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BOOKS AND ARTICLES
THE ART OF INVENTING THE ROADS WE CHOOSE
Books and articles / And then came the inventor
Inventive activity is multifaceted, it is not only problem solving. You need to find a problem, solve it, turn a new idea into a workable design, introduce a new machine, device or method. And yet the most important thing is to solve the problem. You can take a ready task. Often, inventors solve competitive problems. The development of a new idea, its transformation into a working design, implementation can be carried out by others, say, a group of specialists: they read the description of the invention, requested details from the author, and introduced the novelty into production. Of course, it is best if the author participates in the work at all stages. But it is necessary and sufficient for the author to participate in solving the problem; here the author cannot be replaced. The decision is the basis of the foundations of invention. The inventor of the XNUMXth century was a master craftsman, he built a new machine with his own hands, remade it in every way, making it work. A modern inventor is, first of all, a thinker, an intellectual. Of course, it's great if the inventor has skillful hands. You need to know the production, be able to make calculations, design, draw. And yet the most important thing is subtle and precise intellectual operations. Before it comes to drawing or making a model, an idea for a solution must be developed, and this is a complex process. First, the inventor has to answer a difficult question: should he take on this problem or abandon it, replacing it with another problem aimed at achieving the same goal? In essence, this is a question of whether the given technical system has development reserves or whether the reserves have been exhausted and it is necessary to create a fundamentally new system. Let's look at specific examples of how such a question arises and how it should be answered. Problem 40. DON'T GUESS! When iron is smelted in blast furnaces, slag is formed - a mixture of molten oxides of magnesium, calcium, etc. Slag, having a temperature of 1000 °, is poured into large ladles and taken to slag processing plants on railway platforms. Slag melt is a valuable raw material for the manufacture of building materials. But the hardened slag ceases to be such a raw material: it is unprofitable to melt it again. At first, all the slag in the ladle is liquid. However, during transportation, a hard crust forms and quickly grows on its surface. You have to punch it with the help of special (rather bulky) devices. The crust, even with holes punched in it, retains some of the liquid slag. As a result, only two-thirds of the slag is drained from the ladle in slag processing plants. The rest goes to landfill. And you need to spend a lot of work to free the ladle from hardened slag, and then take this slag out of the plant. And so a meeting was called at the research institute. “We need to make a bucket with good thermal insulation,” one scientist suggested. - They tried - it's not good, - objected the representative of the plant. - Thermal insulation takes up a lot of space, the bucket becomes wider, and this is unacceptable for rail transportation. - And the lid? - the scientist did not concede. - Why not make a heat-insulating cover? After all, the main part of the heat goes from above - where the hot slag comes into contact with cold air. - They tried, - the representative of the plant sighed. - A bucket the size of a room. Can you imagine what kind of cover you need? You have to install and remove it with a crane. So much hassle... - It is necessary to solve another problem, - said the second scientist. - Let's think about the restructuring of the entire production. So that the slag does not have to be carried far. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” objected the third scientist. - I would set the task differently: to ensure high-speed delivery of slag. - We must look at the root, - said the fourth. - The task can be set even wider: to smelt cast iron without the formation of slag. And then an inventor appeared. "Don't guess," he said. - The task should be formulated as follows ... How do you think the task should be formulated? In essence, we have before us a whole heap of problems (the so-called inventive situation), and it is not known how to choose that single problem, the solution of which will give the best result. Problem 41. LET'S UNDERSTAND THE SITUATION For the production of sheet glass, the incandescent glass ribbon is fed onto a conveyor. The tape rolls from one metal roller to another, gradually cooling down. And then the glass has to be polished for a long time, because the glass tape that has not yet hardened bends, “creeping” from one roller to another, and irregularities form on the glass. The engineers who first encountered this problem suggested making the rollers as thin as possible. The thinner the rollers, the smaller the depression between them. This means that the glass tape will turn out smoother. But here a technical contradiction arose: the thinner the rollers, the more difficult it is to make a huge - tens of meters - conveyor from them. If, say, the thickness of a roller is equal to the thickness of a match, 500 rollers will be required for each meter of the conveyor, and they will have to be installed with pinpoint accuracy. And if the roller is thinner than the thread? "It's okay," said one young engineer. - There are masters who paint a whole picture on a poppy seed. Let's design a conveyor with very thin rollers. And there will be craftsmen. “Think about how much such a conveyor would cost,” they objected to him. - No, let's leave large rollers, try to improve the polishing process, we will straighten the wavy surface of the glass. - It is necessary to throw out the conveyor altogether! someone else suggested. - It would be nice to replace it with something fundamentally new. And then an inventor appeared. “Let’s take a look at the situation,” he said. - Of these tasks, it should be preferred ... And he explained which task should be given priority. And what do you think? Problems 40 and 41 are relatively easy to deal with. In problem 40, the system "Transportation of slag" is given, which is part of the supersystem "Iron production". We have no complaints about the supersystem, there is no need to change it. The system also copes with its main job - it moves the slag. Everything is fine, except that some of the slag solidifies during transportation. It makes no sense to rebuild the entire system because of this, and even more so the supersystem. After all, it is absurd to refuse a car due to the fact that the front glass is sometimes dirty ... In such cases, the transition from the situation to the task is carried out according to a very simple rule: "Everything remains as it was, but the drawback disappears." Let the slag continue to be transported in normal open ladles, but no hard crust should form. Problem 41 shows a different picture. The system does not cope with its main function: the conveyor must, first of all, form an even glass ribbon, and only then - this is the second thing - to take it away from the furnace. The roller conveyor has exhausted the possibilities of its development (not in general, of course, but in glass production), and it must be replaced with a new system. Of course, there may be intermediate cases when there is no firm certainty: either to keep the existing system, or to look for a fundamentally new system. In such cases, one must begin with a formulation of the problem in which the system is preserved. Any exact science does not exclude art. For example, with the same telescope, different results can be obtained, depending on the skill of the researcher. Much depends on the goals that he sets himself. Suppose the task is to replace conventional ships with something fundamentally new. A ship is a system operating at the macro level: the hull, engines, propellers - all these are pieces of iron, and very, very large ones at that. Sooner or later, this system must move to the micro level, although today it is difficult to imagine exactly how such a ship would look like. What can the theory of inventive problem solving say? Firstly, the problem of transition to the micro level is, in principle, quite solvable. Secondly, the "Ship" system has not yet entered the third stage of development, when a rigid, permanent form will be replaced by a flexible, changing one. The reserves for the development of the system are far from being exhausted, and, therefore, many decades may pass before the transition to the micro level. And that's it! This is where the theory stops. The choice of task depends on the person. He must decide for himself what to prefer: a crane in the sky or a titmouse in his hand. It is only necessary to clearly imagine: if you undertake the creation of a fundamentally new technical system, and the old one has not yet exhausted the possibilities of development, the path to the recognition and implementation of the invention will be long, very long. A problem that is ahead of its time is not easy to solve. And it is even more difficult to prove that a new system is possible and even necessary. In the previous chapter, I mentioned the vibrating gyroscope. So, the application for this invention was filed in 1954, and the inventor received a copyright certificate only twenty-one years later. It took two decades to prove the feasibility, usefulness and novelty of the invention! Imagine that about two hundred years ago an inventor comes to shipbuilders and says: "Why are you bothering with sails? Remove the sails, put on a steam pump - there is such a machine in coal mines. Let the pump turn the wheels like a mill ... That will be great!" It is unlikely that anyone would believe that this is not a joke and that we are talking about a great invention - the steamboat. The famous Soviet inventor / designer Alexander Grigoryevich Presnyakov applied for an unusual ship - without propellers and paddle wheels. Under the bottom of the ship is an electromagnet in the form of a pipe. There are also two metal plates connected to an electric battery. Sea water is a conductor of electricity, so current flows between the plates. And the magnetic field (remember the physics of the seventh grade) sets in motion a conductor with current. As a result, the water is thrown back, and the ship moves forward. Presnyakov filed an application for an invention in 1955 ... and was refused. The experts were indignant: what nonsense - to throw out the engines and replace them with an electromagnetic pump! .. The inventor had to argue, prove, convince ... Only in 1969 Presnyakov received a copyright certificate. Fourteen years he sought recognition! And there were other stages ahead - detailed design development, experiments, implementation ... There are still no ships with Presnyakov engines. Although over time they will definitely appear. The transition of technical systems to the micro level is a law. But the sequence of development is the same law: the system must first exhaust the possibilities of development at the macro level, and only then can the transition to the micro level be made. Alexander Grigorievich Presnyakov did not receive an author's fee, his invention so far exists only on paper. But a page is forever inscribed in the history of shipbuilding that the first ship with a magnetohydro - a dynamic engine, ahead of its time, was invented by A. G. Presnyakov. The joy of creativity, the consciousness that you were able to solve the problem of the future - such is the reward of the inventor. Society has also won: when the time comes to transfer the "Ship" system to the micro level, one of the ways of this transition will be clear. Premature inventions end up being big and profitable... There is another possibility: the "Ship" system today is by no means outdated, energy can be directed to solving relatively small tasks to improve the ship and its individual parts at the macro level. There are many tasks here - solve and implement. In a few years, you can get twenty, thirty, fifty copyright certificates, implement most of the inventions, see what was invented in nature, hear words of gratitude from people who have made their work easier with your invention. And get royalties. Problem 42 The ship was loaded in the port. A powerful crane lowered pallets with bags into the open opening of the ship's hold. It was raining heavily and water got into the hold. - Well, the weather, - grumbled one of the movers. - Wet through... "There's nothing you can do about it," replied the other. - During loading, you can’t close the hold, you can’t put the roof on ... And then an inventor appeared. “We need a special roof,” he said. - So that the rain does not pass, and the loads fall freely. Look here... What kind of roof did the inventor propose? Thousands of ships are in ports. Tens of thousands of people work under the sun, rain, snow. A roof over the holds is undoubtedly needed. And it's easy to come up with it. A similar problem arose a long time ago: to avoid drafts in the factory floor, the doors must be closed. And for forklift trucks to pass freely, the doors must be open. The contradiction was eliminated very simply: the door leaves were made of dense rubber. The loader drives freely - the doors open and then close themselves. The opening of the ship's hold is wider than the factory doors. But the roof flaps can be made inflatable - they will stand above the hold like a gable roof. The load will freely push such doors apart and fall down. This invention was easily issued a copyright certificate - everything is so obvious ...
It is necessary to solve all sorts of problems - small, medium, large and largest. But the disadvantages of the trial and error method are more pronounced, the larger the task. Therefore, huge institutions are working to improve existing systems and there are no institutions to "invent" fundamentally new systems. With the advent of TRIZ, the situation is changing, and it must be assumed that over time, invention bureaus will be organized, specializing in the search for and solution of problems of the distant future. The most advantageous situation is when the system has exhausted its development possibilities and must be replaced today by another system based on other principles. The shortcomings of the old system are obvious to everyone, the new idea is eagerly awaited. As in problem 41: it is unprofitable to make rollers even thinner. The roller conveyor obviously needs to be replaced by something fundamentally different.
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