Inventions
In his various incarnations, Tom Swift, usually in his teens, is inventive and science-minded, "Swift by name and swift by nature." Tom is portrayed as a natural genius. In the earlier series, he is said to have had little formal education, the character originally modeled after such figures as Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss. In most of the five series, each book focuses on Tom's latest invention, and its role either in solving a problem or mystery, or in assisting Tom in feats of exploration or rescue. Often Tom must protect his new invention from villains "intent on stealing Tom's thunder or preventing his success," but Tom is always successful in the end.
Many of Tom Swift's fictional inventions either mirrored or presaged actual technological developments. Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers (1911) was based on Charles Parsons's attempts to synthesize diamonds using electric current. Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone was published in 1912; however, the process for sending photographs by telephone was not developed until 1925. Tom Swift and His Wizard Camera (1912) features a portable movie camera, not invented until 1923, and Tom Swift and His Electric Locomotive (1922) was published two years before the Central Railroad of New Jersey placed the first diesel electric locomotive into service. The house on wheels that Tom invents in 1929's Tom Swift and His House on Wheels pre-dated the first house trailer by a year, and Tom Swift and His Diving Seacopter (1952) features a flying submarine similar to one planned by the United States Department of Defense four years later in 1956. Other inventions of Tom's have not come to pass, such as the device for silencing airplane engines that he invents in Tom Swift and His Magnetic Silencer (1941).
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Famous quotes containing the word inventions:
“New inventions can and will be made; however, nothing new can be thought of that concerns moral man. Everything has already been thought and said which at best we can express in different forms and give new expressions to.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of Western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process.”
—Kenneth MacKenzie Clark, Baron of Saltwood (1903–1983)
“By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)