The Face of Invention: Skills, Experience, and the Commitment to Patenting in Nineteenth-century Victoria

• Published in: Australian economic history review Vol. 38; no. 3; pp. 232 - 257
• Main Author: Magee, Gary B.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK and Boston, USA Blackwell Publishers Ltd 01.11.1998; Sydney University Press
• Subjects: Age; Australia; Australia: Economic history; Birthplace; Degree of specialisation; Economic history; Foreign patentees; Industry composition; Innovation; Inventions; Multiple patenting; New South Wales: Economic history; Occupational composition; Occupations; Prolific patentees; Skills; Victoria; Victoria: Economic history
• ISSN: 0004-8992; 1467-8446
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-8446.00032

This paper uses patent data from Victoria to examine the roles played by skill and experience in Australian invention during the colonial era. In addition to identifying a broadening involvement of Australians in inventive activity in the second half of the nineteenth century, this paper also provides evidence which indicates that technological creativity in Australia in this period did not depend on either the existence of a body of highly skilled workers or major advances in the stock of knowledge of which only they were cognizant. Rather, common sense and the acquisition of basic practical skills appear to have been the only prerequisites for inventiveness. Given the widespread availability of such skills in the colonies, the article concludes that the supply of patentable ideas in nineteenth‐century Australia must have been fairly elastic.