American Inventor - Anyone who has watched the American inventor television show on ABC knows the importance of innovation to Americans. From Benjamin Franklin on, and probably for a good bit before him as well, American inventors have led the world with their ingenuity, and done all kinds of things to make life better. Why Henry Ford, founder of the Ford motor company, might be most popularly known for his car, but this American inventor made an even bigger contribution to the world of mass production by getting the assembly line going. No one else has ever made such an important American invention in the area of mass production, and the machine age owes more to him than to almost anyone else.
If you are an American inventor, however, not all is just smarts, dough, and glory. As an American inventor you have to take careful precautions to safeguard the work that you do, or else it could be stolen by one of any number of other people. This is no joke. In this world of evil multinational corporations which are willing to steal anything from anyone, your only possible safeguard is to patent your invention. And even that might not be enough to keep you safe from these robber barons. Many an American inventor has seen their life’s work ruined, turned to another’s profit, or even worse, because they did not bother to do a patent lookup and to get appropriate legal protection for all of the hard work that they did getting their invention to run. It seems like a shame to me for an American inventor to not go through the work to do this, when you can often get a patent it yourself kit for under 30 dollars.
But then again, American inventors, like all inventors, have always been a quirky bunch. They will spend all of their time thinking up new, sometimes brilliant, and sometimes utterly bizarre devices, but will often not give any thought to how to market them, or turn them to a profit. That is why the American inventor, in spite of his brilliance, is often the first person to get ripped off by ruthless profiteers. They all have faith that, if they are a talented enough or an innovative enough American inventor, everything will work out right for them in the end. The reality of the world, however, is that things do not always work out for the best. Even an American inventor sometimes has to face the music.
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