Hacker News Reader

Comment by crumbshot | Hacker News Reader

> She designed her first model in the shed behind her house in Shelbyville, Ill. Her lack of formal engineering education, however, became an obstacle, so she sought out someone who could help. Mechanic George Butters agreed to assist her in building the prototype.

So the engineer did all the actual hard work here in coming up with a working prototype, but the wealthy funder takes almost all of the credit, and puts the patent solely in their name.

A much fairer framing would be that the two of them were co-inventors.

View on HN

No. She came up with the idea, she built the prototype, she had the vision. To name some lackey who only did what they were told an inventor is a disservice.

Lackey? That's like saying steve jobs founded apple and steve wozniak was a lackey. Ideas aren't worth anything unless you have someone who can actually turn the idea into a reality. Strange to see this kind of dismissive response of an actual engineer here.

They both built the prototype. Without a proof of concept that has the actual details figured out to make it work, it's just an idea.

Downplaying the essential role of an experienced and knowledgeable engineer as merely being a "lackey" is the real disservice.

Your making assumptions here. There's no details on what exactly was needed from an engineering perspective. Was it design? Was it merely the knowledge to work the tools? She hired this person, but would any engineer have worked? If all he did was follow instructions and a plan and build what she designed then he was a lackey. Now he may have been more then that. But all the information I've seen so far has pointed to her being the designer, her being the driving force for this.

Normally the person who comes up with the idea and basic design is considered the inventor. For anything even vaguely complicated, it's likely that multiple people are involved in building the prototype.

This propensity to give one person all or almost all of the credit is the problem. And it tends to be biased towards either the wealthiest person involved, or the one that just had the idea.

As you note, it is often a team effort, and so the whole team should be rewarded with the credit for the invention. Rather than basically ignoring those whose design and/or engineering expertise were essential to its completion and delivery.

I mean, I think the term 'inventor' is probably pretty unhelpful, in that in the popular imagination it _is_ a lone genius, and you're never going to stop people thinking that.

I think we need to know more about the employment details to say whether this is unfair. as an engineer myself (albeit of a different sort), nine times out of ten I would rather be paid a little more than have a patent in my name or receive "credit".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com