. inventiveness, contends Si Ramo. Says he: "It's a matter of getting the risks and incentives into balance."

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