You will be asked to present your patents in a science-fair format--your group should:
- make a poster
- prepare a brief oral presentation, and
- prepare a demonstration that will convince others your device has potential as a communcations system. All patents now require a working model, or proto-type.
Inventors create markets as well as technologies; public demonstrations and lectures create momentum for a new technology and establish one's credentials as an inventor. Bell and Gray went to an exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, where they showed their latest work to the public, even ideas that had not been patented. They used such lectures and demonstrations to 'sell' their ideas; these appearances were written up in newspapers, telegraph journals and publications like Scientific American. Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple, and Bill Gates, one of the founders of Microsoft, put on flashy exhibits at computer fairs, highlighting products that were still in the early development stages. Indeed, the popular Windows operating system was labeled 'vaporware' several years after it was first announced, because all the promises could no longer disguise the fact that there was not a working version.
This presentation should include your group's best sense of how your system might have altered history, in the same way that an inventor at the time would speculate on the potential for his or her device to transform society in beneficial ways.
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This page was last edited: Sunday, July 18, 1999