In technology studies, nothing is more mysterious yet more central than the act of invention. Technological historians, however, have yet to develop a precise interpretation of how an inventor identifies an opportunity, develops a new idea, and manifests it in a physical device. In response to this conceptual lacuna, Drs. Carlson and Gorman are studying invention as a mental or cognitive process. To do so, they are comparing how Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas A. Edison, and Elisha Gray developed the telephone from 1870 to 1880. They have chosen these inventors because their work is well documented by notebooks, sketches, and artifacts and because their efforts to perfect this invention have received limited scholarly attention. To analyze and compare the work of these inventors, they are drawing on recent work in cognitive science. In particular, they are considering three elements of the cognitive process of invention: how an inventor conceptualizes an invention (mental model); the strategies he or she uses to develop an invention (heuristics); and the specific technical devices he or she uses to construct an invention (mechanical representations). To study these three elements, they have created computer mapping techniques which allow them to use the inventors' original sketches in branching-tree diagrams. In addition, they intend to investigate how an inventor's cognitive practices are influenced by his or her social context. Through this research, they expect to enrich the history of technology with a new conceptual framework and a detailed study of a major invention, suggest to cognitive scientists how technological creativity may be effectively studied, and help interested laymen see inventors not as mysterious geniuses but as individuals with specific talents and skills.
