AN AUSTRALIAN SCHEME.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 September 1920, Page 9

AN AUSTRALIAN SCHEME.

ASSISTANCE FOR INVENTORS. The inventor seems to be in for a good time in Melbourne. If a proposition now being put before the trade unions is adopted by them and carried into effect, the person who has conceived the idea of some new invention and lias not the technical knowledge, equipment, or money to put it to a practical test, will be aide to place it before an Inventions Bureau, run on selfsupporting business lines, and embracing trade union representatives, technical experts, business organisers, and others who are capable of determining the value of an invention, of testing its practical etliciency, assessing its commercial value, and putting it on the market as a business proposition. The, Age, in offering the scheme its sympathetic encouragement, points out that tlif inventor is generally a poor man, frequently a , working 'mechanic, and even if he is' able to put his ideas to a practical test, "force of economic circumstances frequently compels him to sell his patent for comparatively a mere song to someone who reaps a reward in tens of thousands. History contains the particulars of thousands of instances in which inventors, have made others rich and have themselves died in poverty." And then there is the vast army of people who are confident that an idea that crossed their minds at some time in their lives would have made them fabulously rich, if only they could have induced'someone to take them up at his own cost, and make a commercial success of them. One thing is certain about tho Melbourne bureau —if it does 'mot lead to many useful new inventions beiii" placed on the market, it will give unmixed joy to a host of hopeful inventors.