• Question: how long does it take normally for an invention to be made

    Asked by bendevolfc796 to Zoe, Sheryl, Shahil, Emma, Andy, Andres on 10 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Andy Woods

      Andy Woods answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      It depends what the invention is. It can take decades for a scientific advance to be turned into something that could be made at a price we can afford to buy it for.

      For me it takes about 3 years for one of our designs to be built and have trains running on it.

    • Photo: Andres Rivero

      Andres Rivero answered on 11 Mar 2017:

      Hi,

      It really depends. A new idea could just take seconds and doing a rough drawing about it could take 5 minutes. However, as you make the design more specific and specific (from dimensions of bolts and screws, etc), it could take months to do it. And then could take even few years to scale it up to big sizes (like an airplane, for example) and to get all the safety certifications.

      Andres

    • Photo: Sheryl Williams

      Sheryl Williams answered on 12 Mar 2017:

      Hi bendevolfc796,

      The last big project ( Remote Lab) we worked on took us just under 4 years and we still have things we can improve on.

      Sheryl

    • Photo: Emma Ryan

      Emma Ryan answered on 13 Mar 2017:

      Everyone’s answers are really good! Just to add to them – there’s also all the laws involved. You have to make sure that your invention is safe and hasn’t copied anyone else and does what it’s meant to do. There are lawyers called Patent Lawyers who deal with all this.

      I sometimes think about it as a job because it’s well paid and seems quite interesting and you’d need an engineering background to understand the inventions. However, I realise that I would much rather be inventing things that talking about other people’s inventions. What about you?

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