TEMPORAL and SPATIAL VARIABILITY OF CANADIAN INVENTIVE COMPANIES and THEIR INVENTIONS: AN ISSUE OF OWNERSHIP

Inventing is an important prerequisite for industrial economies to remain technologically competitive. Yet it is not well known how inventive companies of domestic or foreign ownership can affect a nation's technological base and, ultimately, its spatial-economic system. The present study examines this relationship in Canada by investigating the performance of its indigenous and foreign-owned inventive companies at the national, subnational, and urban levels. The results indicate that: (1) Canada's indigenous inventive companies are distinct from their foreign-owned counterparts in that they are generally smaller, are more apt to have teams of inventors, are more likely to develop product inventions, have come to manage a greater share of this nation's inventions, and are increasing their role in key Canadian industries; and (2) geographically, Canada's two largest cities and its core region were adversely affected by the declining inventiveness of American-controlled companies during the 1980s. L'esprit ?invention est une nécessité pour que les économies industrielles restent en conditions de concurrence technologique. Cependant, on connaît très peu de la manière que les entreprises inventives de propriété domestique ou étrangère affectent la base technologique ?un pays et, enfin, affectent son système spatio-écono-mique. La présente étude considère ces rapports au Canada au niveau national, sous-national et local, en exminant les performances des entreprises inventives indigènes et étrangères. Les résultats indiquent (1) qu'au Canada les entreprises indigènes et inventives diffèrent de leurs analogues étrangers: en général elles sont plus petites, ont plus tendance à consister en équipes ?inven-teurs, sont plus susceptibles de développer les inventions produites, produisent une plus grande part des inventions canadiennes, et sont en train ?augmenter leur rôle dans les industries canadiennes; et (2) que le déclin de ?esprit ?invention dans les entreprises dirigées par les américains a affecté défavorablement les deux villes les plus grandes au Canada, ainsi que la partie centrale du pays, pendant les années 1980. Mots-clés: invention, Canada, propriétéétrangère, technologie, produit     

Illegible ethnicity and the invention of Scots-Irish narratives on the stages of Belfast and Appalachia

Theatrical stages have long been home to performances of identity, creating and sustaining legible visions of various peoples and groups for their audiences. Indeed, in the nineteenth century, the playwright/actor Dion Boucicault popularised the “stage Irishman” for Irish and American audiences alike, thus contributing to the invention of “Irish-America”. This paper examines a similar attempt in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to query the definition of a distinct group of Irish-Americans: the Scots-Irish. Productions from Belfast, Northern Ireland, as well as from the southern Appalachian Mountains, demonstrate how the illegibility of the Scots-Irish – in other words, their status as a non-recognisable, incoherent segment of the white population in the USA – allows for narratives about this group to be highly malleable. Contemporary productions of the Scots-Irish story demonstrate the ways in which ethnic identities emerge as constructions of past and present, memory and history, and politics and culture.     

Shelley’s “Letter to Maria Gisborne” as Workshop Poetry

ABSTRACT

Shelley’s “Letter to Maria Gisborne” is a playful improvisational verse epistle, widely praised for its urbanity and its display of the poet’s invention. The verses turn on a catalogue of the collection of odd scientific and mechanical objects that Shelley found scattered around him in the place he composed the letter, the Livorno workshop of Gisborne’s son, a young engineer who was building a new-model steamboat at the time (with Shelley’s financial and intellectual backing). In the context of that space, the poem reads as a response to competing notions of invention. For Shelley, the engineer’s workshop is an attractive alternative to the poet’s tower—which was uncomfortably close to a Grub Street garret. Verbal and visual images of poets’ and scientists’ workshops, from Hogarth and Mary Robinson, to Joseph Wright of Derby and Frankenstein, illustrate the tensions embodied in the physical location and poetic performance of Shelley’s celebrated “Letter.”     

Carto‐bibliography on the Web: Links Combining Text and Image

Wolfgang Scharfe, Abriss der Kartographie Brandenburgs, 1771–1821. Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission zu Berlin, de Gruyter Verlag, vol. 35, 1972. pp. 357, 27 maps, appendix with indexes. DM. 84.

H. Sigurdsson, Kortasaga Islands. Reykjavik, 1971. pp. 278, 69 × 42 cm. $ 55.

N. J. W. Thrower, Maps and man. An éxamination of cartography in relation to culture and civilization. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, Inc., 1972. pp. vii + 184.

L. Stegena, Maps of Hungary by Lazarus Secretarius. Budapest, the Department of Cartography, Roland Eötvös University, 1971. 5 plates, 63 × 48 cm.

W. P. Cumming, R. A. Skelton, and D. B. Quinn, The discovery of North America. London, Elek Books Ltd., 1971. pp. 304, 362 ill. £ 10.

C. Koeman, Atlantes Neerlandici. Volume 4, Celestial and maritime atlases and pilot books. Amsterdam, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1970. pp. xlvi + 519, with plates.

A. Schäfer and H. Weber, Inventar der handgezeichneten Karten und Pläne zur europäischen Kriegsgeschichte des 16.‐19. Jahrhunderts im Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe. Stuttgart, 1971. pp. 350, 8 illustrations. DM 48.

G. Grosjean and M. Cavelti, 500 Jahre schweizer Landkarten. Zürich, Orell Füssli Verlag, 1971. 30 map‐facsimiles, 48.5 × 50 cm., with text, in slip‐case, Sfr. 260.

Capitão‐de‐fragata Max Justo Guedes, Anônimo ‐ Antônio Sanches, c. 1633. Rio de Janeiro, Biblio‐teca Nacional, 1970. pp. 25, 1 coloured and folded map, 37 × 27 cm., monograph.

J. Cortesão, Historia do Brasil nos velhos mapas. Brazilian Foreign Ministry, 2 vols., 1965–1971.

National Maritime Museum, Catalogue of the Library. Volume 3, Parts 1 and 2, Atlases and cartography. London, H.M.S.O., 1971, 2 vols. pp. 1166. £ 14 (for two parts).

E. W. Gilbert, British pioneers in geography. Newton Abbott, Devon. 1972. pp. 271. £ 3.95.

Wilcomb E. Washburn (Editor), Proceedings of the Vinland Map Conference. Chicago, 1971. ('Studies in the history of discoveries’, Monograph Series of the Society for the History of Discoveries.) pp. xvii + 185, illustrations. $ 10.

C. Sanz, Ciento noventa mapas antiguos del mundo de los siglos 1 al 18 que forman parte del proceso cartografico mundial. Madrid. 1970. pp. 150, 190 plates.     

Patent portfolio analysis of cities: statistics and maps of technological inventiveness

ABSTRACT

Cities can be considered as engines of the knowledge-based economy, because they are the primary sites of knowledge production activities that subsequently shape the rate and direction of technological change and economic growth. Patents provide rich information to analyse the knowledge specialization of specific places, such as technological details and information on inventors and entities involved. The technology codes attributed at the level of individual patent documents can be used to indicate the diversity and scope of the knowledge claims underlying a specific invention. In this study we introduce tools for portfolio analysis in terms of patents that provide insights into the technological specialization of cities. The mapping and analysis of patent portfolios of cities exploits data derived from the Unites States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and dedicated tools (at https://leydesdorff.net/software/patents/). The results allow policy makers and other stakeholders to identify promising areas of further knowledge development, including smart specialization strategies.     

Spatial diversity in invention: evidence from the early R&D labs

This article uses historical data on inventor and firm researchand development (R&D) lab locations to examine the technologicaland geographic structure of corporate knowledge capital accumulationduring a formative period in the organization of United Statesinnovation. Despite the localization of inventive activity aroundthe labs, one-quarter of inventors lived outside a 30 mile commutingradius of the nearest facility of the firm they assigned theirpatents to. A strong positive effect of distance from a labon technological importance is identified, especially for inventorsfrom large cities that were geographically separated from afirm's; labs. A patent case–control method helps explainspatial sourcing by showing that the average quality of externallyavailable inventions was high. Firms selected complementary,not substitute, inventions from non-lab urban locations, suggestinga link between the organization and the geography of innovation.     

The practical limits of inventing traditions: the failed reinvention of the Sinjska Alka

The Alka is a traditional game in Croatia, held to commemorate the victory of the local warriors of the region of Cetina over the Ottoman army in 1715. The Croatian nationalist discourse of the 1990s tried to reinvent the Alka as symbol of a certain national identity, by nationalising this local event and emphasising its religious aspect. In a period of just over a decade, however, the project of reinventing the Alka has failed completely. This paper analyses the reinvention of the Alka and its failure in order to argue that concrete cases of invented tradition are context dependent and may encounter practical limits.     

Ethnic Performance and the State in Laos: The Boun Greh Annual Festival of the Khmou

Following the 1975 revolution, the Laotian statesmen adopted a modernising discourse that targeted “backward” traditions as undesirable. But since the 1990s, authorities have mitigated this standpoint, distinguishing “good” from “bad” traditions according to their compatibility with the program of national development, and professing their will to (re)instate the former as suitable expressions of culture in a multi-ethnic nation. This is manifest everywhere from the National Constitution to TV shows and ethnic catalogues. This paper analyses the implementation of these principles through the case of the boun greh New Year festival, an invented ethnic tradition of the Khmou, the largest ethnic minority in Laos. The article demonstrates that this implementation has consequentially implied the adoption of a grammar of national ethnicity; that this official framework paradoxically allows the Khmou to articulate demands for better recognition of their group; and that this process does not mute expressions of “cultural intimacy” at variance with this matrix. The official frame of ethnicity has been eventually adopted by the Khmou, but this state effect has multiplied the layers of expressed ethnicity: it cannot be equated with a unilateral regimentation that would deprive the Khmou of their agency.     

技术史的理论与实践——技术发展与社会需求

本文作者根据多年来研究中国冶铸史的心得和感悟,阐述了技术发展与社会需求之间的关系．指出：没有需求就没有发明,没有需求就没有发展,任何技术的产生必须完成必要的技术积襄过程：技术的本质是文化的,技术史问题的研究,不仅要着眼技术本身,还应纳入文化体系和社会大背景中去考量。     

浅谈文学艺术创作中的形象思维与逻辑思维

形象思维和逻辑思维是两种性质不同的思维方式,但是,在艺术和文学等的创作实践中,两者却能够统一起来,并且在创作的每个阶段上都交互影响。形象思维始终占据着主导地位,逻辑思维从属于形象思维,帮助它塑造出具体真实的形象。