Invention and Innovation - Vaclav Smil  ## Metadata - Author: **Vaclav Smil** - Full Title: Invention and Innovation - Category: #books ## Highlights - The first category comprises an enormous variety of simple handmade items, starting with stone tools made once our ancestors became bipedal, which freed their hands for performing deliberately complicated tasks. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp7vs1pp766mr71ka6ps0ck9)) - Machines belong to the second category of inventions, that of new and more or less complex devices or mechanisms deployed for both stationary use and transportation. Large waterwheels, windmills, tall stone blast furnaces with waterwheel-activated leather bellows, and oceangoing sailing ships were among the most remarkable premodern inventions in this category. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp7vrqtne6sskzqsc68d9878)) - That is why the third category of inventions, new materials, has been an obvious marker of civilization’s progress, from the age of stone and wood to the era of metals, mixtures, and compounds. Inventions in the third category began with bronze, proceeded to iron and steel (iron’s largely decarbonized alloy), and now include aluminum and a dozen other common metals, as well as glass, cement (an aggregate of materials), and, starting in the late nineteenth century, a still-expanding variety of plastics and—the most recent addition—carbon-based composites, light yet stronger than steel. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp7vsp7ng7sar4sqvczj9yja)) - The fourth category of invention consists of new methods of production, operation, and management, ranging from marginal but economically rewarding improvements to fundamentally new and highly automated ways of mass-scale manufacturing, information gathering, and data processing. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp7vsx26gsdeh0sg6avtyny4)) - As commonly used, the meanings of the terms *invention* and *innovation* have a large overlap, but innovation is perhaps best understood as the process of introducing, adopting, and mastering new materials, products, processes, and ideas. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp7vxxjn9mpd3d534eq9gh5a)) ## New highlights added March 16, 2025 at 9:17 AM - And we can only guess at how much this effort will cost. Initial cost estimates for ITER were as low as €5 billion, but by 2016 ITER’s director had admitted that the project was a decade late and at least €4 billion over budget, with later reports showing the overall sum reaching €15 billion, and in 2018 the US Department of Energy nearly tripled its cost estimate for ITER, to $65 billion. ITER leaders dismissed that claim, but by 2021 they were admitting to further, COVID-19-related delays and cost overruns. Even if the learning process is taken into account, the most optimistic estimate for demonstration reactors (at least three of them, to be built after 2040) would not be less than $20 billion each. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jpfrqdpjvy89vsjrtgaxr4c4))