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Robert Bunsen, Open Source Pioneer?
cygtoad writes "Today marks Robert Bunsen's 200th birthday. I found this interesting factoid on the man: 'Bunsen and Desaga did not apply for patent protection on their burner and it was quite soon that others began to produce their own versions. Some even went so far as to claim the invention as their own, including one person who was granted a patent on the device. Both Bunsen and Desaga were involved in writing letters to the proper authorities to refute these claims.' Does anyone have an older example of such an open information pioneer? In my book he deserves some honor." Benjamin Franklin famously chose not to patent the design of the stove that bears his name, too; you can read all about it.
When you have a system where you can actually make more money suing for patent infringement and protecting "intellectual property" than you can for actually creating a product, what do you think businesses will do? It probably wasn't the case back then.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Discovered fire... and didn't patent it.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
The inventor of fire never got a patent on it. Think of all the royalties he missed out on!
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Whatever, everyone knows Robert Bunsen plagiarized everything from his brother Honeydew. Beaker, you see, was his lover.
Before patents. The real lesson here is people were obtaining patents on things they didn't invent even back then.
There is no -1 Disagree.
If the open source crowd was to do what these guys did they would release their code as public domain. This is not the same. Stop trying to hang your little label on every other thing that comes along.
Man up and go public domain or you're just a lot of hot air.
I thought Michael Faraday came up with the original gas laboratory burner. Bunsen merely improved on the design. I guess, like the telephone or television, no person can claim to be the sole inventor.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Fire. The inventor of fire never got a patent on it. Think of all the royalties he missed out on!
Untrue. Zeus held the patent, there was even enforcement. Prometheus paid quite a high price for his infringement.
Is that both Bunsen and Franklin were already quite well-off when they decided not to patent their ideas. It helps.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
Although not pre-dating Bunsen, my favorite, and explicit anti-patent inventor is Jagdish Chandra Bose, benefactor to us all in so many ways. He even proved that plant and animal tissues are have parallels to one another.
Can I patent this abuse of a thumb drive?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Something tells me this account has been hacked. Someone who posts material like this isn't exactly the first person I'd think of on a list of 'who could get to excellent karma on slashdot'.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
The Curie couples are often depicted as people dedicated to science and nothing else. They really saw that as the enrichment of human knowledge and apparently never tried to monetize their discovery.
It is too bad that this kind of dedication in the research field is obscured by IP discussions.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
There needs to be an "anti-patent" that you can file that says "I invented this first, but I choose not to patent it". Something that would be legally binding and prevent later patents from people who look for things and ideas without patents and then file the patents for themselves.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Perhaps the original post should have said that 31 March was Robert Bunsen's birthday, because it was posted one day later on 1 April.
Besides being a brilliant political philosopher and theologian Priestley invented "impregnated water" but abhorred the idea of patents and the monopolies they grant. Josiah Schweppes was the dude who commercialized the product. Thank Joseph Priestley every time you enjoy American democracy, liberal Christianity, or carbonated beverages.
Am I the only one who finds the passion for celebrating the birthdays of dead guys to be somewhat inexplicable? I mean sure, he was born; so what? Most of us manage that. And he's not getting another year older anymore, nor can you congratulate him on that fact, so the idea of celebrating a birthday seems fairly pointless. If you want to commemorate a famous dead person, celebrate on a day they did something for which you particularly respect them; such as the date Bunsen first published his designs, in this case.
So even if this would have been patented in 1855, the patent would have expired in 1875. And Bunsen could have made some money. That doesn't seem like a problem. I welcome inventors making some money off their inventions.
I contend that, if you were to abolish patents completely tomorrow, people would still want to create and invent and solve problems. The pace of innovation would not slow down but increase, because no firm could ever rest on its laurels.
The arguments that clever people do not work unless paid very highly; that people do not express themselves unless given copyright protection; that people do not invent unless they can win a patent - all these arguments are oft repeated and rarely proven. IME all the cleverest people want is an environment where they can dedicate their time to their art.
Think of all the royalties and rent-seeking potential for "heaven", "hell", indulgences, salvation, etc.
and for those who would add [citation needed] - look up L. Ron Hubbard + religion
and then put it into the public domain. Does that make it impossible to patent?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Back then, science was believed to be universal, and majority of scientists were idealistic to the point that they would send idealists of today crying to a corner in shame.
Read radical news here
This is the kind of awesomeness that won't be possible anymore under First to File, which some asshats are very keen on switching to.
Here's an interesting fact for you: factoid does not mean what you think it does. Though I realize that asking /. editors to pick up on something like that is a pipe dream.
I think it was OMNI magazine that had the cartoon:
"Bunsen, your work on chromatography is excellent. But what really impresses me is that cute little burner you have there."
After a series of deadly methane explosions in British coal mines, Sir Humphrey Davy (1778-1829) invented an oil lamp with a metal mesh-encased wick, which became known as the Davy lamp. He released it without patent, and the design quickly spread. Humphrey determined through experimentation that methane only exploded at a certain mixture with oxygen, at a certain (high) temperature. The metal mesh dissipated the heat of the wick below the ignition point, which alerting the miners to the presence of methane ("fire damp") by burning at a different color. It was considered an early triumph of the application of the scientific method to a critical public need.
For a fascinating read on the era, I can't recommend Richard Holmes' recent book The Age of Wonder highly enough.
Santos Dummont - inventor of the air plane
No, that's an attempt by Brazil to pump up a national hero.
The Wright brothers didn't use a catapult in the 1903 flight, and the claim you just made would be wrong even if they had.
There is a nice story about that in the "Science of Discworld" series. Contrary to what you would expect from the title, these books are about our real science. The Discworld is just used as an outsider standpoint to look at our science.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Actually Bunsen only opened the air source during experiments. Bunsen would agree with Microsoft that it's safest to keep the source closed most of the time.
Why would you think that? Ben Franklin's comment on why he contributed the design of his stove patent free has pretty obvious roots in the teachings of Timothy about not being in love with money. Read the cited articles and seefor yourself.
The fact that this post was marked offtopic tells me that perhaps your avg SL reader ought to get out a bit more. Not everything of worth comes from the left side of the brain...
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Dozens of people around the world contributed to the early development of powered flight, and even though the Wright Brothers were (probably) first, their excessive and draconian use of patents ensured their work was largely irrelevant to the development of the aeroplane. A lot of other people shared what they learned, which is why many of their machines quickly started to look like our modern idea of an aeroplane rather than the tail-first pusher-prop wing-warping monstrosity that was the Flyer.
I have no problem with giving the Wright Brothers credit for the first sustained heavier-than-air powered flight over level ground, but their subsequent actions had the effect of holding back rather than advancing the field of aeronautics, which is kind of the point TFA is making about Bunsen and patents. The only worse example that comes to mind is Matthew Bolton, who through his sharp business practices and political chicanery only narrowly avoided bringing the entire Industrial Revolution to a grinding halt.
[ ]Half Empty [ ]Half Full [x]Twice as big as it needs to be
Well, perhaps if you had said what you said here in the first post, it wouldn't have seemed as off-topic. At first it just looked like one of those bots that goes around posting Bible Quotes absent context.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
If you ever want to present the best argument for abolishing patents, just watch Connections with James Burke. All the episodes are available on YouTube:
Starting here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcSxL8GUn-g