Origins
Lemelson believed invention and innovation were key to American economic success and dynamism, yet he was also deeply concerned that American businesses and society were ignoring the origins of this innovation, which he believed were the minds and achievements of American inventors. Lemelson conceived of the idea of a foundation that would support and celebrate independent inventors when he himself was a struggling young inventor. He envisioned a foundation that would promote the idea that young people should have scientists and inventors as their role models, and provide support for these budding inventors through grants that would give college inventors without seed capital the ability to develop, refine, and take their inventions to market.
A memorial video produced after Lemelson's death includes this statement he made in 1996: "I have had a substantial amount of success in the last five years licensing my patents, and I feel I have an obligation to plow back a portion of the income I made to improve the lot of the inventor in America, and to improve the future economy of this country". Jerome Lemelson created the Lemelson Foundation to promote these ideas and values.
Read more about this topic: Lemelson Foundation
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)