It's a good thing that most inventors don't fall for the "something vaguely like this has been tried with inferior technology before, and it sucked" line of reasoning, or our world would look very different :)
It's a good thing that most inventors don't fall for the "something vaguely like this has been tried with inferior technology before, and it sucked" line of reasoning, or our world would look very different :)
Well, if you're a inventor, you look at the prior art to see if it's been done before. I hold six issued patents, two of which were very profitable. I had one patent rejected because I missed relevant prior art from 1948.