The social factors that spur inventiveness and the social effects of inventions were treated at book length for the first time in this work, originally published in 1935. The author develops his presentation on the basis of 38 explicitly stated propositions. The author writes, "That inventionis an important subject for modern mankind to understand and perhaps later improve, all will agree. That invention is partly caused, hampered, promoted, steered by socialfactors and institutions (such as wealth, or the patent system) and not simply by developments in the physical sciences and industrial practice, will also be allowed. (How great is the social causation we shall discuss.) Likewise that inventions have wide social, and not simply industrial effects,has been common knowledge for nigh a century. There would seem then every call for a treatise on the Sociology of Invention. Yet not one book with this definitive field has been published in any language.... "Our problem is to combine those two worlds of thot, which have so rarely been conjoined—social science and engineering—in order to produce a rather new and fertile hybrid, a Sociology of Invention. It is a difficult problem, this getting people to study and think in an unfamiliar world; and we have tried to solve it for some readers, and dodge it for most...."