Blog Posts

Let’s Thank These Firms for Contributing to the Low Carbon Patent Pledge

Rich firms and persons in a America pay too little in taxes, and yet at the same time they get too few thanks. It is perfectly consistent to believe both of these things. I personally suspect the more they are thanked, the less they will resist paying higher taxes. Whether you believe this or not, […]

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Register your Student Public Invention Club with Us!

Public Invention, Inc., (this non-profit) encourages student groups to create clubs at their schools devoted to the ideas of Public Invention and Humanitarian Engineering. In fact, we’ve written a article explaining how and why to do this, which we would be happy for you to share. However, to use the name “Public Invention”, which is

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How to Start a Public Invention and Humanitarian Engineering Club at your University

— Robert L. Read, PhD, Founder Public Invention — Joshua M. Pearce, John M. Thompson Chair in Information Technology and Innovation Thompson Centre for Engineering Leadership & Innovation, Ivey Business School Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Western University — Avinash Baskaran, PhD candidate, Robotics, Auburn University — Megan Cadena, Biomedical Engineer, UT Austin

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The Humanitarian Engineering Response to the Pandemic: The New Year’s Mid-game

By Ben Coombs “As to diseases, make a habit of two things – to help, or at least to do no harm.” written by Hippocrates in Epidemics.
 A Diagram of Major Humanitarian Engineering Efforts (Link allows zooming)   Early in 2020 the alarm bells rang out. All across the world people tuned into news about

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Our progress and plans: An open letter about the VentMon to donors and grantors

— Robert L. Read In June and July, Public Invention applied for and received two $20,000 grants, one from the Mozilla Open Source Software (MOSS) Foundation, and one from Protocol labs, specifically to develop, make, and give away free-of-charge, the “VentMon” tester for invasive and non-invasive ventilators. The MOSS foundation grant had stronger legal language

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What Makes A Good Public Invention Project? (long form)

“80% of projects are trivial. 20% are impossible. We must work in the thin boundary between these two classes.” — Edsger Dijkstra (quoted from memory) Public Invention fosters project-based invention teams that work “In the public, for the public.” Experience has shown this is a great way to learn, although learning is a secondary benefit

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