How many times have you actually paid attention to all the things that surround you? Take your eyes away from the computer for a moment and take a good look at all the items that you can see from your chair. You’ll see a computer mouse. You’ll see a lamp, containing a light bulb. You’ll see a plastic bottle with a cap that contains a label and some soda. All of the things around you are monumentally more complicated than they appear. The objects did not appear out of thin air. A person or team of people had to think about the object, had to draw out a plan to create the object, and had to find a way to manufacture it.
Those people are called inventors. In history class, you’ve probably heard your teacher or professor ramble on about the historical importance of invention and they may have touched on some of the most legendary inventions ever developed. In doing this, they didn’t communicate just how important inventors are to modern society. Think about how many people were involved with the creation of that bottle of soda. Hard to fathom, isn’t it? Each part, when it was first developed, was probably vastly different from what it is now. Bottle caps were initially not made out of plastic. Soda recipes were probably revised many times before the drink that you’re sipping on became a finished product. Even the earring or earrings you may be wearing are the result of many human revisions so that their posts don’t hurt your ears.
Inventing something is one of today’s greatest miracles, and to be an inventor may be easier than you think. You could be lucky enough to have a science or engineering background and a keen eye for things that need to be improved upon. If that’s the case, you’ve probably already considered becoming an inventor, or have invented something, and hopefully have it patented. Chances are, though, that you’re not that person. You could be a housewife who spends most of her time at home taking care of the kids. You could be a trades worker who spends many hours in front of a machine doing quality inspections. Or maybe you’re a college student with a vast body of knowledge but very little idea what you want to do when you ‘grow up’. You could fall into virtually any category and successfully patent something that sells like wildfire. All you need is an idea, some passion and a plan. Most people have a subject or two they can profess they’re an expert on, and in many cases, they have opinions about how their experience with it could be improved. The opinions are the seeds that can grow you into a patent-holding inventor.
You may find the process of getting a patent and marketing a novel product difficult to understand. However, you may be comforted to know that the US Patent and Trademark Office – the regulatory center of intellectual property in the United States – approves nearly half of the patent applications they receive every year. That’s because the people who submit the applications are passionate about the product they invented and are ready to effectively prove that their creation is special. In your life, have you ever had to fight for something that you sincerely believed in? Well, the practice of inventing and patenting will tap the energy source you used to fight, and will exercise it so that you become a stronger person. Look at the invention process as a way to obtain personal growth instead of a nuisance. And remember, you aren’t alone: there are plenty of resources available to the aspiring inventor. You might just fall in love with wearing shoes like Thomas Edison once wore.
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