Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain

Stathis Arapostathis is Lecturer in the History of Science and Technology, Department of Philosophy and History of Science, at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

An examination of the fierce disputes that arose in Britain in the decades around 1900 concerning patents for electrical power and telecommunications.

Patently Contestable is a dazzling display of the power of history to speak to the most pressing concerns of our modern technological age. This book challenges the fundamental assumptions that allow corporations to monopolize socially and collectively won innovations as their 'intellectual property.' -- Colin Divall, The University of York The image of the lone inventor has long had a powerful hold on the public imagination. But who really invented the light bulb, or the telephone, or radio? As Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday show in their incisive study of controversies in the British electrical industry, the answer was rarely simple and often hotly disputed. By examining, in concrete detail, fundamental questions concerning invention, patents, and what came to be called 'intellectual property,' Arapostathis and Gooday shed light on issues whose significance reaches far beyond the history of technology. -- Bruce J. Hunt, University of Texas Arapostathis and Gooday fully deliver on their promise to unpack the contested relationships between inventors and their inventions. It may seem obvious who invented what, but this survey of the bloody battlefield of electrical technology at the beginning of the twentieth century should convince its readers otherwise. This is a book that shows how the history of technology ought to matter for contemporary policy -- and that policy-makers should read with care. -- Iwan Morus, Professor of History, Aberystwyth University