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inventor
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Thomas Alva Edison stands leaning against a workbench in his laboratory in 1906, surrounded by scientific equipment and glass bottles. Illustration showing two types of human hand grips: a power grip holding a stick with the whole hand and a precision grip holding a small object between the thumb and fingertips. Imhotep An illustration of Archimedes' screw shows a helical screw inside a slanted tube, lifting water from a lower pool to a higher level when the handle at the top is turned. Ctesibius of Alexandria Heron of Alexandria's aeolipile. Johannes Gutenberg, wearing a fur-trimmed robe, examines his first printed proof sheet with two assistants in a workshop beside an early printing press. Lippershey, Hans Torricelli, detail of a portrait by an unknown artist Guericke, engraving by C. Galle, 1649, after a portrait by Anselmus von Hulle
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Thomas Alva Edison stands leaning against a workbench in his laboratory in 1906, surrounded by scientific equipment and glass bottles.
Thomas Edison Thomas Edison in his laboratory, 1906.

inventor

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inventor, a person who brings ideas or objects together in a novel way to create an invention, something that did not exist before. Inventors defy definition; as a result, they are frequently defined by what they are not. For example, though there is a close relation between invention and science and engineering, an inventor is not necessarily a scientist or an engineer. A scientist is said to be a discoverer—that is, somebody who by acute...

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