Overview

Make an index card! Jules Verne did not patent his ideas, he just simply described them in his novels, In order to develop his technical and scientific knowledge, Jules Verne starting in his youth and lasting throughout his life collected new technical and scientific information from books, magazines and papers. Biographers state that his card index contained more than 20,000 entries with information about technology, geography, physics and astronomy.

Today many inventors maintain their own index cards. These cards contain information about physical, chemical and geometrical effects. There are also descriptions of successful methods and inventive tricks information about new materials. In other words, everything that can contribute to the solution of a technical problem.

Index cards slowly accumulate and become very helpful during the search for new ideas. Sometimes an old forgotten card immediately helps solve a complicated new problem.

There is a piece of paper among my index cards with an extract from a book that is 100 years old. The book is called Magic of the World and was published in 1886.

Here is an extract from that book:

#89. Instant blossoming of a flower under the influence of electricity.

The magician takes a fresh-cut bud of any flower (a rose with the cut end of the stem covered with wax is best) and shows it to the audience in order to prove there is nothing inside the bud. Then he removes the wax, inserts a thin, long wire inside the stem,...